Maasai Programme

Keystone Legacy works with local partners to alleviate extreme poverty and improve education through clean energy, permaculture & rangeland regeneration

Our carbon positive programme uses the expertise and power of business, NGOs, CBOs & government to deliver scalable solutions that can drive exponential impact over time.

Location

Amboseli, Kenya

Challenges

The Maasai in Kenya, like other indigenous and ethnic minority groups elsewhere, have maintained their traditional livestock-oriented lifestyles and continued to be on the fringe of the market economy and development

Global issues such as climate change & overpopulation coupled with diminishing land sizes and accessibility, declining land productivity, frequent droughts, escalating levels of poverty and food shortages, mean that the Maasai can no longer support themselves from subsistence livestock herding

It is now necessary for the Maasai to diversify their sources of livelihood in order to cope and mitigate the hardships and challenges that confront them

Keystone Legacy addresses several development challenges with the prevailing issues being extreme poverty & land degradation.

The Approach

Aligned with the Kajaido County Integrated Development Plan & Kenya Vision 2030, the findings of our February 2019 ethnographic study on the Maasai provided us with key information to develop funding & resources for long-term development programmes and interventions

Our documentary film captured the lived experience and challenges of the Maasai, the actions they have taken to mitigate them, what they feel needs to be done to address these challenges and the opportunities that exist for improving their standards of living & well-being in a sustainable manner.

Keystone Solution

The clean energy we help develop is community generated biogas & solar energy for improved light & cooking solutions. The huge health benefits & household savings create options for income generating initiatives enabling communities to become self-reliant, participate in the main Kenyan economy and run successful enterprises bringing greater security to their families

With our local partners, we run concurrent rangeland regeneration programmes to equip communities with grazing, rainwater catchment & tree planting systems that reverse desertification, develop jobs & help protect their ecosystems.