"The project will pretty much catapult the area into the era of modern society," says Mumias CEO Evans Kidero, adding sugar production costs would fall 75 percent at the Delta, helping bring down prices across the country.
In the west, Kenya's only current sugar-growing area, it costs $570 to produce a tonne of sugar, compared to between $240-290 in Sudan and Egypt, according to the Southern and Eastern Africa Trade Information and Negotiations Institute.
Experts say dumping of cheap imports, poor infrastructure and technology shortcomings have held back Kenya's industry.
A twenty-minute drive up the coast from the hostile pastoralists, members of another local community, the Pokomo, who are mainly crop farmers, give the officials an enthusiastic welcome on the next stop of their roadshow.
Entertainment includes songs imploring the government to hurry up with the sugar project.
"There are a few people protesting, but the majority want the project," says delegation leader and Regional Development Minister Fred Gumo, vowing nothing will stop the project.
Project backers say it will help drag a backward region into line with the rest of the country.
The Tana River Delta area has a 42 percent poverty rate, one of the highest in the country, a 2006 government survey shows.
It also has a high rate of illiteracy with 85 percent of the local Wardei people having no education at all, 21 percent among the Pokomo and 36 percent among the Orma.
Conservationists, including foreign groups like Britain's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, have warned the sugar project will threaten 350 species including birds, sharks and reptiles.
"Irrigation will interfere with the natural flow of water in the delta and it will affect fish breeding sites," says Maulidi Diwayu, a local resident.
Backers of the project say they are ready to make amends for any disturbance of the environment.
"We found it will impact the environment negatively and positively, but on balance, the project was found to be environmentally, socially and economically feasible," says Professor David Mungai who led a project impact study.
Kidero says resistance stems from fear of the unknown which will disappear when project benefits become apparent. "Life is changing. You either change or life will change you," he says.
