Turkana County, one of the driest regions of Kenya, has a long history of irrigation interventions, extending from the colonial era to the present. In this chapter, I pose the following questions: How has irrigation development in Turkana changed, and what does it look like today? What are the impacts of recent private-led irrigation development on livelihoods and local economies? How do local Turkana people perceive contemporary irrigation projects and their outcomes? These questions are explored in the context of irrigation schemes along the Turkwel River in Loima sub-county.

The Government of Kenya has prioritised irrigation development as part of its Vision 2030 national development strategy, and considerable sums have been earmarked for irrigation investments. This renewed attention to irrigation and agricultural water management more broadly dovetails with wider trends across governments in sub-Saharan Africa to rehabilitate and develop new schemes (Harrison 2018; Woodhouse et al. 2017; Mutambara et al. 2016). International donors are equally enthusiastic about irrigation development as a route to addressing climate change and generating resilience in dryland areas. The 2013 discovery by the Kenyan Government and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) of two huge aquifers in Turkana – the Lodwar and Lotikipi basins (Avery 2013) – has added to the notion that irrigation represents an excellent solution to the multiple problems in the region. This is in spite of a history of failed irrigation developments in Turkana (Hogg 1987a). However, while state and donor visions of development promote an idea of large-scale, top-down irrigation schemes as a way to provide alternative livelihoods in the region, it is bottom-up efforts by individuals and groups in Turkana that are showing a different way that irrigation could be developed.

This chapter offers details of farmer-led irrigation development at three sites in Loima as shown in Map 13.1. It compares current efforts to develop irrigated plots with the Turkwel Irrigation Scheme Association (TISA), one of the earliest interventions to promote large-scale irrigation in Turkana. TISA was established in 1966 but fell into disuse in the 1990s. It is now being revitalised under a new wave of informal farmer-led irrigation development.