Introduction: Envisioning green futures in Africa

Green visions are key elements in Africa’s ambitious development plans, with particular relevance for the future of rural areas. They encompass a wide range of environmental issues, including the health of ecosystems and biodiversity, the sustainability of agricultural production and resource use, organic cultivation, and the protection of conservation areas. ‘Green’ is used as a metaphor to refer to natural resources, human-environment relationships, land-use change, and sustainable development (Leach 2015). The use of this metaphor appeals to the idea of a ‘common future’, presumably in everyone’s interest, based on the harmonisation of environmental, economic, and social objectives. In recent years, this kind of green terminology has penetrated a wide range of economic fields, expressed for example in concepts such as the ‘Green New Deal’, ‘Green Growth’, or ‘Green Economy’ (Barbier and Markandya 2013, Buseth 2017, Bergius et al. 2018, Hwang et al. 2017). In a sense, ‘green’ can be seen as a fashionable buzzword, as it is used to put a positive spin on all sorts of transformative processes, including agricultural intensification programmes, the establishment of large nature reserves, or the shift to renewable energy. Calling these processes ‘green’ implies that they are environmentally friendly, sustainable, and in everyone’s interest. In Africa, the implicit idea of inclusiveness behind these envisioned green futures is evident in national planning and public debates. The African Union, for example, published its Agenda 2063 under the programmatic title ‘The Africa We Want’, which explicitly aims at a ‘common strategic framework for inclusive growth and sustainable development and a global strategy to optimise the use of Africa’s resources for the benefit of all Africans’. In other words: Green is a political statement; it signals hope for a better future by putting the environment first.

This move towards a green agenda is also gaining momentum in Kenya and Tanzania. In both countries, national planning aims for a major push towards economic development and modernisation, based on the mobilisation of domestic and international capital, new technologies, and increased agricultural production. The quest for a ‘green’ future is reflected in national plans such as Kenya’s Vision 2030, Tanzania’s Vision 2025, as well as the newly prepared Tanzanian Vision 2050, and countless regional development initiatives and projects. However, the physical implementation and impacts of green development are often controversial, as many of the ambitious programmes have so far failed to deliver as planned. This chapter examines the ambiguous relationship between the political rhetoric and the socio-economic reality of the green paradigm, focusing on the historical background, actors, and political conditions of its implementation. The juxtaposition of rhetoric and reality is empirically grounded in the observation that many of the visionary policy papers of the past three decades have been collections of promises and wishful thinking rather than feasible programmes.

To be clear, we do not question the challenges of climate change and the importance of economic development in Africa. However, we believe that a degree of scepticism is warranted, the more so the further into the future policy papers are set. In this respect, Agenda 2063’s target year is a long way off. And yet, as we will argue, these policy papers are interesting not only for the realism (or the lack thereof) they show in setting goals on a distant horizon, but also because they tell us something about the intentions, perceptions, and knowledge of their authors in the present. In this sense, they can be understood as indicators of contemporary problematisation and as tools of ‘future-making’ (Appadurai 2013).

The chapter begins with the underlying idea of Green Growth and its historical background in the context of neoliberal development. It then discusses the use of green concepts in national planning in Kenya and Tanzania. The case studies examine how these concepts are negotiated between different actors and how they are locally appropriated, modified, and resisted. In choosing these two case studies, we do not aim to generalise or compare. Rather, the empirical examples allow us to understand how green ideas ‘travel’: how they are translated, modified or rejected, appropriated, and finally put into practice. In this chapter we aim to address and contribute to answering a number of questions: How do ‘green aspirations’ influence national planning and local development? Where do green development concepts become visible in national plans, policy debates, and implementation activities? What makes ‘green’ aspirations attractive and to whom? What is the purpose and role of the environment in national development planning? Whose rationality and interests are reflected in the mainstreaming of green concepts into national plans? How are concepts of green development communicated and translated across scales?

The paper draws on the researchers’ long-term engagement and observation of the dynamics in both Kenya and Tanzania through collaborative projects, including Research Group ‘Resilience, collapse and reorganisation in social-ecological systems of African Savannas’ (2013 to 2016), and the Collaborative Research Center (CRC-TRR 228) ‘Future Rural Africa – future-making and social-ecological transformation’ since 2018. It draws on empirical work in Kenya and Tanzania, with fieldwork focusing on farmers, pastoralists, development agencies, and state and non-state actors in the Green Growth agenda.