The material temporalities of (un)sustainable irrigation in Marakwet, Kenya

Abstract

Irrigation has long been held as a prerequisite for sustainable social and economic development in sub-Saharan Africa (Adams and Anderson 1988; Moore 2018). Yet there is a long history of failed irrigation intervention in the region, and lessons from these experiences are rarely incorporated into the design of more recent projects (Adams and Grove 1984; Hogg 1987; 1983; Moris and Thom 1990). At the same time, many contemporary schemes overlook Africa’s deep history of agricultural innovation, including multiple traditions of indigenous irrigation, the comparative study of which might offer alternative foundations for sustainable water management and adaptation to climatic and ecological challenges (Widren and Sutton 2004; Stump 2013; Davies 2014; Davies et al. 2024). This paper advances this line of inquiry by presenting an original empirical case study contrasting the design and operation of an ‘indigenous’ irrigation network and an external ‘modern’ irrigation scheme within the same landscape. Our aim is to move beyond largely historical and descriptive accounts of failed external projects (including our previous work Davies et al. 2024), to instead offer a more nuanced analysis of both the successes of indigenous irrigation and the failures of external intervention as rooted in contrasting conceptions of the temporal and material nature of the Marakwet landscape. We examine how these conceptions translate to differing visions of sustainability and inform divergent engineering designs and material choices. We conclude that closer attention to the temporal and material understandings of local and external engineers provides an important focal point for designing more effective irrigation in the future.