Citizenship and partitioned people in East Africa: The case of Wamaasai

In: Africa development: a quarterly journal of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa = Afrique et développement, Band 28, Heft 1-2, S. 53-96

Abstract

This paper focuses on the issues of globalization and citizenship. It takes to task the various ways in which the issue of African integration has been conceptualized, by bringing in the question of the partitioned communities. It examines the situation of a partitioned people in East Africa, the Wamaasai. (...) The Wamaasai people, cut nearly in half by the Kenya-Tanzania border, live in a situation whereby boundaries were drawn across well established lines of communisation including (...) an active sense of community. (...) These pastoralist groups, in both countries, have been facing harsh conditions because of being deprived of their lands and resources by their respective states, which have alienated them for agriculture and tourism. They have also been persecuted because of their resistance to "modernity". The paper is historical in its focus and analysis, with the aim to find ways of dealing with the problems facing the border/partitioned people through Pan-Africanist solutions. (Afr Dev/DÜI)