Panel 1: 14:00 – 15:00
Clemens Greiner (Köln) – Infrastructuring the energy frontier: Harnessing geothermal resources in Baringo, Kenya
Lotte Hughes (Open) – Feeling the heat: The impacts of geothermal industry on communities at Olkaria and Akiira, Kenya

Panel 2: 15:30 – 16:30
Biruk Terrefe (Bayreuth) – The resilient pasts & fragile futures of infrastructure in Eastern Ethiopia
Neil Carrier (Bristol) – The shash revolution: illicit livelihoods and development in the borderlands and beyond

Panel 3: 16:30 – 17:30
Evelyne Owino (Bonn) – Hybrid frontiers: assemblages of power, blurred boundaries, and the dynamics of control in Suguta Valley, Kenya
David M Anderson (Warwick) – “We are cursed by God”: Prosopis juliflora, the flood, and Baringo’s environmental future

The uncertainties of rural life in Eastern Africa’s underdeveloped arid and semi-arid districts have always presented challenges for the local communities of this long-neglected region. Over the past decade the supposed ‘resilience’ of these communities has been tested by the perceived impacts of climate change, and often disrupted by major political changes – for example devolution in Kenya, and severe instability in Ethiopia. At the same time, national plans for economic development have for the first time promised significant investment in these areas, with new roads and improved transport infrastructure, energy projects around oil, electricity supply and geothermal resources, and greater local participation in development all building up hopes of a better future. This interdisciplinary workshop examines the challenges and the opportunities that this complex and sometimes contradictory future now presents in the arid and semi-arid regions of Kenya and Ethiopia.