The changing value of land in Northern Kenya: the case of Lake Turkana Wind Power

Abstract

Lake Turkana Wind Power, situated on the eastern shores of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya, is currently the largest wind-power project in Africa and the biggest private investment in Kenyan history. While this project enjoys strong support from the Kenyan government, at the local level it has unfolded amid considerable controversy and has been accompanied by accusations of land-grabbing, corporate negligence and infringement of indigenous and customary land rights. This article examines the local effects of the Lake Turkana Wind Power's construction. It explores how the value of land has been transformed by the wind farm and the effects this has had on local social relationships, territoriality and connections to place. The largescale, rapid privatisation of land and infrastructure development has produced a variety of apparently contradictory effects; local people simultaneously seek to access 'benefits' from the project and experience new forms of exclusion. This is particularly clear in disputes over the distribution of employment and corporate social investment. A notable consequence has been increasingly exclusive claims to land and interpretations of local history -new values ascribed to the land have generated new feelings of entitlement and raised expectations of 'development'. These contestations reveal that the value of land is about more that the material resource itself. It rests on what other privileges can be accessed through claims to place and belonging.

Social-ecological change in the Omo-Turkana basin: A synthesis of current developments

“…Further technological developments in Kenya can be framed as potential solutions to livelihood challenges in Turkana, where ventures to exploit reserves of petroleum and establish large-scale wind farms are underway (Cormack and Kurewa 2018). The Lake Turkana Wind Power (LTWP) project, launched in 2006, aims to provide 310 MW energy to the national grid.…”

“…The Lake Turkana Wind Power (LTWP) project, launched in 2006, aims to provide 310 MW energy to the national grid. In 2012, oil reserves estimated between 750 m and 1630 m barrels were discovered in the Lokichar region of southern Turkana (Ecofin 2016; Africa Oil Corporation 2017; Munda 2017; Cormack and Kurewa 2018). Both oil- and wind-power developments present challenges as well as potential benefits for local communities.…”

How to understand a development corridor? The case of Lamu Port–South Sudan–Ethiopia‐Transport corridor in Kenya

“…This merging between the state and private actors is, however, contested at a discursive level. In the context of corridor development, some groups, particularly those at risk of being displaced are making exclusive claims over land, or contest the state development vision and its territoriality, so they could be included as legitimate beneficiaries of projects associated with LAPSSET (Cormack & Kurewa, 2018;Enns, 2017). Approaching these processes as the infrastructural production of territorialityhistorically and geographically specific forms of political and spatial organisation, imbued with social tensions and different competing actors that undermine the state's attempt to territorialise socio-ecological landscapescould provide one way to understand what socio-political function development corridors play in undermining or strengthening particular configurations of socio-political orders in contemporary Kenya.…”

Navigating Contested Winds: Development Visions and Anti-Politics of Wind Energy in Northern Kenya

“…Despite delays in the determination of the court, there was little concerted resistance to the project except in the Kargi location, where the company trucks were blocked by the Kargi residents from accessing the wind site through the Marsabit-Kargi-Loiyangalani route. Other road blockages by the local communities were reported from settlements along the Laisamis-Loiyangalani route with communities reporting concerns around employment and frustrations over delays by the LTWP project to address their complaints [58]. The lack of concerted community activism was attributed to the fact that, despite widespread opposition to the project by communities and their local leaders, some local political leaders from the area and the local government were in full support of the project, to which a Rendille elder desperately remarked, "with some of our leaders eating from the enemy's (LTWP) pot, how can we achieve a united front to confront this monster?…”