Conclusions
Energy futures in northern Kenya include both renewable and fossil fuels that are exploited in large-scale flagship projects. The three case studies considered here – wind in Marsabit, geothermal in Baringo-Silali, and oil in Turkana – are firmly embedded in the national government’s future-making masterplans, whose long-term visions and aspirations are closely aligned with those of private investors and/or development financing institutions’ goal of capitalist development. The national government and investors benefitted from the pre-devolution situation when the projects started, as they only had to negotiate with local communities, whose land rights were weakly protected by then-existing legal frameworks. However, the emergence of a new resource periphery did not go unchallenged but has rather opened up spaces for negotiation for local communities, their representatives, and supporters.
The projects have raised both expectations and fears within local communities, as well as diverse responses ranging from cooperation to resistance (both overt and covert, active and passive, as well as legal strategies). In northern Kenya’s frontier situation, local bargaining power is further strengthened by the fact that some community members are prepared to use armed force, if necessary, to emphasize their demands. Acts of resistance have been directed towards defending or improving existing livelihoods, but more often to improving the terms of inclusion, that is, to better benefit from employment and other opportunities created by different projects.
The institutional changes – Kenya’s new constitution, devolution, and land laws – have gradually empowered local communities, as they have come to learn about these political and administrative changes, thereby strengthening their negotiating position. Moreover, they have also opened spaces for new alliances. While investors were supported by the national state, the counties have emerged as new political players and potential partners during project development and implementation. In the cases of wind in Marsabit and oil in Turkana, official county-level actors backed local communities and their activities vis-à-vis private investors and the national state, thereby highlighting the independent and active role of county institutions in (re)solving disputes with and in local communities. Such scalar politics are further compounded by inter-community conflicts at the sub-county level. Intercommunity conflicts are mainly about the distribution of jobs, CSR benefits, compensation and revenues, but they are also associated with fierce and even violent, often ethnicized, contestations about land rights, constituencies, and inter- and intra-county boundaries.
Our case studies show that frontier constellations open fields of contestation over future-making, involving various actors, and challenging pre-existing power asymmetries at different scales. These findings also underline the importance of processes and practices in scalar politics, which shape ‘the interaction of inherited and emergent projects and scales’ (MacKinnon 2011: 31). Future-making in such constellations is not only about realizing competing future visions and aspirations in institutionally unstable environments. It is also reshaping the relationship between centre and periphery, local and global. Following the first fieldwork for this article, the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to declining oil prices, which added to doubts that Tullow Oil will complete the project (Global Energy Monitor 2020). Tullow Oil’s investment partners left in 2023, and the company has been seeking a new strategic partner (Mutua 2023). At the same time, Kenya’s new President William Ruto has entered the stage (in 2022) with plans to massively expand geothermal production for industrial development and green hydrogen export. The emergence of a new energy resource periphery in Kenya’s arid rural north is still in flux, and its socio-spatial consequences are far from certain.