Protest, middlemen and everyday meanings of place: reconceptualising the scramble for East Africa’s drylands

Kenya's drylands have experienced a recent rise in large-scale land acquisitions, including energy extraction and infrastructure projects. The “scramble” for land and resources involves a range of actors, including pastoralists, many of whom have attempted to secure rights over land in anticipation of new opportunities associated with future investments. Such “economies of anticipation” among communities are transforming investor and state visions. This article adds to discussions of economies of anticipation; it argues that different types of middlemen are central to rural communities' struggles to gain a stake in energy and infrastructure investments, and the precarity they face due to land tenure change. The article argues for the importance of incorporating a temporal dimension into discussions of economies of anticipation and community-middlemen interactions. It charts how one pastoralist community's past experiences of negotiating their inclusion in the Lake Turkana Wind Power investment and other land deals shaped subsequent desires to demarcate land in anticipation of future investments. Alleged nepotism and inequitable inclusion of communities by investment gatekeepers sparked community claims of rightful inclusion based around contested meanings of land and an everyday sense of place. Social stratifications and narratives of belonging that emerged from protests for inclusion determined citizens' subsequent attempts to gain a stake in future investment projects.