African farmers risk losing out on new livestock vaccines as illegal encroachment on research land belonging to the International Livestock Research Institute threatens operations on the site.
Settlers are targeting the research land located on the Kapiti plains in Kajiado county south-east of the capital, Nairobi. Many have erected structures on the land that they claim to have boughtfrom people who—ILRI says—have no right to sell it.
The illegal abstraction of land belonging to public institutions is a common problem in Kenya. It is usually done by developers in collusion with government officials, with both sides keen to make a quick buck from some of the highest land prices in Africa.
In a 5 January statement, ILRI said the people duped into buying plots of the ranch risk losing their money. They also stated that no land on the ranch is for sale, that its 80 on-site staff have been threatened with violence by the new settlers, and that continued trespassing could ultimately disrupt research.
ILRI has sought a court order to evict the squatters. Meanwhile, police are helping prevent even more people from settling on the land. The court hearing has been scheduled for 6 February.
ILRI keeps more than 2,500 head of cattle and hundreds of sheep and goats on the farm used for field trials of vaccines, treatments and feeds for arid rangeland animals. With climate change possibly leading to a drier climate in places, the research is set to benefit Africa and arid tropics around the world, ILRI said.
One of the projects at risk concerns safety trials of vaccines against Rift Valley Fever, the last outbreak of which in 2006-07 killed more than 100 people and cost the country KSh3.1 billion (US$30.1 million), ILRI said.
The site also houses trials of a vaccine against Malignant Catarrhal Fever, a herpes virus occurring in Kenya’s Kapiti and Maasai Mara regions. The virus is transmitted from wildebeest to sheep and cattle at grazing locations where wildebeest have recently calved.
“The ongoing lawlessness risks disrupting or stopping important long-term livestock research, thereby threatening the futures of hundreds of millions of livestock producers—as well as the processors, sellers and consumers of milk and meat—across Kenya, Africa and Asia,” ILRI stated.