Resource information
Kenya is on the road towards commercial exploitation of the Turkana oil resources. Until now, management of benefits from Kenya‟s natural resources is particularly problematic. This assertion is demonstrated by the fact that such benefits have never trickled down to the local people in a very structured way. The failure has led to calls for the putting into place of ways through which natural resource-based benefits should be shared equitably. Picking a cue from the above experiences, Parliament recently published three relevant and interrelated Bills. These were the Natural Resources (Benefit-Sharing) Bill 2014, Petroleum (Exploration, Development and Production) Bill, 2015 and the National Sovereign Wealth Fund Bill 2014. If enacted, these pieces of legislation would deal with benefit-sharing in a more structured way so as to ensure that the country substantially minimises the present challenges relating to benefit-sharing of its natural resources. Natural resources contribute immensely to economic growth, employment and to the country‟s fiscal revenue. However, the potential for realization of these benefits sometimes fail to materialize. Such failure usually arises from the fact that many resource-rich and resourcedependent countries are characterised by unconvincing growth rates, high inequality and widespread poverty, bad governance, as well as an ever present high risk of violence. Often, natural resources are the highest cause of most of these deadly conflicts. Usually, scarcity of natural resources has been noted to be responsible for causing a higher of conflicts. However, it is also the case that abundance of these resources also causes conflicts.
