Paper short abstract:

Isiolo is the locus of a number of mega-projects under Kenya’s ‘Vision 2030’ blueprint, which rehash its under-developed north into a landscape of opportunity. Focusing on an economy of anticipation, this paper examines the generative effects of these plans in their non-implementation.

Paper long abstract:

Isiolo has historically been imagined as a border town to Kenya's under-developed northern frontier, as the end of the tarmac, the beginning and the end of a 'Kenya B'. But plans for large-scale infrastructural development across northern Kenya as part of the country's 'Vision 2030' project rehash the north from a place of 'low potential' into a landscape of opportunity. Isiolo has been identified as a key node in these plans: the site of multiple 'flagship projects', including a 'resort city' along the route of a modern highway, railway line and oil pipeline linking oilfields in South Sudan to a new port at Lamu. For a number of years now, Isiolo has been reimagined as a place of potential, a gateway to a 'new frontier' and on the brink of a radically different future.

Yet while there is much talk and rumour in Isiolo as to what these projects will bring, very little in the way of development has materially manifested. This paper explores the methodological and analytical challenges and possibilities emanating from this not-yet-ness. Focusing on an economy of anticipation - the soaring land prices, speculation and urbanization that have emerged since the mega-projects were announced - it examines the generative effects of Vision 2030 in its non-implementation. In doing so, it traces how temporal logics and values that are both explicit and implicit in the plan become translated, reconfigured and situated in everyday lives in urbanizing areas on the edges of the town, manifesting in social, material and temporal reorderings.