Tribal conflicts and conflicts between herders and landowners in Laikipia, Kenya, have been documented in a true-life film released this year and already entered the circuits of festivals and film festivals around the world. It is ‘The battle for Laikipia’ directed by Daphne Matziaraki and Peter Murimi.
In Laikipia County, north of Nairobi between Mount Kenya and Aberdare National Park, the vast expanses of savannah have always intersected with the grazing lands of the Samburu herders. The large private reserves, hectares and hectares of heritage preserved mainly by former British colonialists and their heirs, or sold to foreigners, protect endangered animal species and maintain the ecosystem in spite of climate change and pollution.
At the same time, however, with civilisation and climate change itself, pastoralists, who have always survived by taking their herds where they can feed them, invade the ‘conservancies’ and often lead to even bloody conflicts.
The conservationist and writer Kuki Gallman, owner of one of the many ranches in the area, knows something about this.
‘The battle for Laikipia’ speaks with realism and rawness about these extreme and complicated relationships, through the lives of the real protagonists, while showing the wonders of one of the most fascinating places in Kenya and Africa in general.
On the one hand, the Samburu shepherd Simeon is a representation of the person who perpetuates the oldest farming traditions in the area. His cattle do not know and cannot afford words like ‘boundaries’ or ‘fences’. Goats and cows graze wherever there is water to quench their thirst and grass to feed themselves.
On the other move Maria and her son George, Kenyans of British descent for four generations, who have created a sustainable business from their colonised land, providing employment but not giving in to the demands of local people who would like to encroach.

This gives rise to the film's narrative tension, between documentary and pathos, recounting the ties and distances between the two ‘factions’ involved. The protagonists' stories reveal the actuality of those lands, with the worrying lack of water, which worsens every year, with the efforts made by former colonialists but also the partly legitimate demands of those who claim the lands where their ancestors were born and lived before the British colonisers arrived. Up to and including reconstructed events that take their cue from local news, to violence and dispossession, with banditry often taking advantage of local people's claims to rob and plunder ranches.
Daphne Matziaraki, an American director with a 20-year association with Kenya, has collaborated with her colleague Peter Murimi on a necessary feature film that premiered at the prestigious ‘Sundance Film Festival’ last January.
A film that does not linger on the drama and does not seek sensationalism, but shows the situation, without taking sides. And how could one, seeing in one scene a white rancher who decides to shoot the cows of the shepherds grazing on his side of the fence, looking for grass to eat, and in another a group of shepherds, with the priority of preserving their lifestyle, raiding a ranch house.
However, behind these events, there is the ‘longa manus’ of the power of the global economy and the new dynamics of agricultural production and ecotourism.
The question that arises from this film-denunciation is ‘is there a common good for Laikipia, is there a solution to reconcile the good of the region's ecosystem and the coexistence of its inhabitants?’ The Kenyan film will be at the ‘Cinema for the Environment’ festival in Turin, subtitled in Italian. Hopefully also soon on screens or some streaming platforms. Anyone who cares about Kenya and wants to understand its reality, through a work of art and entertainment, should be able to see ‘The battle for Laikipia’.