Following the need to re-expand global capitalist frontiers of value accumulation after the 2008 crisis, mega-infrastructure projects (i.e. railways, highways, ports, and airports) have emerged as key drivers redefining the landscapes of global development. In a changing world order increasingly characterised by the demising power of North America and Europe, from China’s Belt and Road Initiative to infrastructural development plans of the African Development Bank, mega-infrastructures are rearranging global, regional, and local flows of capital, commodities, and populations, whilst simultaneously incorporating previously marginal regions into the global system of value extraction and capital accumulation. In Africa – which over the last decade has been portrayed as “Africa Rising”, a place ripe with opportunities for financial investment and economic growth – Kenya, in particular, has been an emblematic case of mega-infrastructural developments. One of the first countries in the region to advance its national industrial development policy through a direct link to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Kenya is currently implementing several mega-projects that are central to its national development "Vision 2030" aimed at transforming its economy, overcoming its aid dependencies, and achieving a “middle-income status” in less than two decades.
Focusing on these dynamics from an ethnographic perspective, this research project explored how large-scale infrastructure projects –– that are promoted as interventions of "development" by the Kenyan national government and investors alike –– are realised on the ground. It particularly explored multiple types of challenges and opportunities that these projects present to historically marginalised groups of people across Kenya.
The project focused on the following two questions:
1. What (im)possibilities of a liveable life emerge in everyday geographies of contemporary mega-infrastructures?
2. How do mega-infrastructures affect – subjugate, configure, or articulate – people who use, live in, or around, them?
To answer these questions, the project consolidated critical geographical and anthropological scholarship on infrastructure development with ethnographic research on everyday geographies of infrastructure in Kenya. A central part of the project was 3 months of ethnographic research in Lamu, coastal Kenya. This work explored multiple social, economic, and political effects of the construction of Lamu Port as a strategic component of the Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia Transportation Corridor. Focusing on the experiences of historically marginalised groups of people -- artisanal fishermen, landless women, and small-scale farmers -- the project concluded that such mega-projects as Lamu Port do not bring "development" promised by national governments or investors. Instead, they visibly exaggerate the pre-existing social and economic differences, making it more difficult for the marginalised groups of people to sustain their lives. For instance, people without secure livelihoods are displaced by mega-infrastructures, or due to pre-existing neglect and marginalisation such as the lack of education, they cannot participate in new economic opportunities opened by infrastructure investment.
Highlighting these dynamics in the context of Kenya's social and economic development since its independence, the project emphasises that these increasing inequalities are not an accidental by-product of mega-projects. Instead, they are direct results of strategic choices made by national and local governments that focus on large-scale infrastructures as opportunities to open marginal regions for opportunities of international investment, without proper consideration of how local livelihoods will be affected or could be sustainably integrated into regional and global economies. Therefore, the project concludes that mega-infrastructures function as forms of state neglect and structural violence that marginalised people experience.
Analysing these dynamics, the project contributes to the critical geographical and anthropological scholarship on infrastructure, showing how the impacts and effects of mega-infrastructure are mediated according to people's class, gender, and racial/ethnic position in society. Beyond academia, doing so, the project demonstrates very concrete challenges the implementation of mega-projects present in achieving sustainability. Therefore, this project is important for society at large because it demonstrates that mega-projects, as any development project, need not be accepted as "development" but need to be critically interrogated for the social, economic, and environmental harm they bring. This research project also highlights the important role of active civil society in holding national governments and investors accountable for the harm that mega-projects bring to vulnerable groups of people. Finally, given the recent surge in mega-project investments, the insights gained from this project will be of direct relevance to understanding challenges in achieving sustainability in most development contexts across the globe.
