Dear People of Gem Ramula,
My name is Dickens Ochieng’. I am an Advocate of the High Court but, most importantly, an expert in projects and development governance.
I am also a resident of Siaya County and extremely concerned about the happenings on the ground.
I want to lend my honest opinion on the standoff between the community and Shanta Gold, an opinion born out of experience working with communities impacted by similar projects.
Let’s face the challenge and the reality.
There is a tendency, especially in public interest struggles, to hold on to the idea that every project can still be stopped at any stage. But that is not always true, and pretending otherwise can sometimes do more harm than good to the very communities we seek to protect.
First, political economy matters. If a project had strong backing at inception, particularly from influential political actors, then the early-stage resistance that often determines a project’s fate was already weakened. That is not unusual (and we may have witnessed it with our struggles against the nuclear project). Many large-scale infrastructure or extractive projects gain momentum not because they are flawless, but because they are politically convenient or strategically shielded. By the time communities begin to fully grasp the implications, the project is already structurally embedded.
Second, the legal window that typically offers the strongest leverage is the challenge to the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) license at the tribunal stage. That moment is critical because it questions the project’s legality, including on the question of public participation, before it becomes too costly, financially and politically, to reverse.
Experience shows that when communities succeed there, they can halt or significantly reshape a project (see the success of the Lamu community in their fight against the proposed Lamu Coal Power Plant). But once that window closes and time passes, the balance shifts. The project begins to acquire a sense of inevitability.
So the difficult question becomes: what is to be done when a project appears to be at an advanced stage?
If one is advising a community from a place of realism (not resignation or seeking donor funding or political leverage), they must offer practical solutions. Focus may need to shift. Not because justice no longer matters, but because the form it takes must adapt to the circumstances.
At that stage, the struggle often moves from stopping the project to shaping its impacts. That means pushing hard for a stronger Resettlement Action Plan (RAP), ensuring that displacement is not just compensated but handled with dignity and fairness. It means demanding a credible and enforceable livelihood restoration plan, so that affected people are not left worse off in the long term. And it means negotiating meaningful benefit-sharing arrangements, so that the community is not merely bearing the costs while others reap the gains.
This is not an easy pivot. It can feel like conceding defeat. But it is, in many cases, a strategic recalibration, recognizing where leverage still exists and using it effectively.
At the same time, this does not mean abandoning accountability altogether. Even at advanced stages, there are still opportunities to document harm, to engage oversight mechanisms, and to build pressure for compliance with standards. But these efforts work best when paired with practical, immediate gains for the community.
In short, when a project has moved beyond the point where it can realistically be stopped, the question is no longer “How do we block it?” but “How do we ensure the community does not lose everything?” That shift is not about lowering ambition; it is about grounding the struggle in the reality on the ground and securing the best possible outcome under imperfect conditions.
