Lempaira Desmond Elijah is the Program Manager for IMPACT’s Community Land Protection Program, which empowers pastoralist communities across northern Kenya to understand and claim their collective tenure rights. He oversees the day-to-day operations of the project and coordinating a group of paralegal workers based at the community level. Lempaira is so enthusiastic and committed to supporting the pastoralist communities to benefit from the available information and natural wealth found on their community lands. His urge to support communities comes from him being a pastoralist, born and raised in the plains of Laikipia County and motivated by tremendous steps other communities have made in developing and improving their living standards.

Prior to joining IMPACT, Lempaira worked at the African Education Trust and Nyada Public Accountants mainly on both qualitative and quantitative data analysis. Lempaira earned a Bachelor’s degree in Arts from the University of Nairobi. In addition to this, he has a Certificate Course in SPSS, STATA and Advanced Excel from the University of Nairobi, certificate on the Human Dignity; The Universal Declaration on Human Rights from Amnesty International, a certificate on E-learning course on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples from the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner and, also the Legal Empowerment Leadership Course from the Legal Empowerment Network which is the largest community of grassroots justice defenders in the world. The network brings together 2472 organizations and 9472 individuals from over 160 countries, all working to advance justice for all.

In his spare time Lempaira enjoys adventure/bird watching and reading motivational books, Robin Sharma is his favorite author.

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