Under the first Medium-Term Plan (MTP-1) (2008-12) of Kenya’s Vision 2030 strategy,significant efforts were made to promote growth and preserve sound economic policies underchallenging circumstances. While reforms were being implemented across the board during2008-12, the biggest achievements under MTP-1, as noted in the MTP-2, were in improvinginfrastructure as well as some social indicators, such as school enrolment rates. Though short of thetargets set in MTP-1, average annual GDP growth reached 3.8 percent despite the impact ofrepeated droughts, high international commodity prices, the global financial and economic crisis,and political uncertainty in the run up to the 2013 general elections. Furthermore 2.7 million jobswere created between 2008 and 2012 compared with an objective of 3.3 million.

The LAPSSET Corridor project, a major infrastructure development project that will run from Kenya to South Sudan and Ethiopia, will impact, positively or negatively, on the lives of more than 100 million people in the three countries. Indigenous peoples will potentially suffer the most negative impacts as a result of their having been historically marginalized economically, socially and politically. The recent discovery of oil in Turkana1 will add to the suffering of the Turkana peoples.

The project’s potential negative impacts on Indigenous Peoples include loss of land, territories and resources, increased conflicts, alteration of traditional livelihoods systems and the collapse cultures and traditions among others.

Kenya’s Vision 2030 aims at transforming the country into a newly industrialized middle income countryand infrastructural development is high on the agenda to achieve this. Competing land uses and existinginterests in land make the use of eminent domain by government in acquiring land inevitable. Howevermost of the land earmarked for compulsory acquisition comprises of un- registered land whose interestsare not formally documented. Kenya has progressive statutes that provide for compensation of land that iscompulsorily acquired even where the owners/ occupants do not hold legal titles. The paper explores howthe government while implementing infrastructural development projects on land acquired using theprinciple of eminent domain; was able to identify genuine land owners and holders of different interests,value the land and award fair and just compensation. It looks at how grievances were resolved usingalternative dispute resolution mechanisms. It also explores the benefits negotiated for the affectedcommunities and safeguards being put in place to guide future compensations, protection of familyinterests and ways of ensuring participation by women, the youth and vulnerable members of thecommunity.

The recent phenomenon of ‘land grabbing’ – acquisition of large tracts of land by wealth, food-insecureand private investors from mostly poor, developing countries has resulted in loss of land and naturalresources for farmers in poor developing countries. The East African Federation of Farmers (EAFF),concerned about the implications of land grab on food security and the livelihoods of small holderfarmers in Kenya, commissioned a study to provide information on the extent of the land grab in Kenya.This study looks at the key players and their motivation, responses to the land grabbing and implicationson small scale agriculture in Kenya. The study also highlights possible business models that can beutilized for effective engagement between farmer organisations and land grabbers, as well as suggestpolicy recommendations on the issue.

Over the past years vast tracks of agricultural landshave been taken over by foreign firms. The total areaprobably surpasses the farmland of France. Much of thisland is located in African countries with fast increasingpopulations suffering hunger and under-nourishment.Such land acquisition has been happening outsidepublic scrutiny and many details are still hidden. Thisland grabbing has sparked debates in the media, indevelopmental institutions, in UN organisations and incivil society.

This paper aims at demonstrating how Kenya’s land reforms have led to the improvement of tenuresecurity, livelihoods and increased investments at local level. It will highlight how the policy,constitutional and legal reforms done at national level have opened opportunity for the protection oftenure rights through adjudication, surveying and registration of land in Kilifi County at the Kenya Coast.The Kilifi County Government land adjudication and settlement programme has been able to mainstreamthe principles developed through Kenya’s policy and legal reforms to date. The benefits to the areasissued with title deeds include reduced land and related disputes, increased human settlements, improvedagricultural productivity, emergence of new commercial centres, increased investor interest and an overallimprovement of individual incomes and the county GDP. It is recommended that this programme bescaled up to ensure benefits and improvement of livelihoods for more people in the county.

Land acquisitions, either driven by foreign investments or domesticinvestment needs have continued to polarize opinions. When thisresearch was proposed, it was premised on arguments by scholars RuthMeinzen-Dick and Helen Markelova, who had analysed agricultural landdeals, and argued that there were potentially two schools of thoughtabout foreign acquisitions over agricultural land. Their school of thoughtregards them as “beneficial investments” whereby investors are viewedas bringing needed investment, possibly improved technology or farmingknowledge, thereby generating employment and increasing foodproduction. Meinzen-Dick and Markelova further argued that becausethese land acquisitions, foreign and domestic, are ongoing at a very fastrate, it is necessary for host countries to focus on what they can do toseize the opportunities and mitigate the risks associated with the deals.

This article presents a case study of a wildlife-based ecotourism project in which the people of Kimana have sought to exploit the commercia ladvantage of their communal land which lies near Amboseli National Park (ANP)in southern Kenya.  The Kimana Community Wildlife Sanctuary represents oneof the best examples of a community-based ecotourism project that promotes the ideals of local participation in wildlife management and creates opportunities for the local Maasai pastoralists to benefit from wildlife tourism.  Whilst local participation has a positive resonance, the case study suggests that a great deal of the ecotourism potential for the Kimana area has not materialised.  The chapter concludes that internal political rifts within the community have both hampered meaningful Maasai participation in tourism benefits and facilitated the exploitation of Kimana's tourism potential by external commercial operators.

Kenya’s need for water infrastructure investment is urgent – the country is becoming increasingly water scarce due to population growth and rising demand across sectors, and climate change poses additional risks. Both ‘natural’ and built infrastructure could play a vital role in supporting resilient river basin development.Kenya’s need for water infrastructure investment is urgent – the country is becoming increasingly water scarce due to population growth and rising demand across sectors, and climate change poses additional risks. Both ‘natural’ and built infrastructure could play a vital role in supporting resilient river basin development.

Although policy-makers recognise the need to protect river catchments and ecosystems (naturalinfrastructure), in practice, built infrastructure development and management is often prioritised, resulting in missed opportunities. Water governance is also highly fragmented, making strategic integrated approaches difficult.

The devolution process currently underway – driven by the 2010 Constitution – offers opportunities (and challenges) for water governance, creating spaces for actors to negotiate existing arrangements and form new alliances. The Constitution also requires public participation in decision-making, safeguards rights to water and a clean environment, and strengthens regulatory authorities’ position.

This thesis is a part of the TAITA project, which is carried out by the Department of Geography at the University of Helsinki and funded by the Council of Development Studies of the Academy of Finland.  The project leader and the coordinator is Professor Petri Pellikka.  The general objective of the TAITA project is “development of land use change detection methodology in the East African highlands applying geographic information systems”(Pellikka 2004; Pellikka et al. 2004).  The project focuses on various land use change issues in Taita Hills applying remote sensing (RS) data and geographical information systems (GIS).  The main objectives of the project are to develop a cost-effective and practical land use change detection methodology and to create a geographic database for the land use and its changes in the area (The Taita Project 2006).  This thesis focuses on land use issues in terms of the road infrastructure and state of road network in the Taita Hills.  In addition, remote sensing and GIS methodologies and data issues are taken into deep consideration in the context of this study.

Various trends, including an increasing emphasis on fiscal decentralization; political democratization in many areas; globalization and the financial liberalization that often accompanies it; growing demands for urban services as urbanization continues in major cities around the world; all argue compellingly for finding ways to help municipalities finance large-scale infrastructure.  Improved urban infrastructure, for water supply, sanitation, urban transportation and solid waste management is widely believed essential in encouraging and facilitating economic growth.  Evidence indicates that those countries most successful in sustaining high growth supported their cities with transformative investments to improve urban infrastructure that could accommodate rapid population growth in major economic centers.

With the discovery of oil in 2012, Kenya is one of East Africa’snewest frontiers in the search for oil. Oil exploration iscurrently concentrated in Turkana County, the largest, poorestand one of the most marginalized counties in Kenya.

At both the national and local level, oil exploration hasengendered high expectations of new flows of revenue,employment and business opportunities. The discovery of oilhas accelerated several large-scale infrastructural developmentplans – such as the Lamu Port – South Sudan – EthiopiaTransport corridor (LAPSSET) – as proposed by the Governmentof Kenya in its development plan, Vision 2030. For the marginalizednorthern parts of Kenya, in particular Turkana County,oil exploration is sometimes referred to as a potential ‘gamechanger’ that could bring in much-needed revenue for thedelivery of basic services. At the same time, oil exploration hasgenerated anxieties among local communities, about increasedcompetition for (grazing) land and water, the distribution ofjobs and resources, and the fact that there is a high risk ofspeculation and corruption.

This report presents the results of a study undertaken by UNEP-WCMC for the MacArthur Foundation, from November 2013 to May 2014 and updated in January 2015, to:

 - identify the data required to monitor the impact of the emerging oil sector in the Ugandan Albertine Graben and Kenyan Turkana Basin on the environment and the socioeconomic livelihoods of affected people and communities in those areas; and

 - establish the suitability of data currently being, or proposed to be, generated, to meet such needs.

The purpose of the study is to inform the subsequent development of an indicator framework that can be used by the MacArthur Foundation to monitor and evaluate both the impact of oil development on the environment and socioeconomic livelihoods of people, as well as the performance of its own grant making in achieving the changes it seeks to facilitate in oil governance in the Great Lakes Region of Eastern Central Africa.

International Trade Centre (ITC) of the United Nations (UN), in partnership with The China-Africa Development Fund (CADFund) of the People’s Republic of China and the Department for International Development (DfID) of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, is implementing a project that aims to increase sustainable incomes in selected African partner countries through exports and investment promotion, as well as enhancing integration of African small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) into the global value chains. The project is called CADFund-DFID-ITC Partnership for Investment and Growth in Africa (PIGA).

The primary objective of the China-Africa Development Fund (CADFund) is to support Chinese companies interested in investing in Africa by building business linkages and economic and trade cooperation. The CADFund-DFID-ITC partnership will further strengthen such initiatives by enhancing trade and investment between China and Africa through addressing the bottleneck issues for bilateral trade, such as lack of market information, limited supply side capacities, impediments to trade and investment, and lack of access to finance and investment capital for African SMEs.

Conserving land and ecosystem connectivity for wildlife is increasingly a global challenge as demand for infrastructure development to meet growing human population needs encroaches in many traditional wildlife areas. The survival of wildlife species in arid and semi-arid systems requires interconnected landscapes, and limiting animal movement greatly reduces the system’s ability to sustain viable wildlife populations (Vasudev et al. 2015). Major infrastructural developments such as multi-lane highways and railways can sever wildlife movement often with negative consequences (Clevenger and Waltho 2005; van-der-Ree et al. 2011; Xia et al. 2007).

Kenya’s energy security and green growth development occurs against a background of newly found oil reserves on the one hand and, on the other, a growing international consensus on the need to decarbonise national economies and energy production. The degree to which Kenya succeeds in realising green growth therefore crucially depends on the power and influence of groups that advocate either direct economic gains or a combination of social, economic and environmental development within a larger timeframe.

The Heads of State of Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya and South Sudan formed the Northern CorridorIntegration Projects (NCIP) to fast track the implementation of the commitments made in the Dar-es-Salaam Declaration 2004. The NCIP includes 16 clusters that handle various portfolios and to ensureeffective implementation of the projects, each of the NCIP Partner States created a special office tocoordinate the NCIP. The private sector representatives started participating in NCIP meetings sincethe 9th NCIP Summit held in March 2015 in Kigali where at the same event, the Heads of Staterequested EABC to coordinate and ensure that the Private Sector participates and takes full advantageof the Northern Corridor Integration Projects and the accruing benefits from the initiative. During the10th NCIP Summit held in June 2015 in Kampala, Uganda, the Heads of State further requested theprivate sector to identify feasible investment projects where private companies could engage, either inthe framework of public – private partnerships or as fully private investment projects.

Development and maintenance of physical infrastructure are prerequisites for rapid economic growth andpoverty reduction, as they influence production costs, employment creation, access to markets, and investment.This paper reviews and analyses roads infrastructure policies in Kenya over the post-independence period.The paper has six sections. After the introduction, it presents the theoretical and policy framework for roadsinfrastructure, focusing on the phases of roads development, structure for roads administration and provision,basic objectives of roads policies, and strategies for sustainable transport policies. The third and fourthsections deal with the trends in and the impact of the Kenya road policy. A critique on the policy frameworkand conclusions are presented in the penultimate and last sections.

This Investment Prospectus (IP) aims to present the short-term priorities of the Kenyan Government for the operationalization of the country’s SE4All.  The IP has been developed for the Government of Kenya (GoK) in order to attract investment in thecountry’s energy sector, and in particular to address the country’s SE4All goals of ensuring universal access to modern energy services, doubling the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency and doubling the share of renewable energy (RE) in the global energy mix by 2030.

The Masai Mara Game Reserve is Kenya’s finest wildlife reserve, one of the world’s top tourist attractions and vital to Kenya’s economy.  Recently, concerns have been expressed about the sustainability of tourism given the threats of depletion of indigenous animals, degradation of the landscape and impact on the native Masai Mara tribespeople.  The challenge now is to create a sustainable situation that protects the interests of all stakeholders.  This paper explores the views of four key stakeholder groups: the Masai people; conservationists including the Kenya Wildlife Service and the Masai Mara Game Reserve management; local tourism and game lodge operators; and government departments.  Interviews were carried out with representatives of each stakeholder group to gain insight into their needs from tourism and whether these needs are currently met; suggestions for short- and long-term tourism developments; and the economic implications of tourism in the Masai Mara.  Interview data were supplemented by an extensive period of observation.  The findings indicate that the growth of tourism and the lack of resources to manage tourism are leading to persistent tensions between stakeholders and presenting long-term threats to the tourism industry.  Overpopulation, changes in land use, poaching, deforestation, land degradation, conflicts due to unequal sharing of revenue, poor infrastructure and insecurity all contribute to these tensions.  All stakeholders agreed that urgent action is required and lessons must be learned in order to sustain tourism and ensure the Masai Mara is preserved for future generations.