2 - Local Transformations of LAPSSET: Evidence from Lamu, Kenya

Summary

In Lamu County on Kenya’s northern coast, several components of the ambitious Lamu Port–South Sudan–Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) corridor come together: a new modern port of thirty-two berths and a planned network of new transport infrastructure consisting of an airport, a series of highways, a standard-gauge railway and an oil pipeline (Atkins Acuity 2017) (see Map 2.1). In this grand vision, a planned oil refinery will sit adjacent to a Special Economic Zone, a ‘growth area’ and a new metropolis city with the capacity to accommodate approximately 1.1 million people – a significant increase on the 2009 recorded population of 112,252 people (Lamu County 2013: 1). To support this population, plans are also under way to create new sources of energy, initially through a coal-fired electricity generating plant – whose progress has been halted by a court order after local activists filed a petition – and a wind-power farm. There are also plans to construct new infrastructure for the supply of water, which will come from the yet-to-be-built Tana River Grand Falls dam (Kasuku 2013).

The LAPPSET project is part of a wider push across Africa by policy makers, development partners, and investors to promote corridors and growth poles, which all involve, or anticipate, major land-based investments in transport, mining and agricultural commercialisation (Smalley 2017). Since LAPSSET was first mooted in 2009, the project has been marketed as a way of transforming northern Kenya – not just Lamu – by opening up the region for investment and economic development, as Elliott explains in Chapter 3 on plans to remake Isiolo as an economic hub of northern Kenya. The LAPSSET project has also been marketed to potential investors around the world as part of a larger, continent-wide Great Equatorial Land Bridge via Juba and Bangui to Douala on Cameroon’s Atlantic coast. It consists of new highways, railroads, dams, pipelines and ports (Browne 2015). Visions for LAPSSET connect with plans to position Kenya as a key player in north-east Africa’s oil and gas sector – details also presented by Okenwa in Chapter 4. In May 2018, Wood Group, a British firm, won a US$2 billion bid to construct an 800 km pipeline connecting oil fields in Kenya’s Turkana County with Lamu.