Jeremy Lind & Doris Okenwa 
Land, Investment & Politics 
Reconfiguring Eastern Africa’s Pastoral Drylands

Examines the new challenges facing Africa’s pastoral drylands from large-scale investments and how this might affect the economic and political landscape for the regions affected and their peoples.






More than ever before, the gaze of global investment has been directed to the drylands of Africa, but what does this mean for these regions‘ pastoralists and other livestock-keepers and their livelihoods? Will those who have occupied drylands over generations benefit from the developments, as claimed, or is this a new type of territorialisation, exacerbating social inequality?

This book’s detailed local studies of investments at various stages of development – from Kenya, Tanzania, Somaliland, Ethiopia – explore, for the first time, how large land, resource and infrastructure projects shape local politics and livelihoods. Land and resources use, based on ancestral precedenceand communal practices, and embedded regional systems of trade, are unique to these areas, yet these lands are now seen as the new frontier for development of national wealth. By examining the ways in which large-scale investmentsenmesh with local political and social relations, the chapters show how even the most elaborate plans of financiers, contractors and national governments come unstuck and are re-made in the guise of not only states‘ grand modernist visions, but also those of herders and small-town entrepreneurs in the pastoral drylands. The contributors also demonstrate how and why large-scale investments have advanced in a more piecemeal way as the challenges of implementation have mounted.


JEREMY LIND is Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex. DORIS OKENWA holds a Ph D in Anthropology from the London School of Economics. IAN SCOONES is a Professorial Fellow at the IDS, University of Sussex and co-director of the ESRC STEPS Centre.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: The Politics of Land, Resources & Investment in Eastern Africa’s Pastoral Drylands – Jeremy Lind

Introduction: The Politics of Land, Resources & Investment in Eastern Africa’s Pastoral Drylands – Doris Okenwa

Introduction: The Politics of Land, Resources & Investment in Eastern Africa’s Pastoral Drylands – Ian Scoones

Local Transformations of LAPSSET: Evidence from Lamu, Kenya – Ngala Chome

Town Making at the Gateway to Kenya’s ‚New Frontier‘ – Hannah Elliott

Contentious Benefits & Subversive Oil Politics in Kenya – Doris Okenwa

Meanings of Place & Struggles for Inclusion in the Lake Turkana Wind Power Project – James Drew

Conflict & Resistance around a Rice Development Scheme in the SAGCOT Area of Tanzania – Adriana Blache

Hosting Refugees as an Investment in Development: Grand Designs versus Local Expectations in Turkana County, Kenya – Cory Rodgers

Negotiating Access to Land & Resources at the Geothermal Frontier in Baringo, Kenya – Clemens Greiner

The Berbera Corridor Development & Somaliland’s Political Economy – Ahmed M. Musa

State-building, Market Integration & Local Responses in South Omo, Ethiopia – Fana Gebresenbet

The Impacts of Delay: Exploring a Failed Large-scale Agro-investment in Tanzania – Linda Engström

Twilight Institutions: Land-buying Companies & their Long-term Implications in Laikipia, Kenya – Marie Ladekjær Gravesen

Farmer-led Irrigation Investments: How Local Innovators are Transforming Failed Irrigation Schemes – Gregory Akall

Shifting Regimes of Violence within Ethiopia’s Awash Valley Investment Frontier – Simone Rettberg

Über den Autor

Clemens Greiner is the academic coordinator of the Global South Studies Center (GSSC). His current research focuses on rural change, political ecology, translocality, and (energy) infrastructures in Kenya. His regional specialization is on Eastern and Southern Africa.