Violence and resources in Kenya

The Economist interviews John Githongo:

Baobab (The Economist's Africa blog) : Recently we’ve seen outbreaks of violence around the country, including the massacres of villagers around Tana River in the east and the slaughter of police recruits in Samburu county in the north. So far an estimated 500 people have been killed...

John Githongo: What we are seeing now is localized violence, the result of a struggle for power that comes from the competition for resources due to an increasing amount of international and local elite interest in our newfound oil, natural gas, gold, as well as our fertile land. All those things combined means that the politicians are still using violence as a political tool... What’s happening is that there is a massive land grab underway... Now, there’s oil. There’s gold. There’s gas. There’s pasture. And when you combine that with devolution and international investment—the stakes rise higher and higher. The political intensity increases, and that’s why in these regions the violence has just exploded...