Future-making and scalar politics in a resource frontier: Energy projects in northern Kenya

Abstract

This contribution explores conflicts in the context of energy-related investments and infrastructure projects in Kenya’s arid and semiarid north. Over the past decade or so this historically marginalised region has turned into a resource frontier. Such frontiers arise as capitalist and state actors penetrate rural hinterlands, with the aim of transforming these regions according to competing visions of the future that operate at different scales. The projects considered here include the Lake Turkana Wind Power Project (LTWP), the expansion of geothermal energy production, and the extraction of crude oil, which jointly exemplify the contested and scalar politics entailed by “future-making”. Against this background, this contribution analyses how different energy projects are brought about by different actors, including how their impacts on local livelihoods are negotiated across scales. This contribution explores how frontier situations generally, and the recent devolution of government in Kenya, impact such negotiations.

Greiner, C, Klagge, B, Grawert, E, Mkutu, K 2022, ‘Future-making and scalar politics in a resource frontier: Energy projects in northern Kenya‘, PLAAS Working Papers, No. 63, Full Text.

More CRC News

Cover Image for a website post of a blog entry

Envisioning African Futures: Blog Post by Detlef Müller-Mahn and Eric Kioko

Against the backdrop of recent visits by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and several German ministers to Africa, CRC-TRR Future Rural Africa researchers Detlef ...
Read More »
Dr. Richard Kiaka and his research assistants

Future Rural Africa Researchers Awarded Cologne International Forum Innovative Tandem Project Grant

The University of Cologne’s International Forum is awarding five project grants (€ 15,000 each) annually for project-related innovative tandem collaborations between University of Cologne-based academics ...
Read More »
Cover Image for a Lecture given by David Anderson at the University of Nairobi

Video Lecture: Kiotalel’s Kin – Identity, Autochthony and the Occult in Kenya’s Western Highlands

By Prof. David Anderson (CRC Project A02 Past Futures) In this presentation given at the University in Nairobi in late 2023, David Anderson focuses on ...
Read More »
Cover for a talk between David Anderson and Laleh Khalili

Video: Collective Punishment as Colonial Policing – A Conversation between David Anderson and Laleh Khalili

In this conversation, Prof. Laleh Khalili (Exeter; author of Time in the Shadows) and Prof. David Anderson (Future Rural Africa Project A02 Past Futures) discuss ...
Read More »
Kilombero Valley in Tanzania

Francis Ching’ota and Jonathan Jackson on Broadening Participation in Research Through Building Sustainable Relationships and Disseminating Knowledge

In their latest publication titled “Maono ya Bonde la Kilombero, Tanzania: Historia za Maendeleo Yake”, Francis Ching’ota, an Assistant Lecturer from the National Institute of ...
Read More »
Scroll to Top