The world's climate technology investors are searching for real-world deployment environments. Africa's arid and semi-arid lands cover 40% of the continent and offer exactly what is needed — at scale, at low cost, and with conditions that mirror the majority of the global dryland market. Yet they remain almost entirely untapped. Here is why, and what it takes to change that.
Arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs) cover approximately 80% of Kenya's land area and support roughly 70% of the country's livestock. Across sub-Saharan Africa, ASALs account for over 40% of the total land mass and are home to hundreds of millions of people whose livelihoods depend on rangeland systems, seasonal water sources, and climate-sensitive pastoralism.
These are also the regions most acutely affected by climate change. Erratic rainfall, prolonged drought cycles, soil degradation, and water scarcity are not projections in ASAL communities — they are present realities. Technologies that address these conditions have a genuinely massive addressable market.
Yet the vast majority of climate technology investment and deployment has concentrated in contexts very different from ASALs: urban grids, commercial agriculture, coastal infrastructure, and high-income markets. The ASAL deployment environment — vast, arid, community-governed, and ecologically diverse — remains almost entirely unexplored by the climate technology sector.
"Technology proven in African ASAL conditions is technology proven for one of the world's largest and most underserved markets. The question is not whether the opportunity exists — it is who will be first to structure access to it."
Three factors have historically made ASAL deployment difficult for climate technology companies. First, land access and community consent. ASAL land in Kenya is predominantly community land — governed not by individual title but by customary arrangements and, increasingly, by the Community Land Act 2016. Without a structured entry point that can demonstrate genuine community consent and legal clarity, technology companies face real governance risks.
Second, the absence of institutional infrastructure. Successful technology pilots require baseline data, local workforce capacity, community relationships, and institutional partners who can navigate local governance systems. In most ASAL regions, this infrastructure does not exist in accessible form for international partners.
Third, perceived remoteness and logistical complexity. ASAL regions are often characterised — incorrectly — as inaccessible and logistically prohibitive. In reality, road networks, mobile connectivity, and local supply chains in regions like Laisamis have improved substantially. The perception of inaccessibility is often more significant than the reality.
Laisamis Constituency in Marsabit County offers something unusual: 1.85 million hectares of community-governed ASAL land across four distinct ecological zones, with a governance framework anchored by the National Land Commission under Article 67 of the Constitution of Kenya.
The National Land Commission has already conducted nine formal sensitisation forums across all six wards of the constituency between 2024 and 2025. Community land registration is underway. Ward-level Community Land Management Committees are being identified. The institutional groundwork that is typically the most difficult and time-consuming part of any African land partnership is being laid systematically, before any commercial partner is engaged.
This means that a climate technology company or accelerator approaching Laisamis does not face the usual problem of having to build governance legitimacy from scratch. The process is already running. The question is which partners will engage early enough to shape it.
Community land registration in Kenya is a process that takes time — typically several years from sensitisation to formal title. Laisamis is currently in the early stages of that process. Partners who engage now have the opportunity to help shape the governance frameworks, benefit-sharing agreements, and pilot protocols that will define how the land is used for the next generation.
Partners who wait until registration is complete will find a more crowded and more expensive landscape. The advantage of early engagement is not just cost — it is the ability to co-design a deployment environment that genuinely fits the partner's technology and data needs.
The Laisamis Climate & Land Initiative exists precisely to structure that early engagement — connecting international climate technology partners with a community-governed ASAL environment that is ready for serious partnership.
"The ASAL opportunity is real. The governance is being built. The question is who engages first."
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