The Ilemi Triangle

Grass and water

Ilemi is a triangle of land where Sudan, Kenya and Ethiopia joined, described in some records as 14,000 km² and in others as 10,320 km². Its value has been its dry-season pastures, which herders from all sides depend on and have fought over: the Turkana of Kenya, the Didinga and Toposa of Sudan, the Nyangatom of Sudan and Ethiopia, and the Dassanech, most of whom live in Ethiopia. In 2003 it had no infrastructure except a Kenyan frontier post.^[3]

A line, then more lines

In 1914 a Uganda–Sudan boundary commission was set up, and a line was fixed as Uganda’s northern border; when Uganda’s Rudolf Province went to Kenya in 1926, that line became the Kenya–Sudan border.^[3][4] But much of the Turkana’s dry-season grazing lay north of it.^[3]

So officials kept adding lines. In 1931 the local British administrators agreed a Red Line around the Turkana pastures, and in 1932 a Green Line stretched it north-east. In 1944 Britain’s Foreign Office drew a Blue Line further west, used from 1947, which enlarged the triangle. In 1950 Sudan set its own Sudanese Patrol Line further west still.^[3] Sudan never wanted the cost of running the area, and Britain at one point proposed trading eastern Ilemi to Ethiopia for the Baro salient.^[3]

Two readings

Kenya administers the triangle as part of Turkana County, using the 1950 Patrol Line, which gives it the whole area.^[1] South Sudanese officials say the land was never legally transferred: a 1936 undertaking let Kenya’s colonial governor administer it on behalf of the authorities in Juba, and Kenya simply kept it after Sudan’s independence in 1956.^[5] South Sudan inherited Sudan’s claim at independence in 2011.^[2]

In August 2026 South Sudan’s vice president, Taban Deng Gai, objected to maps showing Ilemi inside Kenya. Kenyans, he said, “were asked to administer it on behalf of us” because it was so far from Kapoeta and Khartoum.^[2]

“This Ilemi Triangle should be seen always as a place of discussion. It’s not part of Kenya.”^[2]

Talks and clashes

In June 2019 the two foreign ministers agreed to set up a joint commission and to speed up reaffirming the border at Ilemi.^[5] The commission was launched in February 2023, after Kenyan troops responded to fighting between Turkana and Toposa herders and entered Nakodok, a town both countries claim. South Sudan bases its claim there on a 2009 agreement placing a border post at Nadapal, 10 km further into what maps show as Kenya.^[1] Possible oil and water have raised the stakes, and skirmishes still flare.^[6]