Participatory Video in Kenya: “Seeing” conflict generated by green energy projects

The “Seeing Conflict at the Margins” project focused on listening to, amplifying and responding to concerns of people living in Kenya and Madagascar, affected by large-scale renewable energy projects.

Across sub-Saharan Africa, investors are committing unprecedented funds to develop oil, geothermal, hydropower, titanium, iron-ore, agricultural, carbon and other natural resources. Many projects are located in remote rural regions with histories of tension and conflict. While national governments welcome the potential of these investments to generate economic growth and create a more dynamic entrepreneurial environment, they can intensify long-standing struggles around public authority, community autonomy and environmental justice for those who live in in these places, and who often do not benefit or whose lives are negatively affected. In in some cases this resulted in new and emerging tensions, protests, disputes, and inter and intra-community violence.

The project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Economic and Social Research Council, and ran for three years between 2017 and 2020. The project focused on Kenya’s Rift Valley and Madagascar’s Anosy and Atsimo-Andrefana regions. The work in Kenya is the focus of this case study.

The project applied participatory video, not only as the means for people to create their own stories, but as an umbrella methodology to drive and mediate the community-based participatory research processes.

Initially, it was used to build participants’ communication capacities and the inclusive and trusting relations needed for honest reflection and deeper insight. Participants used it to synthesise key learnings after other participatory research activities. Later in the process they made video messages, documentaries and dramas on key issues . These were used to mediate and prompt discussions within the groups, across communities, and to extend learning through interaction with wider external audiences.

The research sites were:

1. Ol Karia: Residents are largely Maasai but members of other ethnic groups are present, including Turkana, Samburu and Kikuyu. Many people practise pastoralism but there are diverse livelihoods in the region. Most people do not have land titles which makes them vulnerable to eviction.
2. The Lake Turkana Wind Power site: This 160km windfarm was set up in rangelands east of Lake Turkana, inhabited by interacting groups of Turkana, Samburu, Rendille and El Molo. Pastoralism and fishing are the main livelihoods.

What happened

To generate understanding of the diverse experiences of people living in Ol Karia and near the Lake Turkana Wind Power site, an approach of intersecting methodologies was adopted, weaving together qualitative, ethnographic, community-based participatory research such as net-mapping (video below) and participatory video.

The project was facilitated by researchers at the UK-based Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and practitioners affiliated with the Pastoralist Development Network of Kenya and Friends of Lake Turkana, whose collaboration pre-dated the project.

IDS researchers delivered intensive methodological training to teams in Kenya, and then spent a week in each focal site accompanying the teams as they ran activities with community collaborators. Over 9 months, these teams then led consecutive 2-week programmes of research activity— 12 intersecting research processes (IRPs)—with different stakeholder groups such as young people, women, elders, business people and pastoralists. These groups included people benefitting from the projects and those excluded.

Originally IDS researchers had planned for the research processes to be adapted according to group needs, but in the end, a set 2-week programme was established which was more appropriate for the less experienced facilitators.

Following this initial research phase, a mid-project workshop was held which included collective analysis of research materials and accompanied collaborative filmmaking.

A second research phase followed to generate ideas from missing stakeholders, to prepare research materials and to produce the video outputs with remote support from IDS.

Screening events, a research process evaluation and an academic seminar were held after the second research phase, as well as accompanied video-mediated engagements with the Ol Karia communities.

The final phase of the research involved more video-mediated engagements with communities in Ol Karia and the Lake Turkana Wind Power areas, and with external audiences.

The research process is described in some detail in this journal article by IDS researchers Jackie Shaw and Jeremy Lind and through the video below:

Findings and new knowledge

Participatory Video worked well in this instance because it highlighted the great variety of ways people see the challenges associated with large scale green-energy projects in Kenya, rather than producing the same dominant story about rural life, poverty and environmental degradation.

The project generated close to 30 videos showcasing different perspectives. Here are some examples:

Beyond Despair (content warning: baby loss)

Political Relations and Processes in Ol Karia

Ol Karia Youth Role Play

In this project, the researchers found that, when applying an intersecting methodologies approach, the key to mixing methods was not so much to iron out and reconcile differences between very different methods. Rather, it is to craft and guide processes that accommodate activities and practices emanating from different traditions, often happening separately but still proximate enough to inform the other. This in turn deepens understanding of multiple and sometimes diverging subjective viewpoints, as in the case of this project.

Lessons

Challenges with the methodology in this project included:

• The interlaced, layered, iteratively progressive and responsive approach was well-suited to exploring diverse local perspectives in this project, but it was also challenging to put into practice, which was amplified by IDS needing to support from afar. The support needed was greater and took more time than anticipated.
• Of the researchers trained by IDS at the beginning of the project, only one remained throughout the project as others accepted other job opportunities. The remaining researcher then was responsible for training new team members and the emphasis on Participatory Video’s ability to facilitate relational discussions was lost, in favour of the video production element.
• Given that ethnicity, gender and age were some of the most critical social differences in the way issues were “seen”, the composition of research teams was not well-balanced. There were some perspectives in the Lake Turkana Wind Power area that the project would be biased towards the interests of Turkana people. The second phase of the research process aimed to include groups who were missed in the initial phase.
• Residents were accustomed to visits from researchers who use more extractive methods and this caused some challenging expectations around renumeration. Participants in the intersecting research processes who committed 2 weeks away from work and childcare were compensated for their time and travel. However, in the Lake Turkana Wind Power area, as soon as residents saw the camera they asked for payment even if their engagement was very limited and the project’s purpose had been explained. In Ol Karia, the same challenge occurred but over time the community took more ownership over the project and requested that the facilitator come to critical events.

Despite this, the teams generated much qualitative evidence including a remarkable amount of video material reflecting diverse subjective perspectives. They also developed practical appreciation of the processual value of participatory video and video-mediated engagement for generating new dynamics and grounded knowledge, with facilitators emphasising the value of bringing local perspectives to government and developer representative.

The project held a screening event in Nairobi involving national-level stakeholders (aid officials, diplomats, private sector representatives, civil society groups, researchers), and there were also various community-level screenings in the two focal sites. However, further plans to hold screenings in Kenya and the UK were impacted negatively by Covid and didn’t happen.