Kenya’s Developments, Achievements, and Difficulties since Independence
It is consistently reported that African countries gained independence in the wake of World War II, in an economic and intellectual environment altered by the Great Depression and the coming out of the Soviet Union as an industrial authority.[1] There are many English-speaking countries in the Sub-Saharan African (SSA) region because the British colonial administration. Among these countries include Kenya as among those having the highest level of colonial culture including in its politics, economy and social dynamics.[2] Accordingly, Kenya in terms of geography is conveniently divided into five broad and contiguous regions namely: 1) the Lake Victoria basin, 2) the Central rift and associated highlands, 3) the eastern plateau foreland, 4) the coast region and 5) the semi-arid, Northern, Northeastern and Southern Kenya.[3] Kenya gained its full independence as a country on December 12, 1963, with a unitary form of government, and Jomo Kenyatta as the first president (until his death in 1978).[4] Up to date, Kenya is making history in terms of its remarkable development in politics, economy, society, and its people. This paper discusses the political, economic, and social developments and achievements. It also identifies the difficulties that hinder total development.
Political, economic and social developments and achievements of Kenya
As identified, Kenya holds a unitary form of government. The founding governments of newly liberated African countries back then are highly ambitious in terms of their views of what governments could and should carry out in the service of modernization. But Kenya, under the rule of Kenyatta vary qualitatively from other countries like Ghana (under Nkrumah), Tanzania, and Zambia in the status attached to markets and private accumulation as opposed to direct controls and government regulation in the development process. Like Botswana and Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya varies in terms of the importance credited to international markets and foreign private capital in the development process. These differences continue to distinguish episodes both within and across countries throughout the post-independence period.[5]
In terms of politics, a single party known as KANU ruled national politics from Kenya’s independence in late 1963 until the elections of December 2002. This resulted to the first democratic transformation of government in Kenya’s history as an independent state and one of the few democratic changes of government in Africa.[6] In earlier years, tribal tensions exploited by politicians have frequently erupted into conflicts leading to killing of thousands of people particularly during the early 1990s.[7] Changes in the government are focused on political, economic, and social aspects and are said to be directed towards the progressive aims for the country and its people.
Kenya is among the large economies in the African region specifically in the East.[8] Kenya’s economy is heavily dependent on agriculture, especially low priced cash crops such as coffee and tea, and few mineral-based natural resources, and most of its industrial output is for local consumption.[9] The latest performance of African stock markets also promises well for financial globalization. In terms of economy, the Kenyan stock market (including the Arab Republic of Egypt, Ghana, Mauritius, Nigeria, and Uganda) performed extraordinarily well, earning returns of more than 50 percent in 2006. Kenya (like Mozambique, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia) shares a modern legacy of comprehensive policies to open economy to trade and foreign investment. Only Kenya and Senegal have avoided severe disruption to their established business communities since independence, through revolutions and civil conflict (Mozambique and Uganda), or socialist development and widespread nationalization (Mozambique, Tanzania, and Zambia).[10] Kenya is a natural pattern in forming regional stock exchange in East Africa. Agriculture and other agricultural potential were expected to be harnessed to accomplish national development aspirations. The agricultural origins of early Kenyan leaders help explain the more supportive stance toward agriculture in the country. In Kenya, a long history of entrepreneurship is reflected in strong potential factory-floor productivity; however, high costs and losses hamper competitiveness. Today, Kenya is very promising in terms of tourism development. The Kenyan tourism industry is a major element of the country’s economy, regarded as the third largest source of the country’s foreign exchange earnings (after coffee and tea), and one of Kenya’s principal providers of employment.[11]
In social aspects, Kenya holds an estimated population of 37 million people as according to CIA – The World Factbook. The African population of Kenya consists of 42 tribes who cherish their own values even when lumped into larger ethnic groups, which the colonial administration invented.[12] Since then, Kenya became a country of various races and nationalities where the biggest segment of the African population has coexisted with Americans, Arabs, Asian migrants (including Indians, Pakistanis and other Asiatics), Europeans, and other Africans and non-Africans nationalities.
With the unity of various races and nationalities, several factors including the tolerance of the state-run government, peace and prosgress in the first three decades of independence, centrality of the country's capital in the North-South and West-East trade and communications system, and the existence of many offices of international organizations (i.e. United Nations agencies, NGOs and foreign missions), Kenya has become the home country that is subjected with dynamic global changes towards political, economic, and social development.
Difficulties encountered
Kenya suffered an extended period of poor governance.[13] Since Kenya gained independence from Britain in 1963, economic growth has been destabilized by prevalent corruption in the government, crumbling infrastructure and inefficiency. These problems are not just experienced by Kenya but most countries in the African region. Also, these problems resulted to disadvantageous position of the country and its economic industries. There are problems in infrastructures that are not given special attention. Budget allocations to roads and railways, seaports and airports are corrupted, which results to poor conditions of road and railway links that hamper accessibility and mobility of people and their products. Other infrastructure, services, and utilities, including electrical and water services, are not always reliable. For instance in May 2003, severe storms and flooding damaged dams and water supply pipelines servicing the capital Nairobi, resulting in water shortages in the city.[14] Similar problems occur from time to time.[15] These problems do not only affect people but also several industries like the business and tourism sectors.
Kenya is one of the few parliamentary democracies on the African continent, although political opposition was severely curtailed during the presidency of Daniel Arap Moi whose KANU Party ruled between 1978 and 1992.[16] Political instability and conflict are among the difficulties being faced. The country and its people have suffered many social and economic problems, while corruption and inefficiency became entrenched in Kenyan public and economic life.[17] Kenya has one of the world’s highest mortality rates from malaria, AIDS and other epidemics. This is among the past and the present obstacle towards development. Despite the high mortality rate from epidemic diseases, the population is amongst the fastest growing among other African countries.
Similarly, poverty in the Sub-Sahara African countries like Kenya has been and still is a serious problem that hinders progress. Since independence, the Kenyan government has been committed to fighting poverty through various programs, policies, and initiatives. There are also aids and other helps from international institutions varying from economical to humanitarian nature. However, despite these efforts, poverty continues to escalate to higher level and this makes it even harder to implement poverty alleviation programs, policies, and initiatives. In Kenya, especially in the 1990s, the significant decline in economic growth was attributed to the decrease in tourism activity over the same period.[18] Due to the increase in poverty, several multinational and local organizations have joined the government in its efforts towards poverty alleviation. One strategy that has been proposed, especially by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), is the sustainable livelihoods approach – an approach to poverty alleviation that is derived from people’s capacity to access options and resources and use them to earn a living in such a way as not to foreclose for others, either now or in the future.[19]
Macroeconomic data confirm that African countries tend to be “high-cost”.[20] The firm-level estimates confirm that high costs are reducing industrial competitiveness. Countries like Kenya that have been able to diversify into manufactured exports tend to have low cost levels relative to purchasing price parity predictions and lower indirect costs. It is also identified that the most daunting puzzle in the African growth experience is the failure of its coastal, resource-poor economies to participate in the explosion of manufactured exports from developing countries that occurred in the last quarter of the twentieth century.[21] This is similarly applicable to the case of Kenya. The global evidence suggests that countries such as Kenya, Mauritius, and Senegal faced very favorable growth opportunities during this period but are not able to grab such. Similarly, ethnic and structural cleavages in business sectors also have implications for the political economy of reform. Poor business environments generate entry barriers that provide larger firms with anticompetitive rents. Firms that might push for reform are therefore faced with a choice between a hostile business environment that they have learned to negotiate and an unknown situation with potentially large increases in entry and competition. These difficulties presented are among the focus of the Kenyan government particularly in devising other national programs, policies, and initiatives directed towards eventual progress and development.
Bibliography
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Kritzer, H. M. (2002). Legal Systems of the World: A Political, Social, and Cultural Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
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Oucho, J. O. (2002). Undercurrents of Ethnic Conflicts in Kenya. Boston: Brill.
Phombeah, G. (2002). Moi’s Legacy to Kenya. BBC World. 5 December.
Sindiga, I. and Kanuna, M. (1999). Unplanned tourism development in sub-Saharan Africa with special reference to Kenya. Journal of Tourism Studies, 10, p. 25–39.
Yeats, A. J. (1998). What Can Be Expected from African Regional Trade Arrangements? Some Empirical Evidence. World Bank Working Paper 2004. Washington, DC: The World Bank.
[1] Bourguignon, F. & Pleskovic, B. (Eds.) (2006). Annual World Bank Conference On Development Economics, 2006: Growth and Integration. New York, NY: World Bank, p. 38.
[2] Oucho, J. O. (2002). Undercurrents of Ethnic Conflicts in Kenya. Boston: Brill, p. 35.
[3] Ibid., p. 38.
[4] Kritzer, H. M. (2002). Legal Systems of the World: A Political, Social, and Cultural Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, p. 823
[5] Bourguignon, F. & Pleskovic, B. (2006). Annual World Bank Conference On Development Economics, 2006: Growth and Integration, op. cit., p. 38.
[6] Laws, E., Prideaux, B. & Chon, K. S. (Eds.) (2007). Crisis Management in Tourism. Wallingford, UK/Cambridge, MA: CABI Publishing, p. 286-87.
[7] Kritzer, H. M. (2002). Legal Systems of the World: A Political, Social, and Cultural Encyclopedia op. cit., p. 823.
[8] Yeats, A. J. (1998). What Can Be Expected from African Regional Trade Arrangements? Some
Empirical Evidence. World Bank Working Paper 2004. Washington, DC: The World Bank.
[9] Laws, E., Prideaux, B. & Chon, K. S. (Eds.) (2007). Crisis Management in Tourism, op. cit., p. 286-87.
[10] Bourguignon, F. & Pleskovic, B. (2006). Annual World Bank Conference On Development Economics, 2006: Growth and Integration, op. cit., p. 203.
[11] Laws, E., Prideaux, B. & Chon, K. S. (Eds.) (2007). Crisis Management in Tourism, op. cit., p. 286-87.
[12] Oucho, J. O. (2002). Undercurrents of Ethnic Conflicts in Kenya, p. 38.
[13] Bourguignon, F. & Pleskovic, B. (2006). Annual World Bank Conference On Development Economics, 2006: Growth and Integration, op. cit., p. 203.
[14] Akumu, G. (2003). Expect worse effects of climate change. The Nation Nairobi. May 16, p. 2.
[15] Sindiga, I. and Kanuna, M. (1999). Unplanned tourism development in sub-Saharan Africa with special reference to Kenya. Journal of Tourism Studies, 10, p. 25–39.
[16] Laws, E., Prideaux, B. & Chon, K. S. (Eds.) (2007). Crisis Management in Tourism, op. cit., p. 286-87.
[17] Phombeah, G. (2002). Moi’s Legacy to Kenya. BBC World. 5 December.
[18] Jones, E. & Haven, C. (2005). Tourism SMEs, Service Quality, and Destination Competitiveness. Wallingford, UK, Cambridge, MA CABI Publishing, p. 60.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Bourguignon, F. & Pleskovic, B. (2006). Annual World Bank Conference On Development Economics, 2006: Growth and Integration, op. cit., p. 222.
[21] Ibid.
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