Paper short abstract:

Despite the promises of lasting, transformative change, the extractive industry in Kenya is characterized by evanescence and uncertainty. Using the notion of ‘development limbo’, this paper explores the state of in-betweenness contrived by the truncated delivery of CSR projects and local content.

Paper long abstract:

Turkana in northern Kenya has long been on the receiving end of an unsteady flow of international development interventions. Development projects vary greatly, not only in their orientation—from health to infrastructure, from agriculture to civic education—but also by the implementing agent. Latest, private developers such as oil companies became government partners to introduce ‘change’ via infrastructure development and CSR projects. However, far from the promises made, projects are replete with delays, circularity, and abrupt standstills. In my case study, I will elaborate concrete promises lingering indefinitely, creating an interim state that eventually becomes intransient: a development limbo.

As this notion implies, rather than focusing on the clash of visions between different stakeholders (Ridde and de Sardan 2022) or the repurposing of projects over time (Gez 2021; Schler and Gez 2018), this paper will explore the gaps between the promises of transformative change and de facto truncated, uncertain delivery (Wedekind 2021). Through the notion of development limbo, I will examine how, among local stakeholders, the promises of oil-driven development contrive a state of in-betweenness, from legacies of past interventions that may or may not be revived to imaginations and aspirations regarding those yet to come. Often overlooked by scholarship, I will assert the palpable effect of such in-betweenness on individuals and communities at the oil exploration site in Turkana East from an anthropological perspective.