Paper short abstract:

The town of Kalakol has some of the worst health indicators in Kenya. Healthcare here is symptomatic of marginalization and a history of failed development plans. I show how past interventions still inform the agendas of current health strategies and how their rhetoric has changed since the 1980s.

Paper long abstract:

In Turkana, Kenya, new incarnations of global health coincide with remains of past development plans. The scant health system in the district is symptomatic of marginalization and repeated failures of development projects, most of which conducted by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) in the 1980s. During this decade, NORAD achieved an amelioration of the healthcare system in the region. Unfortunately, sudden end to NORAD´s collaboration with the Kenyan Government concluded several promising initiatives. Whilst the 1980s saw a brief improved healthcare situation, other development plans with the fisheries forced relocation and sedentarization upon Turkana pastoralists. With NORAD´s withdrawal, many Turkana became poorer and moved into larger towns, leading to quick spread of HIV/AIDS, one of many disastrous health consequences. In Kalakol, on Lake Turkana, the allure of fishing development attracted thousands of dispersed people. Here population is still growing whilst the overall health and economic situation is worsening. Since the 1990s an insufficient and rudimentary healthcare system is maintained only by religious organizations and NGOs.

My paper compares past health and development documents with recent ones: NORAD health reports with those of religious missions and the Kenyan Ministry of Health. What is left of past development plans in present health strategies? How have major health challenges changed and what are the plans to overcome them? Has the rhetoric of intervention changed?

My paper answers these questions based on observations gathered during fieldwork in 2009, focusing on Kalakol as example of failed experimentation of grand-scale developmental plans.