Norman Miller - Kenya: The Quest for Prosperity, Second Edition

First published 1994 by Westview Press

Published 2018 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Miller, Norman N., 1933

Kenya : the quest for prosperity / Norman Miller and Rodger

Yeager.2nd ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8133-8201-7.ISBN 0-8133-8202-5 (pbk.)

1. KenyaPolitics and government19631978. 2. KenyaPolitics

and government1978 3. KenyaPolitics and government1963
4. KenyaEconomic conditions1963 5. KenyaSocial
conditions1963 6. KenyaForeign relations. I. Yeager, Rodger.
II. Title.
DT433.58.M55 1994
967.6204dc20

93-29882
CIP

Paperback cover photo: Vendors with vegetables from the wholesale market in Haile Selassie Avenue, Nairobi (photo by David Keith Jones/Images of Africa Photobank).

ISBN 13: 978-0-8133-8202-9 (pbk)

Republic of Kenya

This book examines the entrepreneurial, innovative, aggressive approach to life that characterizes modern Kenyan society. Reflecting a mood encountered throughout much of the country, todays Nairobi is a freewheeling, materialistic place where the search for individual advancement shapes the dominant ethic. To the extent that it defines the Kenyan civic culture, this orientation is unique in eastern Africa. It has been both heralded as a harbinger of democratic achievement, social integration, and economic justice and condemned as a deeply embedded cause of political elitism, social conflict, and economic exploitation.

Our view of Kenya is essentially positive, although we believe that a country can be defended and still criticized. The inequities of Kenyan society are not necessarily permanent. The economy faces difficult times but abounds in untapped potential. The political system, increasingly repressive, is nevertheless alive with demands for democratic reform. The overstressed environment still offers the promise of sustainable resource use for the benefit of present and future generations. Events in the international arena are threatening but not overwhelming. Our purpose in the following pages is to describe, explain, and evaluate these divergent tendencies.

In addition to the organizations, friends, and colleagues acknowledged in the first edition, we thank several institutions and individuals for helping make this second edition possible. Under the auspices of the African-Caribbean Institute, our most recent work in Kenya and in other African countries focuses on public-policy problems of natural resource conservation, health, and biodiversity management. We are grateful to the Ford Foundation, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for their financial support of this effort. In Nairobi, the assistance of the following persons was especially appreciated: Ford Foundation country representatives Goran Hyden, Diana Rocheleau, and Eric Rusten; John Gaudet, Larry Hausman, and John Koehring at USAIDs regional office for eastern and southern Africa; and Mona Bjorkland of UNEP headquarters. We are also obliged to the researchers and research advisors associated with our Kenyan projects: Mohamud Abdi Jama and J. Keter, University of Nairobi; A. K. Kiriro, National Environment Secretariat; Michael Korir-Koech, Kenyatta University; Francis Lelo, Egerton University; Charles Okidi, Moi University; Fred Owino, International Centre for Research in Agroforestry; Betty Nafuna Wamalwa, UN Development Programme; and David Wasawo, UN Environment Programme.

Both individually and together, we have long enjoyed an excellent working relationship with Westview Press and with its Nations of Contemporary Africa series. Over the years, series editor Larry W. Bowman has continued to encourage and support our work, as have our Westview editors, Barbara Ellington, Miriam Gilbert, Michelle Murphy, and Shena Redmond. To them we are particularly indebted for enabling our thoughts to see the light of day.

In the final analysis, our deepest thanks are reserved for our long-suffering academic associates and students and, above all, for our families, to whom this book is dedicated: Jan Yeager and Judith, Scott, and Amy Miller. Carrying on a tradition established in nearly three decades of friendship and research collaboration in Africa, we have once again agreed to attribute any errors of fact and interpretation to each other.