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Assignment: The Struggle for Land on Kenya's Coast

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The Struggle for Land on Kenya’s Coast

28/02/2013

The Struggle for Land on Kenya's Coast

BBC World Service - Assignment, The Struggle for Land on Kenya's Coast

What’s behind the calls for a new breakaway state on Kenya’s coast?

A separatist group on Kenya’s coast is calling on voters there to boycott the upcoming elections. How credible a threat will they pose to the next Kenyan government?

The last time Kenya held a general election, voters from different ethnic groups turned on one another over a contested result.  More than a thousand people were killed. 

Five years on, the competition to succeed President Mwai Kibaki still centres around a number of highly contentious, unresolved issues: ethnicity, the division of resources, and access to land.

These tensions are particularly acute on Kenya’s coast. Decades of anger about land grabbing by people from other parts of Kenya has led to the rise of a separatist movement that says only independence can help coastal achieve their rights. 

For Assignment, Gabriel Gatehouse asks how much of a threat the separatists will pose to the government that will take power after the elections. Are land and ethnicity the real fault-lines, or are there other factors at play?

(Image of Mealii Ali who was evicted from her home when the land was claimed by someone else. BBC Copyright)

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