Focusing on Suswa, this study analyses the impact of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) project on labour dynamics in local communities in Kenya’s southern rangelands. Using the patron–client framework, we explore the complex relationship between the SGR, labour practices and contestations during its construction. Following a qualitative approach, data collection between 2021 and 2023 reveals how the elites promised jobs and claimed to follow labour regulations but covertly promoted patron–clients’ interests, resulting in social disparities through inequitable labour distribution, power dynamics and violent protests by the local workers, predominantly from the Maasai ethnic and the broader labourers in Suswa.
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