Northern Kenya’s Conservancies Withstand Funding Shock in Defining 2025 Test

The Year the conservation System Was Tested—and Didn’t Break In early 2025, the pressure did not come from the land.

It came from somewhere far less predictable—funding decisions made thousands of kilometres away.

When major donor streams shifted and the USAID Stop Work Order took effect, the ripple reached northern Kenya quickly. Budgets tightened. Operations were restructured. Teams were reduced. For an organisation like Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT), which works across one of the most complex landscapes in East Africa, the moment could have fractured everything.

It didn’t.

Across 47 community conservancies, spread over more than 6.3 million hectares, something quieter—but more significant—happened.

The system held.

“We were under pressure,” says Vishal Shah, CEO of NRT. “But what we saw was that the foundation we’ve been building for years—community governance, local ownership, structured systems—continued to function even when resources were constrained. It was a year that gave us massive lessons, lessons that make us and the communoties we searve much stronger.”

In places like Samburu and Isiolo, community meetings did not stop. Grazing plans continued. Peace dialogues still took place. Water systems were mainained. Scouts remained on patrol.

There was no dramatic announcement. No single moment of success.

Just continuity, though with difficulties.

That continuity is easy to overlook. But in development—and particularly in fragile ecosystems—it is often the clearest measure of whether something is working.

For years, NRT has positioned itself not as a delivery organisation, but as a builder of systems: governance structures that allow communities to make decisions; livelihood pathways that reduce vulnerability; conservation models that integrate people rather than exclude them.

In 2025, those systems were forced to stand on their own. And largely, they did.

This is not to suggest the year was easy.

Restructuring meant difficult decisions. Staff who had carried the organisation for years exited. Programmes were scaled back. The margin for error narrowed.

“It was one of the toughest periods in our history,” Shah admits. “But it also clarified something important—what we are building has to outlast us.”

That realisation has shaped what NRT now calls its “2.0” strategy—a deliberate shift away from direct implementation towards facilitation. The aim is simple in theory, complex in execution: ensure conservancies can operate independently, with NRT supporting rather than driving.

Across northern Kenya, signs of that shift are emerging.

County governments are beginning to step in, not as observers but as actors. Samburu has established a conservancy fund. Laikipia has committed direct financial support. Communities are taking on more responsibility for managing resources and programmes.

None of this is guaranteed.

The funding landscape remains uncertain. Climate pressures are intensifying. Population growth continues to stretch resources.

But the events of 2025 revealed something that no strategy document can fully capture: When systems are locally owned, they are harder to break.

In northern Kenya, resilience did not come from new interventions.

It came from structures that had been built slowly, tested quietly, and—when it mattered most—continued to work.