Promised Land: Settlement Schemes in Kenya, 1962 to 2016

Smallholder settlement schemes have played a prominent role in Kenya's contested history of state-building, land politics, and electoral mobilization. This paper presents the first georeferenced dataset documenting scheme location, boundaries, attributes 533 official schemes, as well systematic data on creation since 1980. The show that almost half all government were created after 1980, rural development rationales for state-sponsored gave way to more explicitly welfarist electoralist objectives. Even so, logics state territorialization fix ethnicized, partisan constituencies state-defined territorial units pervade over entire 1962–2016 period, theorized classic political geography works territorialization. While these “geopolitics” regime construction are fueled by patronage they also sustain practices allocation affirm moral legitimacy grievance-backed claims land. fuels on-going contestation around representation acute, if socially-fragmented, demands state-recognition rights. Our findings consistent with recent interdisciplinary work peoples' recognition rights access natural resources. shows even country's core agricultural districts, where reach formal authority is undisputed, politics power-consolidation resource continues be shaped social pressures from below.