Tradition meets tech as Kenya’s herders adapt to climate change

Traditional Samburu tribeswomen gather their goats to be sell at Merille livestock market, some 411km north of Nairobi in Kenya's Marsabit county, on April 30, 2019. - Nomadic livestock herders in East Africa's drylands have endured climate variability for millennia, driving their relentless search for water and pasture in some of the world's most inhospitable terrain. (Photo by TONY KARUMBA / AFP)

MERILLE, Kenya: For generations, Kaltuma Hassan's clan would study the sky over Kenya's arid north for any sign of rain – some wind here, a wisp of cloud there – to guide their parched livestock to water.

But such divination has been rendered hopeless by intensifying droughts. Days on foot can reveal nothing more than bone-dry riverbeds and grazing land baked to dust, sounding the death knell for their herd.