Date of Award

Spring 6-10-2025

Document Type

Thesis (Master's)

Department or Program

Master of Arts in Liberal Studies

First Advisor

Peter DeShazo

Second Advisor

Sarah Kelly

Third Advisor

Klaus Milich

Abstract

Located approximately 4 km from Raya village in Garissa County, the Garissa Solar Park spans

85 hectares and was envisioned as a flagship renewable energy project. Yet, despite its scale and proximity, the marginalized pastoralist community of Raya continues to face acute energy poverty, limited irrigation capacity, and exclusion from the material and socio-ecological benefits of the green energy project. This study critically examines the systemic energy injustices embedded within the Garissa Solar Park—specifically procedural, distributive, and recognition-based inequalities—and critiques the project’s failure to deliver on principles of equity, local meaningful and democratic participation, and gender inclusion.

The research assesses the project’s planning and governance processes, equitable benefit- sharing frameworks, and local community engagement strategies through a case study approach grounded in semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders and local community members. Central to this humanistic inquiry is deploying a novel and critically integrated framework: Intersectional Feminist-Informed Pluriversal Energy Justice (IFIPEJ) Framework, which synthesizes insights from energy justice, feminist political ecology, Decolonial African feminism, and feminist energy systems. This revolutionary framework privileges a nuanced, context-sensitive analysis that centers marginalized rural pastoral communities' embodied and lived realities and surfaces epistemic, geographical, and gendered exclusions in green energy transitions.

Findings reveal that the Raya community, particularly women, has been systematically disenfranchised in both planning and implementation phases, raising critical concerns about the legitimacy and inclusivity of Kenya’s national renewable energy strategy. The study concludes with a targeted policy recommendations to guide more democratic, just, and community-responsive rural electrification efforts in Kenya and comparable global South contexts.

KEYWORDS: Energy justice, Gender, Energy Equity, Intersectionality, Energy mix, Rural Electrification and Renewable Energy Corporation (REREC), Energy insecurity, energy poverty, Feminist Energy systems, embodied experiences, Energy democracy, Burdens of energy systems, misrecognition, Decolonial African Feminist Thought, Pluriversal, Feminist Political Ecology.

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Original Citation

Musyoka, Carolyne.M., "Pluriversal Energy Justice Through an Intersectional Feminist Lens: Analyzing Rural Electrification Injustices and Policy Pathways at Kenya's Garissa Solar Park (2025). Dartmouth College Master’s Theses.: https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/masters_theses

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