This is one of the documentaries Hivos produced for Africa Climate Week, held from 4 to 8 September in Nairobi. We showed it to the media to illustrate how large-scale energy projects – often backed by foreign investors – do not always benefit local communities where they are built.
The film tells how the El Molo Indigenous community of Lake Turkana was illegally dispossessed of their lands for the construction of Africa’s largest wind farm. The USD 680 million project provides over ten percent of Kenya’s electricity. But the people who had to make way for it, and who still live closest by, remain disconnected from the national grid.
For the energy transition to be successful, it must include local communities. A green and just future is only possible if we do not perpetuate the colonialist and exploitative practices of the fossil fuel age.
