PhD thesis Title Page Final _Richard Juma - Victoria University ...

Similar problems hampered other development projects, and by early
1970s, it became clear that, in terms of preventing famine, the strategies of
specialized alternative economies in the Turkana District had failed.
Small-scale irrigation schemes: In 1966, the Kenyan government started a
new project to develop small-scale irrigation schemes along the Turkwel,
Kerio, Ewaso Nyiro, and Tana rivers. Irrigation trials were not a new thing
in Turkana. It started in 1942 along the Oromo river delta, an area
traditionally farmed by the Dassenech group. Some were earlier started in
and around Lodwar with little success (Gulliver 1951). Despite huge
financial investment by the Kenyan government in the new project which
began in 1966, it was a total fiasco since the schemes could generate
neither food sufficiency nor food security. Crop yields were highly variable
from scheme to scheme and from year to year, and were generally below
expectations (Oba 1990).
Fisheries industry: The Kalokol Fishermen’s Cooperative Society and an
ice-making and cold storage plant and accessories which had been set up
on the western shore of Lake Turkana in 1924 were revived in 1980
through funding from the Norwegian government. However, this project
failed because it appeared to have ignored the inherent instability of such
marginal ecosystems. In the planning phase, the lake’s fish stocks were
assumed to be relatively constant in terms of abundance, density, and
location; so that sufficient quantities would be available for a large-scale
market-oriented scheme involving about 20,000 people (Watson 1985).
This security was merely assumed, as there was no comprehensive data on
fish stocks, production costs, markets or other key factors. The planners of
the fish intervention were also misled into believing that large quantities
were constantly available, and that the limiting factor was production
technology (Oba 1992).
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