Oliver Vivian Wasonga

Oliver Vivian Wasonga
University of Nairobi | UON · Department of Land Resource Management & Agricultural Technology

PhD Dryland Ecology and Pastoral Livelihoods (www.oliverwasonga.info)

About

114
Publications
76,163
Reads
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1,892
Citations
Additional affiliations
January 2006 - April 2020
University of Nairobi
Position
  • Senior Lecturer
Description
  • Senior Lecture & Researcher, University of Nairobi. Over 19 years of experience.
January 2000 - July 2019
University of Nairobi
Position
  • Lecturer
Description
  • Dryland Ecology; Pastoralist Livelihoods; Climate Change Adaptation; Resilience; Wildlife Conservation; Ethnobotany; Fodder Value Chain; Food Security; Pastoral Livestock Marketing
Education
September 2005 - August 2009
University of Nairobi
Field of study
  • Range Management

Publications

Publications (114)
Preprint
Full-text available
In the Horn of Africa Drylands (HAD) conflict over water and vegetation is prominent. Additionally, large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) are increasing the competition of water, putting local communities at greater risk. A key impact of increasing LSLA's is the decrease in water and land availability for vulnerable agropastoral communities. Despit...
Article
Introduction: Livestock are central to pastoral livelihoods. A major constraint in pastoral production is livestock diseases, which is often exacerbated by inadequate surveillance systems. Reporting of disease outbreaks from pastoral communities to animal health workers is one of the challenges that affects effective and timely response to disease...
Article
Full-text available
Perennial grasses form the bulk of nutrition for livestock in semi-arid grassland ecosystems in addition to the provision of other ecosystem services such as carbon storage. A study was undertaken to evaluate the performance of ecotypes of two common perennial semi-arid grasses (Panicum maximum and Cenchrus ciliaris) under different soil types and...
Article
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Agropastoralism and nomadic pastoralism constitute the main land use systems in semi-arid drylands in Kenya. However, limited studies have investigated how land use and management practices and seasonality affect soil properties that alter C, N, and P biogeochemical cycling in African drylands systems. Thus, this study was conducted to determine ef...
Article
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Developing countries are witnessing rapid expansion of electrical infrastructure to meet increasing energy demands , prompting a critical need to assess the potential impact on avian biodiversity. Leveraging open access data, our study conducted a comprehensive assessment to detect electrocution and collision risk hotspots in Kenya while identifyin...
Article
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Efforts have been made in the recent past to improve knowledge of soil greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes in Sub- Saharan Africa. However, information on land use and land cover (LULC) types’ influence on soil GHG fluxes in Kenyan drylands is still limited. This study aimed to quantify soil GHG (carbon dioxide-CO2, nitrous oxide-N2O and methane-CH4) fluxe...
Article
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Climate variability and its impacts affect different members of gender groups in households and society differently. Within the pastoral community, women are more vulnerable, being among the poorest of the poor, and they are expected to be highly susceptible to climate variability effects. This study assesses gender perceptions of climate variabili...
Article
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To explore the utility of artificial sweeteners (Acesulfame: ACE; sucralose: SUC; saccharin: SAC; cyclamate: CYC) as molecular markers and to establish a historical benchmark of the water pollution status in the 2010 decade, 272 surface water samples, including river water, sewage, and livestock wastewater, were collected from African (Ghana, Kenya...
Article
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Background. Climate change is a global phenomenon, with varying indicators and impacts from one region to another. The impacts of the changing climate are high in developing countries that are mainly dependent on climate-driven economic sectors such as pastoral and agro-pastoral livelihoods. Objective. Analyze the temporal trend, the variability in...
Article
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The Horn of Africa Drylands are increasingly experiencing severe droughts, which impose a threat on traditional livelihood strategies. Understanding adaptation behavior in rural communities is key to helping reduce the impact of these droughts. We investigate adaptation behavior by assessing four established economic and social psychological theori...
Article
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Regardless of geographical location, climate variability significantly influences the success or loss of agricultural production as a source of income worldwide. As a result, this research aimed to look into the spatio-temporal variability of rainfall and its impacts on pastoral and agro-pastoral livelihood choices in Marsabit County. The rainfall...
Article
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Kisambo BK, Wasonga OV, Kipchirchir OK, Karuku GN, Kirwa EC. 2023. Forage yields and quality of Cenchrus ciliaris and Panicum maximum ecotypes under varied harvest intervals in a semi-arid environment in Kenya. Intl J Trop Drylands 7: 102-111. Livestock production in Kenya typically relies on native pastures for nutrition and efforts are ongoing to...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Livestock production is a key sector in tropical Africa, sustaining millions of livelihoods in rangelands. It majorly relies heavily on indigenous vegetation including grasses which form the main basal diet. Grazing or defoliation is one of the processes which influence plant functional traits and productivity of range grasses. The objective of thi...
Conference Paper
Livestock production is a key sector in tropical Africa, sustaining millions of livelihoods in rangelands. It majorly relies heavily on indigenous vegetation including grasses which form the main basal diet. Grazing or defoliation is one of the processes which influence plant functional traits and productivity of range grasses. The objective of thi...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Perennial grasses form the bulk of nutrition for livestock in semi-arid grassland ecosystems and are a key livestock feed source in addition to the provision of a range of ecosystem services. A pot experiment was conducted to examine the responses of four perennial indigenous grass ecotypes grown in three different soil types (ferralsols, fluvisols...
Article
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Research conducted on food systems by higher institutions can contribute to sustainable food security and nutrition at a local level and reduce the impact of societal challenges such as malnutrition. Unfortunately, malnutrition itself manifests as hidden hunger causing unintended consequences such as illness negatively affecting economic progress....
Article
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Raptors face global threats like electrocution, collisions, and habitat fragmentation. Many species remain understudied, and their distribution patterns are unknown. Understanding their current and future distribution is crucial for conservation. Protecting these top predators requires knowledge of their spatial distribution and environmental influ...
Article
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In Tigray, northern Ethiopia, land degradation has generally undermined the environmental goods and services (EGS) those local communities depend on for their livelihoods. Massive sustainable land management programs (SLMP) to restore degraded land have temporarily ceased to be accessible free of charge to communities because human and animal inter...
Article
Full-text available
Diseases affecting livestock can have significant impacts on the animal, humans and the economy. Participatory epidemiology and spatial analysis were conducted to assess livestock disease problems in Samburu County, northern Kenya. Key informants were selected purposively with the help of local leaders. Among the livestock, goats were identified to...
Article
Land rehabilitation through exclosures has been recognized as a promising practice in the restoration of degraded drylands. This study evaluated woody species density, diversity, cover, and biomass production from three regeneration approaches (EMTs): (1) Naturally Regenerated (ENR) exclosures, (2) exclosures with Soil and Water Conservation Struct...
Article
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Many smallholder farmers grow crops using low-intensity management in the different rangelands of Eastern Africa. This crop cultivation also substantially contributes to the income of farmers. However, the extent of cropland expansion, the driving factors and the impacts have not been mapped on smaller scales. We obtained this information by interv...
Article
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Background: Kenya's rich wildlife is an important natural resource and is vital to the country's economy. However, rapid infrastructure development in key wildlife areas has threatened the survival of numerous species including raptors. Policy: The growing distribution of electricity grids in Kenya poses a significant risk to raptors and population...
Preprint
Full-text available
Raptors are apex predators threatened globally by electrocution, collisions, and habitat fragmentation. Most species of raptors are understudied and largely unexplored. Top predators like raptors depend on the sustainability of the ecosystems in which they live and migrate. Knowing how endangered raptors are geographically dispersed, as well as the...
Article
Full-text available
Range exclosures have been used as a tool to restore degraded communal grazing lands in Tigray region of Northern Ethiopia. Although there seems to be ecological evidence of success in rehabilitation of degraded rangelands in Tigray, there is unclear translation of these achievements into socio-economic benefits. It was hypothesized that this could...
Article
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Background: Land degradation is a major challenge facing the world today, with devastating effects particularly among communities inhabiting semi-arid rangelands who are more directly dependent on natural resources. Over the years, indigenous grasses have provided multiple economic, ecosystem and cultural benefits for many communities in Kenya. How...
Article
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Background Livestock production is an economically significant activity in grassland‐based production systems with herbivory, a critical process in modifying plant structure and regulating biomass dynamics in these areas. Methods A grazing simulation experiment was undertaken in a semi‐arid environment in Kenya to determine the effects of clipping...
Article
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Agroforestry is one of the key sustainable land management practices recommended for the drylands that are characterized by a myriad of problems among them land degradation that is exacerbated by climate change. Adoption of agroforestry practices has largely remained low and largely unexplained especially in drylands of Kenya. Socio-economic factor...
Article
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Pastoralism is globally recognized as the backbone of the economy in the vast arid and semi-arid rangelands. Despite its enormous economic contribution, the system is facing a myriad of challenges, among them, land use and land tenure changes, resulting in diminished grazing land. Accompanying such changes is the conversion of traditional grazing l...
Article
Full-text available
Many activities from livestock husbandry contribute to emission and concentration of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), nitrous oxide (N 2 O) and methane (CH 4 ) gases to the atmosphere; activities such as grazing, manure and urine deposited or stored on land as well as crop farming practices such as tilling, burning of biomass or crop residues. A better unde...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Pastoralism is the main economic activity in the massive drylands of Kenya, consisting over 70% of the countries' livestock population. It employs 90% of communities living the arid and semi-arid parts of the country. Although few small-scale livestock markets exist in rural pastoral areas, most of the animals end up in the urban markets with peak...
Technical Report
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COVID-19 is a defining moment for strengthening drought resilience of society and managing ecosystems more sustainably. Both recent and historical experiences indicate that disease outbreaks very often follow extreme weather events. Drought, combined with other ecosystem changes such as habitat degradation, preceded the COVID-19 outbreak and has be...
Article
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Livestock production in arid and semi-arid areas is an important source of household food and income. Selling or buying of livestock and their products is important among pastoral communities who derive their source of livelihoods from livestock production. This study sought to determine factors that influence the initial decision of pastoral commu...
Article
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This study assessed the perceptions and attitudes of the communities living in the fringes of the Falgore Game Reserve (FGR) in Kano, Nigeria towards the protected area conservation approach. Multistage sampling technique which comprises of purposive and random sampling technique were used for the study. The data were analysed using descriptive, ch...
Article
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Abstract Livestock export from Somaliland to the Arabian Peninsula countries is an important economic activity and the main source of Somaliland’s foreign exchange earnings. We have employed multiple regression time series analysis of secondary data to understand factors that influence the monthly volumes of small ruminants (sheep and goats) and ca...
Article
Full-text available
Background The arid and semi-arid lands experience inherently unpredictable rainfall and frequent droughts, which are exacerbated by climate change. This consequently leads to deterioration of land resources, and eventually forage and water shortages that negatively impact livestock productivity. In Kenya, development and government agencies have b...
Article
Full-text available
The semi-arid Lokere and Lokok catchments in northeastern Uganda are experiencing land use andland cover (LULC) change driven by policies and actions aimed at pastoralist sedentarisation. Whilethese efforts present a trajectory of a landscape dominated by farming, livestock herding or grazingpersists. The objective of this study was to project medi...
Article
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This article argues that brokers are key actors in the cross-border livestock trade between Kenya and Somalia, where formal regulations are weak or absent. We elucidate the economic and social rationales for livestock brokerage as well as a series of brokering practices taking place at the intersection of profit making, kinship and trust. Besides p...
Preprint
Full-text available
Background The arid and semi-arid lands are affected inherently by unpredictable rainfall and frequent droughts, which are exacerbated by climate change. This has resulted in deterioration of land resources, leading to forage and water shortages that negatively impact on livestock productivity. To cope with these climatic hazards that affect agricu...
Preprint
Full-text available
Background: The arid and semi-arid lands experience inherently unpredictable rainfall and frequent droughts, which are exacerbated by climate change. This consequently leads to deterioration of land resources, and eventually forage and water shortages that negatively impact livestock productivity. In Kenya, development and governments agencies have...
Preprint
Full-text available
Background: The arid and semi-arid lands experience inherently unpredictable rainfall and frequent droughts, which are exacerbated by climate change. This consequently leads to deterioration of land resources, and eventually forage and water shortages that negatively impact livestock productivity. In Kenya, development and government agencies have...
Article
Many community groups in rural Africa malfunction or collapse after external support has ended. The use of non-consultative and non-contextual approaches in the establishment and evaluation of community groups has been associated with limited understanding of group functionality. This paper uses the perspectives of group members to identify social...
Article
Full-text available
Context Stratified cattle production (SCP) systems, which involve buying lean animals from pastoral areas and fattening them in locations that have better production conditions, are re-emerging in Kenya’s drylands. Aims This study investigated how pastoralists in the drylands of Kenya endeavour to fulfil cattle marketing requirements under the SCP...
Article
Full-text available
In Africa’s pastoral production systems, the body condition of livestock declines during the dry season when grazing resources become scarce, resulting in lean animals that fail to meet terminal market requirements and therefore fetch low prices. In Kenya, stratified livestock production (SLP) systems in which cattle are purchased from pastoral are...
Article
Full-text available
Livestock production is the most important economic activity in Kenya. Land use practice in arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs) of Kenya is most affected by droughts, which lead to pasture scarcity. Fodder production has been adopted by communities in ASALs to enhance feed availability and generating alternative source of livelihood. However, the scal...
Article
Full-text available
The Lokere and Lokok Catchments, which form the mainwatershed in the semiarid Karamoja sub-region of Uganda, are experiencing land use and land cover (LULC) change from extensive livestock production to crop agriculture. This paper assessed the change in LULC in the Catchments during the period 1984-2013 through unsupervised and supervised classifi...
Article
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The Kapir Catchment, which is the main watershed in the semiarid Karamoja sub-region of Uganda, is experiencing land use and land cover (LULC) change from extensive livestock production to crop agriculture. This paper assessed the change in LULC in the Catchment during the period 1984-2013 through unsupervised and supervised classification of satel...
Article
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This study estimates the economic contribution of grazing management practices in pastoral systems by specifically undertaking an economic analysis of pastoralists’ preferences for grazing management practices and the economic value pastoralists place on them. The study applied the discrete choice experiment technique using a D-optimal design, a mu...
Article
Full-text available
Soil properties contribute to the widely recognised resilience of semiarid areas. However, limited attention has been given in providing a scientific basis of how semiarid soil properties in the various land covers occur and how they influence forage quantity. is study investigated the influence of different soil properties and land cover types on...
Article
Full-text available
Abstract: Long-term changes in rangeland ecosystems of the world have impacted on the livestock production, a key livelihood strategy in these areas. This paper presents perceptions of the pastoral community on the dynamics of pastoral livelihoods under three land-use types namely nomadic, semi-nomadic, and sedentary in Amboseli ecosystem located i...
Article
Full-text available
Fodder production has been regarded as one of the suitable strategies for increasing feed availability for enhanced livestock production among pastoral and agro-pastoral communities in the drylands of Kenya. Previous studies indicate that factors determining participation in these practices vary from time to time and from one location to another. T...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Economic potential of cattle production in pastoral areas of Kenya is constrained by limited market outlet for lean animals especially during dry seasons. Since the year 1999/2000, when a severe drought was experienced, there has been an emergence of stratified forms of cattle production in which the lean animals are purchased from the pastoral are...
Article
Full-text available
Whereas there is abundance of information on community groups that engage in income generation in rural agricultural and peri-urban areas, information on community groups in pastoral areas still remains scarce. However, in the recent past, a growing trend of such groups has been observed in the pastoral areas in northern Kenya. This study therefore...
Article
Full-text available
Seasonal fluctuations in forage availability in African drylands significantly affect the body condition of pastoral livestock. The result is lean animals that, besides falling short of market requirements, often fetch low prices for producers. In Kenya's pastoral areas, stratified cattle production (SCP) systems in which animals are transferred fr...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Fodder production has increasingly become important among pastoral and agro-pastoral communities in Kenya. A number of pasture production technologies have been introduced to these communities not only to enhance availability of livestock feeds in dry periods but also to boost their income from sale of hay and grass seed. Only scanty information ha...
Article
Full-text available
IntroductionMulti-temporal land-use and land-cover data provides a historical vehicle for determining and evaluating long-term trends in bio-physical landscapes. Land-use and land-cover assessment and mapping is one of the most useful applications of geographic information system (GIS) for planning, management, and development. This study analyses...
Article
Full-text available
Introduction: In the recent decades, there has been growing interest in the contribution of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) to livelihoods, development, and poverty alleviation among the rural populace. This has been prompted by the fact that communities living adjacent to forest reserves rely to a great extent on the NTFPs for their livelihoods...