Report of workshop on nomadic education, Nakuru (26-28 January 2010)

In 2009, the Ministry of State for Development of Northern Kenya and Other Arid Lands(MDNKOAL) commissioned a team of pastoral experts from IIED to assist in the design of a new national~strategy to allow nomadic children and adults to access high quality education. The Education for Nomads programme team have since carried out extensive research around the problem of how Kenyan pastoralists can acquire the education and skills which will allow them to compete on equal terms with other national population groups, without compromising their livelihood as pastoralist producers.

The purpose of this inter-ministerial workshop was to help design an education strategy for nomadic pastoralists. The Government and its partners have already started to accommodate mobility, for example through mobile schools and the policy framework for nomadic education. To build on this, Ministry of State for Development of Northern Kenya and Other Arid Lands (MDNKOAL) invited fifty participants from key government and community bodies, including the Ministry of Education, Kenya Institute of Education, Kenyatta University, Egerton University, and representatives of various mobile schools as well as retired education specialists to this workshop in order to share the research findings to date and use the participants’ expert knowledge to inform the strategy design.