Kenya

(PD) Image: Central Intelligence Agency

The Republic of Kenya is a country in Eastern Africa. It shares borders with Ethiopia, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda and Sudan. Its coastline borders the Indian Ocean.

Government

Kenya is a Presidential Representative Republic, where the President acts both as head of State and head of Government. Executive power is wielded by the Government. Legislative power is shared between the government and the National Assembly. The Judiciary acts independently of both legislative and executive organs of government.

Kenya has had a relatively stable political history since independence (omitting recent political unrest and rioting). It escaped much of the internal tribal warfare and civil war which crippled neighbouring nations such as Ethiopia, Uganda and Somalia. It held elections in December 2002 which were deemed free and fair by international observers. Kenya has until recently been used as an example of a recovering African nation free of many of the domestic problems which beset many of her neighbouring states. The 2002 election heralded a peaceful transfer of power from the Kenya African Union to the National Rainbow Coalition.

The disputed 2007 elections led to wide civil strife with around 180,000 people being displaced and an estimated 350 lost lives.

Geography & natural history

Kenya elevates from low lying coastal lands along the Indian Ocean to the Highlands in the center of the country. The Kenyan highlands are one of the most productive agricultural regions in Africa. The highlands have one of the highest points in Kenya, Mount Kenya and is also home to a rare specimen to Africa, glaciers. Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa lies along the Kenya/Tanzania border.

Kenya enjoys a rich variety of flora and fauna within its borders; Several safari parks operate under its jurisdiction and it provides a healthy income in tourism for the nation.

Economy

Immediately following independence Kenya enjoyed a period of economic growth, mainly due to public investment and high levels of foreign investment. From the mid 1970s to 1993, her economic performance declined as a direct result in the downturn in the international agriculture market, poor credit and higher oil prices. In the mid 1990s, Kenya began a economic liberalisation effort in tandem with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. This allowed a sharp increase in economic fortunes despite setbacks in the early 21st century. However, the IMF suspended Kenya's Enhanced Structural Adjustment Program due to the government's failure to maintain reforms and curb corruption. Over the following few years efforts at reform were top priority in order to get the IMF back on board. Recent efforts at the highest level has been to combat corruption in government which is believed to be widespread from the local level to the very highest level of government.

Demographics

Kenya's ethnic groups comprise the following: Kikuyu 22%, Luhya 14%, Luo 13%, Kalenjin 12%, Kamba 11%, Kisii 6%, Meru 6%, other African 15% and non-African (Asian, European, and Arab) 1%. Recent elections has seen these groups generally vote along ethnic and tribal lines, but with exceptions. In the cities, such as Nairobi, old ethnic divisions are less stark than in the more traditional countryside.

Kenya's religious groups comprise the following: Protestant 45%, Roman Catholic 33%, Muslim 10%, indigenous beliefs 10% and other 2%.

History

The interior is a history of migrations, and the activities of most of the major tribes are not well known before the 19th century. On the coast, trading settlements were established by 150 AD. By 1000 AD Persian and Arab traders were well established. A Swahili culture developed in the towns, notably Pate, Malindi, and Mombasa. The Portuguese arrived in 1498, with a powerful navy. The goal was not settlement but the establishment of naval bases that would give Portugal control of the Indian Ocean. After decades of small-scale conflict the Portugese were defeated in Kenya by Arabs from Oman. Under Seyyid Said, the Omani sultan who moved his capital to Zanzibar in the early 19th century, the Arabs created long-distance trade routes into the interior. The dry reaches of the north were lightly inhabited by seminomadic pastoralists. In the south, pastoralists and cultivators bartered goods and competed for land as long-distance caravan routes linked them to the Kenya coast on the east and the kingdoms of Uganda on the west. Arab, Shirazi, and coastal African cultures produced an Islamic Swahili people trading in a variety of up-country commodities, including slaves.

1850-1920

By 1850 European explorers had begun mapping the interior. British interest in the area developed later in the century, stimulated by German competition, and in 1887 the Imperial British East Africa Company, a private concern, leased from Seyyid Said his mainland holdings, a 10-mile (16-km)-wide strip of land along the coast. In 1895 the British government took over and claimed the interior as far west as Lake Naivasha; it set up the East Africa Protectorate. The border was extended to Uganda in 1902, and in 1920 the enlarged protectorate, except for the original coastal strip, which remained a protectorate, became a crown colony.

Railways

The British government decided, primarily for strategic reasons, to build a railway linking Mombasa with the British protectorate of Uganda. A major feat of engineering, the "Uganda railway" (that is the railway inside Kenya leading to Uganda) was completed in 1903 and was a decisive event in modernizing the area. Large numbers of workers were imported from British India to do the manual labor. Many Indians stayed, as did the many Indian traders and small businessmen who saw opportunity in the opening up of the interior of Kenya. Rapid economic development was seen as necessary to make the railroad pay, and since the African population was accustomed to subsistence rather than export agriculture, the government decided to encourage European settlement in the fertile highlands, which had small African populations. The railway opened up the interior, not only to the European farmers, missionaries, and administrators, but also to systematic government programs to attack slavery, disease, and famine. By the time the railroad was built, military resistance by the African population to the original British takeover had petered out. However new grievances were being generated by the process of European settlement. To make way for the Europeans (largely Britons and whites from South Africans), the Masai were restricted to the southern Loieta plains in 1913. The Kikuyu claimed some of the land reserved for Europeans and continued to feel that they had been deprived of their inheritance.

Representation

Although power remained concentrated in the governor's hands, legislative and executive councils made up of official appointees were created in 1906. The European settlers were allowed to elect representatives to the Legislative Council in 1920, when the colony was established. The settlers hoped to achieve responsible government, as did the settlers in Rhodesia in 1923, and they pressed for extensions of representative government for themselves while opposing similar demands by the far more numerous Indian community. In 1923 the Colonial Office declared that the interests of the African population must be paramount. But although the settlers failed to achieve self-government, representation on the Legislative Council for Indians and Arabs, first introduced in 1924, remained disproportionately small. A European was nominated to represent African interests.

In World War II (1939-45) Kenya became an important British military base for successful campaigns against Italy in the Italian Somaliland and Ethiopia. The war brought money and an opportunity for military service, and stimulated African nationalism. In 1944 the first African, appointed by the governor, took his seat in the Legislative Council, and the first pan-tribal African party, the Kenya African Union, was formed. It soon became dominated by the Kikuyu, the African group most affected by the European presence and the most politically active. In 1947 Jomo Kenyatta, former president of the moderate Kikuyu Central Association, became president of the more aggressive Kenya African Union, a political organization demanding a greater voice for Africans.

In response to the rising pressures the British Colonial Office broadened the membership of the Legislative Council and increased its role. By 1952 a multiracial pattern of quotas allowed for 14 European, 1 Arab, and 6 Asian elected members, together with an additional 6 African and 1 Arab member chosen by the governor. The council of ministers became the principal instrument of government in 1954.

Mau-Mau Rising

A key watershed came from 1952 to 1956, during the "Mau Mau" rising, a terrorist movement directed principally against the colonial government and the European settlers. It was the largest and most successful such movement in British Africa, but it was not emulated by the other colonies. The protest was supported almost exclusively by the Kikuyu, despite issues of land rights and anti-European, anti-Western appeals designed to attract other groups. The Mau Mau movement was also a bitter internal struggle among the Kikuyu, with many assassinations and killings on all sides reflecting the ferocity of the movement and the ruthlessness with which the British suppressed it. Kenyatta denied he was a leader of the Mau Mau but was convicted at trial and was sent to prison in 1953, gaining his freedom in 1961.

Constitutional debates

After the suppression of the Mau Mau rising, the British provided for the election of the six African members to the Legislative Council under a weighted franchise based on education. The new colonial constitution of 1958 increased African representation, but African nationalists began to demand a democratic franchise on the principle of "one man, one vote." However, Europeans and Asians, because of their minority position, feared the effects of universal suffrage.

At a conference held in 1960 in London, agreement was reached between the African members and the English settlers of the New Kenya Group, led by Michael Blundell. However many whites rejected the New Kenya Group and condemned the London agreement, because it move away from racial quotas and toward independence. Following the agreement a new African party, the Kenya African National Union (KANU), with the slogan "Uhuru," or "Freedom," was formed under the leadership of Kikuyu leader James S. Gichuru and labor leader Tom Mboya. A split in KANU produced the breakaway rival party, the Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU), led by R. Ngala and M. Muliro. In the elections of February 1961, KANU won 18 of the 33 African seats while KADU won 11. (Twenty seats were reserved by quota for Europeans, Asians, and Arabs.) Kenyatta was finally released in August and became president of KANU in October.

Independence

In 1962 a KANU-KADU coalition government, including both Kenyatta and Ngala, was formed. The 1962 constitution established a bicameral legislature consisting of a 117-member House of Representatives and a 41-member Senate. The country was divided into 7 semi-autonomous regions, each with its own regional assembly. The quota principle of reserved seats for non-Africans was abandoned, and open elections were held in May 1963. KADU gained control of the assemblies in the Rift Valley, Coast, and Western regions. KANU won majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives, and in the assemblies in the Central, Eastern, and Nyanza regions. Kenya now achieved internal self-government with Jomo Kenyatta as its first prime minister. The British and KANU agreed, over KADU protests, to constitutional changes in October 1963 strengthening the central government. Kenya became independent on Dec. 12, 1963. In 1964 Kenya became a republic, and constitutional changes further centralized the government

Foreign policies

Independent Kenya, although officially non-aligned, adopted a pro-Western stance. Kenya worked unsuccessfully for East African union; the proposal to unite Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda did not win approval. However, the three nations did form a loose East African Community (EAC) in 1967, that maintained the customs union and some common services that they had shared under British rule. The EAC collapsed in 1977 and it was officially dissolved in 1984. Kenya's relations with Somalia deteriorated over the problem of Somalis in the North Eastern Province who tried to secede and were supported by Somalia. In 1968, however, Kenya and Somalia agreed to restore normal relations, and the Somali rebellion effectively ended.

Moi regime, 1978-2002

Kenyatta died in 1978 and was succeeded by Daniel Arap Moi (b. 1924) who ruled as President 1978-2002. Moi, a member of the Kalenjin ethnic group, quickly consolidated his position and governed in an authoritarian and corrupt manner. In mid-1982 lower-level air force personnel backed by university students attempted a coup to oust Moi. It failed and was followed by looting of Asian-owned stores by Nairobi's poor blacks and by attacks on Asian population. Robert Ouko, the senior Luo in Moi's cabinet, was appointed to expose corruption at high levels but was murdered a few months later. When Moi's closest associate, Nicholas Biwott, was implicated in Ouko's murder, Moi dismissed him but not before his Luo support had evaporated. Germany recalled its ambassador to protest the "increasing brutality" of the regime, and foreign donors pressed Moi to allow other parties, which was done in December 1991 through a constitutional amendment.

Koi ruled using a strategic mixture of ethnic favoritism, state repression, and marginalization of opposition forces. He utilized detention and torture, looted public finances, and appropriated land and and other property. Beginning in 1998, Moi engaged in a carefully calculated strategy to manage the presidential succession in his and his party's favor.

21st century

Moi's handpicked successor Mwai Kibaki (1931- ) came to power in 2002. Once regarded as the world's "most optimistic," it quickly lost much of its power. The continuity between Kibaki and Moi, set the stage for the self-destruction of Kibaki's National Rainbow Coalition, and the explosion of Kenya into violence following a rigged election in December 2007.

Social Change

Luo

The Luo population of the southwest had enjoyed an advantageous position during the late colonial and early independence periods of the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s, particularly in terms of the the prominence of its modern elite compared to those of other groups. However the Luo lost prominence due to the success of Kikuyu and related groups (Embu and Meru) in gaining and exercising political power during the Jomo Kenyatta era (1963-1978). While measurements of poverty and health by the early 2000s showed the Luo disadvantaged relative to other Kenyans, the growing presence of non-Luo in the professions reflected a dilution of Luo professionals due to the arrival of others rather than a absolute decline in the Luo numbers.

Bibliography

• Barsby, Jane. Kenya (Culture Smart!: a quick guide to customs and etiquette) (2007)
• Haugerud, Angelique. The Culture of Politics in Modern Kenya. Cambridge U. Press, 1995. 266 pp. excerpt and text search
• Mwaura, Ndirangu. Kenya Today: Breaking the Yoke of Colonialism in Africa. Algora, 2005. 238 pp.
• Parkinson, Tom, and Matt Phillips. Lonely Planet Kenya (2006) except and text search
• Rough Guide To Kenya (8th ed. 2006)

History

• Anderson, David. Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire. W. W. Norton, 2005. 406 pp. excerpt and text search
• Berman, Bruce and Lonsdale, John. Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa. 2 vol. Ohio U. Press, 1992. 504 pp.
• Bravman, Bill. Making Ethnic Ways: Communities and Their Transformations in Taita, Kenya, 1800-1950. James Currey, 1998. 283 pp.
• Collier, Paul and Lal, Deepak. Labour and Poverty in Kenya, 1900-1980. Oxford U. Press, 1986. 296 pp.
• Eliot, Charles. The East Africa Protectorate (1905), by the well-informed former governor; full text online
• Elkins, Caroline. Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya. Holt, 2005. 496 pp.
• Gatheru, R. Mugo. Kenya: From Colonization to Independence, 1888-1970. McFarland, 2005. 236 pp.
• Harper, James C., II. Western Educated Elites in Kenya, 1900-1963. Routledge, 2006. 193 pp. excerpt and text search
• Kanogo, Tabitha. African Womanhood in Colonial Kenya, 1900-50. Ohio U. Press, 2005. 268 pp. excerpt and text search
• Kyle, Keith. The Politics of the Independence of Kenya St. Martin's, 1999. 258 pp.
• Lewis, Joanna. Empire State-Building: War and Welfare in Kenya, 1925-52. James Currey, 2000. 393 pp.
• Mackenzie, A. Fiona D. Land, Ecology and Resistance in Kenya, 1880-1952. Edinburgh U. Pr., 1998. 286 pp.
• Maloba, Wunyabari O. Mau Mau and Kenya: An Analysis of Peasant Revolt. Indiana U. Press, 1993. 288 pp.
• Maxon, Robert M. and Ofcansky, Thomas P. Historical Dictionary of Kenya. (2nd ed. Scarecrow, 2000). 449 pp.
• Maxon, Robert M. Going Their Separate Ways: Agrarian Transformation in Kenya, 1930-1950. Fairleigh Dickinson U. Pr., 2003. 353 pp
• Miller, Norman, and Rodger Yeager. Kenya: The Quest for Prosperity (2nd ed. 1984) online edition at Questia
• Ndege, George Oduor. Health, State, and Society in Kenya. U. of Rochester Press, 2001. 224 pp.
• Ochieng, William R., ed. Themes in Kenyan History. Ohio U. Press, 1991. 261 pp.
• Ochieng, William R., ed. A Modern History of Kenya: In Honour of Professor B. A. Ogot. Nairobi, Kenya: Evans Brothers, 1989. 259 pp.
• Odhiambo, E. S. Atieno and Lonsdale, John, eds. Mau Mau and Nationhood: Arms, Authority and Narration. Ohio U. Press 2003. 306 pp.
• Ogot, B. A. and Ochieng, W. R., eds. Decolonization and Independence in Kenya, 1940-93. Ohio U. Press, 1996. 270 pp. online edition from Questia
• Percox, David A. Britain, Kenya and the Cold War: Imperial Defence, Colonial Security and Decolonisation. Tauris, 2004. 252 pp. excerpt and text search
• Pinkney, Robert. The International Politics of East Africa. Manchester U. Pr., 2001. 242 pp. compares Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.
• Press, Robert M. Peaceful Resistance: Advancing Human Rights and Democratic Freedoms. Ashgate, 2006. 227 pp.
• Sabar, Galia. Church, State, and Society in Kenya: From Mediation to Opposition, 1963-1993. F. Cass, 2002. 334 pp.
• Sandgren, David P. Christianity and the Kikuyu: Religious Divisions and Social Conflict. Peter Lang, 1989. 209 pp.
• Smith, David Lovatt. Kenya, the Kikuyu and Mau Mau. Mawenzi, 2005. 359 pp.
• Steinhart, Edward O. Black Poachers, White Hunters: A Social History of Hunting in Colonial Kenya. Oxford: James Currey, 2006. 248 pp.
• Tignor, Robert L. Capitalism and Nationalism at the End of Empire: State and Business in Decolonizing Egypt, Nigeria, and Kenya, 1945-1963. Princeton U. Press, 1998. 419 pp.

Primary sources

• Kareri, Charles Muhuro. The Life of Charles Muhoro Kareri. U. of Wisconsin-Madison, African Studies Program, 2003. 104 pp.
• Lewis, Joanna, ed. From Mau Mau to Harambee: Memoirs and Memoranda of Colonial Kenya, Tom Askwith. Cambridge U. Press, 1995. 221 pp.
• Maathai, Wangari Muta. Unbowed: A Memoir. Knopf, 2006. 314 pp.