{UAH} How oil and water mix in politics of marginalisation - Comment - www.theeastafrican.co.ke
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How oil and water mix in politics of marginalisation - Comment
The natural resource gods have a wicked sense of humour.
Last week it was announced that a massive aquifer, enough to meet Kenya's water needs for the next 70 years, had been discovered in the Turkana region.
Turkana's underground water is now estimated to be about 200 billion cubic metres, enough to serve 625 million people for a year. That's something considering that Kenya's population is currently 41 million.
It in the same Turkana swathe where Kenya has struck oil.
At the end of July, a mineral exploring company said it had found a rare and precious mineral, niobium, worth $62.4 billion in Kwale at the Kenya Coast.
In Uganda, the Albertine region is floating on oil worth billions of dollars.
In the Songo Songo islands in Kilwa District, Tanzania has found a dizzyingly rich gas field.
All these finds have one thing in common; they are being made in marginalised and poor regions, most of them with low populations.
The logic of development and politics in East Africa is that the fertile areas fed better, grew larger populations, were first in queue for a modern education, and thus moved on to monopolise power and grow fat on the riches of the land.
Most regions where water, oil and gas are being found were largely ignored, and didn't have power because, being poorly fed, their populations were small, and so they didn't have large numbers of voters.
Now the game has changed. The lands in the old agricultural regions are tired, and several of them are in decline as the people flee to the cities.
The Banyoro people, also marginalised, in Uganda's oil find region are demanding a special cut of oil revenues. President Yoweri Museveni has decided to build a refinery in the area, a politically shrewd move as the regional economy should be able to receive some benefit.
In Tanzania, the government decided to construct a gas pipeline from the port of Mtwara, 250 kilometres south of Kilwa district, to Dar es Salaam, where the establishment sits.
The people rioted, attacking government offices and laying siege to the offices of the ruling Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party.
The protestors were dealt with in a very old fashioned way. The army and riot police were dispatched to Mtwara, and several canisters and rounds of live ammunition later, three people were dead and the revolutionaries were subdued.
Governments have three choices. Stick to the discredited model of cracking down as happened in Mtwara and end with the nightmare that is the Delta region in Nigeria, or share the natural resource dividend with the local communities and their leaders.
The better solution, though, is a political one — end extreme majoritarian politics, and find weighed forms of representation that give minorities a voice in national politics.
It is well and good to dole out to a small Bunyoro, Turkana, and Mtwara elite a slice of the mineral wealth in order to co-opt them. However that doesn't solve the problem of the regions that are marginalised but have no oil, gas, or other minerals.
Charles Onyango-Obbo is Nation Media Group's executive editor for Africa & Digital Media. E-mail: cobbo@ke.nationmedia.com. Twitter: @cobbo3
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