Wilson Omalenge Ndenyele, Dr.Prof. Halimu Shauri Suleimani, Prof. Marie-Emmanuelle Pommerolle, Dr.Godffrey Nyongesa Nato

Abstract

The plan to promote large scale farming of Jatropha Curcas as a means of boosting energy security by Bedford Biofuels Company under Canadian investor in the lower Tana River of the Tana River County brought Kenya to the forefront as a potential target for large land deals by foreign investors. However, the project was abandoned before reaching the production stage and ended up as a non-operational project in the context of land deals investments. The consequences of non-operational land deals on the local communities are an understudied aspect of large scale land investments in Kenya and elsewhere. We argue that by empirically unpacking the impacts of a non-operational land deals on the local community members we can contribute to the growing literature on the effects of large scale land investments projects that get abandoned before the production phase. In order to achieve this we use the case study of Bedford biofuels project from the Lower Tana Delta area of Tana River County in Kenya to analyse the major impacts in general and local perceptions on the opportunities and risks introduced by non-operational of the Bedford Biofuels project. This article was based on primary data obtained through individual and focus group interviews and observations and was complemented with secondary sources on land deals. Our primary observations show that currently there is communal ‘corporation’ among the local communities living in the context of this study in the midst of this non-operational land deal and there is still some ‘interest’ in the Bedford biofuels as reflected in communities’ narratives.

Key words: large scale land deals; non-operational land deals; Jatropha Curcas; Tana River County; land deals in Kenya