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Layeni, on the shore of Lake Turkana in Kenya, is one of only two villages where the Elmolo people live. The smallest tribe in Kenya, the Elmolo continue to rely on an almost exclusive diet of fish pulled from Lake Turkana.
Nearly 90 percent of its freshwater inflow comes from the Omo River across the border in Ethiopia. Last year, the government in Addis Ababa unveiled Africa’s tallest hydroelectric dam and announced plans to build a series of water-hungry plantations along the Omo. Nearly 30,000 hectares have already been cleared in the Lower Omo for sugar plantation. Those projects threaten to strangle Turkana’s water supply, and have the potential to devastate the nearly 300,000 people in Kenya who rely on the lake for food and livelihood