Infrastructures of Large-Scale Geothermal Energy Projects in Kenya: Materialization, Generativity, and Socio-Economic Development Linkages

Abstract

The linkages between infrastructures and socio-economic development have become increasingly complex and varied in transdisciplinary human science scholarship. In the Global South context in particular, these linkages entail unusual geographies of diffusion that defies many easy narratives. Using the case of geothermal energy projects in Kenya, this article explores the materialization and generativity of infrastructures in large-scale projects and their complex linkages to socio-economic development. In so doing, the paper shows how the delivery of ‘core’ infrastructure projects enable the provision of ‘other’ infrastructures – ‘required’ and ‘generated’ infrastructures, all of which entail different socio-economic development linkages for different interest groups at national and local community levels. In exploring these processes, the paper engaged with multi-disciplinary scholarship on the materialization and generativity of infrastructures and their variegated and multifaceted linkages to socio-economic development. A methodological combination of expert and informal interviews, document analysis, and project-sites observations form the basis of our analysis. Keywords: infrastructures, large-scale geothermal energy projects, materialization, generativity, socio-economic linkages, Global South, Kenya