“The Coast Is Not Kenya”: Mwambao in a “Moment of Danger” in Lamu

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the multiple, diverse renderings of the past that came to the fore in the Indian Ocean port city of Lamu at the groundbreaking of the Lamu Port, South Sudan, Ethiopia Transport and Economic Development Corridor (LAPSSET) project in 2012. This infrastructural project includes a megaport and a freight corridor that would make Lamu the Indian Ocean terminus for a rail-land bridge. In Lamu, the LAPSSET project produced anxieties and questions about the past, where different historical narratives—of belonging, sovereignty, and autochthony—bubbled up to the surface. Focusing on two groups in Lamu and the wider Swahili coast, the first a coalition of civil society organizations called Save Lamu and second, the Mombasa Republican Council, a secessionist group, this essay examines the resurgence of older modes of coastal nationalism or mwambao. This article argues that coastal nationalism enshrined notions of Indian Ocean belonging, where the “nation” was defined by the coast's history in the larger Indian Ocean rather than the Kenyan nation-state. These Indian Ocean imaginaries were at the center of cleavages between state and society when construction for LAPSSET began in 2012, gesturing to how sovereignty remains unsettled in coastal East Africa.