Scales of future-making: a comparative analysis
An overview of the projects shows that, in all three cases, there are competing claims over benefits. The Kenyan state and policy actors, as well as external investors, cannot just pursue their economic interests; rather, they must also engage local communities because of legislative requirements regarding land and community participation in land deals, as well as engage counties, as a relatively new set of players resulting from devolution. Negotiations over the fair sharing of benefits thus occur in a region that, until recently, has not been a historical focus of international investors, and in a situation where many communities are undergoing profound changes with respect to their lands and livelihoods. This institutionally weak and unstable regulatory environment opens up an arena in which various actors struggle for influence, authority, and ultimately the power to shape the future at different scales. Unresolved issues over land, employment, and CSR schemes, as well as local-to-national revenue-sharing challenges, all emerged as focal points of conflicting interests. In what follows, we examine the following axes of scalar politics: national government and investors, communities and investors, inter-community conflicts, and counties as new players in the devolution context.
Nation-state and investors: future-making on a large-scale land investment
The Kenyan state has supported the above-described investments by facilitating or even financing land access, planning activities (including environment and social impact assessments), and the construction of ancillary infrastructures, such as roads. In the case of geothermal, the state is even the main investor. The situation in northern Kenya, therefore, does not resemble the neoliberal, privately secured resource extraction enclaves that have emerged in other parts of the African continent (Ferguson 2005). By contrast, the Kenyan government actively pursues future-making activities, which are firmly embedded in social and economic development goals that are explicitly stated in both Vision 2030 and the LAPSSET corridor plan.
Because all projects were initiated before or during the process of political devolution, the state was able to set the stage before county governments could participate in planning and decision-making. Major partners in these early stages were private investors and development finance institutions, whose own profit- or development-oriented goals were largely compatible with the national government’s long-term vision. Major counterparts in all stages of project development are the affected local communities, whose visions of the future are much more concrete, leading to various conflicts with investors as well as among local communities, as seen in the cases of the ethnicized conflicts mentioned above.
Communities and investors: future-making around land rights, job opportunities, and other benefits
Communities hosting large-scale energy projects in the northern Rift Valley have a history of marginalisation. Social services were available in towns but not in the rural areas where the new projects seemed to appear out of the blue, raising concerns that only the ‘big guys’ might again benefit. While there is variation within communities regarding benefits, local communities in all three project areas reacted strongly to the implementation of the infrastructures, exhibiting varying degrees of cooperation and confrontation with different investors. Reactions ranged from approval to critical negotiations over compensation and benefits to outright protests, as in the case of Tullow Oil. Differences in reactions are mainly related to differences in perceptions concerning future livelihood trajectories – i.e. whether livelihoods would be improved or threatened by the projects and their associated activities. In particular, the loss of grazing land, as well as a lack of adequate compensation, have stirred communities against the investors.
The companies responded with increased, although short-term, employment of local unskilled labour, as well as a range of CSR measures, primarily focusing on water provision, education, and health infrastructures. The LTWP and Tullow Oil initially only engaged minimally with local communities, whereas GDC, responsible for geothermal development in Baringo-Silali, made some recognisable efforts to involve local communities from the outset (Greiner et al. 2023). Tullow Oil significantly increased CSR spending in response to mounting local pressures and conflicts (Mkutu and Mdee 2020, Tullow Oil 2020), and it appears that LTWP did the same following legal action. At all three sites, local employment and CSR provisions helped circumvent resistance by local communities to a certain extent and deflected the most critical legal issues around land rights. Employment, especially for unskilled people, was the most important benefit in the early stages of all three projects. However, once the projects moved towards operation, and the construction of ancillary infrastructures such as roads was completed, jobs began to dwindle, contributing to numerous protests by community members (Schilling et al. 2018, Klagge et al. 2020). In all three cases, rather than open resistance to the projects as such, what was at stake were ‘terms of inclusion’ (Hall et al. 2015), which, as we show below, led to fierce contestation among local communities.
Communities versus communities: Future-making and intercommunity conflict
In all three case studies, intercommunity conflicts are fuelled by the distributions of, and access to, project-related compensation and benefits. These conflicts often revolve around distance from project sites, the location of administrative boundaries, and customary claims to land. Who is regarded as affected by a new energy infrastructure depends on how the project’s geographical coverage is conceived. This is especially difficult to determine for decentralized projects distributed across several sites, such as oil exploitation or geothermal development, especially if pipelines connect sites with each other, or are necessary to transport oil, water, or electricity to nearby or distant locations. In addition, gas, odour, noise, and other emissions from projects, as well as ancillary infrastructures, can disturb local livelihoods and health well beyond their actual locations.
The complex geographies of energy projects are further complicated by historical hostilities between specific communities, as well as the fact that precise territorial boundaries are difficult to determine given the communal nature of land rights, and the flexible, and often overlapping, land use patterns historically prevalent in northern Kenya. Adding to these complexities, the mobile nature of livelihoods allows people to move towards projects or to claim traditional use of certain areas in order to become eligible for compensation and CSR measures (Greiner 2016). Such practices of future-making may foster conflict with investors, and particularly with neighbouring communities, but they sometimes also create intracommunity conflicts, such as those that occurred between different clans in Turkana (Agade, 2017). Intercommunity conflicts frequently have ethno-political dimensions that sometimes turn violent. Some conflicts have exceeded ‘traditional’ ethnic hostilities to involve repeated attacks on Chinese workers in Turkana, as some interviewees mentioned.
Counties as new players: the impact of devolution
The devolved county governments operate on the basis of County Integrated Development Plans that are aligned with Kenya’s so-called Vision 2030. The largest share of county budgets comes from the national government. Additionally, those county governments that have energy production sites receive 20 per cent of the public revenues from oil production and from geothermal electricity generation in the future. They are obliged to establish trust funds for the 5 per cent community share (RoK 2019: Art. 58). With these budgets, counties administer and control a variety of county-level issues, such as health provision, roads and transportation, pre-primary education, cultural activities, agriculture, planning, and development. Moreover, the county governments hold all unregistered community land in trust on behalf of the communities (RoK 2016: Art. 6).
Counties, therefore, have an important role in facilitating energy projects through land negotiations between the NLC and the local communities. The Energy Act of 2019 also gives counties a role in energy planning. Among other tasks, they are required to submit a county energy plan to the Cabinet Secretary for Energy, which is to then be incorporated into an integrated nationwide plan (Amakobe and Randa 2020, Volkert and Klagge 2022). By performing these roles, counties serve as important intermediaries between the national government and local communities. However, power struggles among national politicians and county governors have undermined the smooth functioning and coordination of governmental institutions (Tyce 2020). Furthermore, there is a lack of administrative capacity in many counties, which is why international development agencies remain deeply involved in capacity-building and providing support to county governments (Council of Governors 2017). In addition to capacity problems, resource and data availability are also limitations to energy planning at the county level (Amakobe and Randa 2020, Volkert and Klagge 2022).
Whereas the county government’s role in Baringo-Silali has so far been negligible, this is not the case with LTWP in Marsabit and oil production in Turkana. While the first Marsabit county government acted as an ally to the national government, other county-level actors, including the present county government, supported opposing local communities in their lawsuit. Similarly, the Turkana County government supported local communities by filing a petition to stop compulsory land acquisition for LAPSSET by the national government, an indication that the county government is committed to shaping the county’s future (see section on oil production in Turkana). However, many inhabitants distrust the county administration and demand that the 5 per cent share come as direct cash payments to each community member (Mkutu 2022). This controversy highlights local communities’ fears that the county government will sideline them from the expected oil wealth. These fears are bolstered by the fact that the legally required trust fund to manage the 5 per cent community share has not yet been set up.