Testing Community Consent: Tullow Oil Project in Kenya

Oil discoveries in the South Lokichar Basin in Turkana County have brought Kenya into the global spotlight of emerging oil producers. At the same time, questions remain about what impact these discoveries will have on the future of the historically marginalized county and the traditional pastoralist communities who live there. A remote and arid county in the north of the country, Turkana has one of the highest poverty rates in Kenya (94.3 percent) and very low levels of education (82 percent of its residents have no formal education).1 Turkana society is highly patriarchical, especially in traditional pastoralist families and communities