Decolonization

MOI UNIVERSITY MAIN CAMPUS SCHOOL OF EDUCATION ARTS ADM NO: ED/47/07 NAME: JANANGA HADLEY LIMANYE COURSE: KENYA’S ECONOMY SINCE 1963 COURSE CODE: HIS 412 TASK: TERM PAPER PRESENTED TO: DR.MAKANA DATE: SIGN: QUESTION: Discuss the ways in which the process of decolonization in the 1950’s and 1960’s influenced and determined the nature of Kenya’s post independence economy. WAYS IN WHICH THE PROCESS OF DECOLONIZATION IN THE 1950’S AND 1960’S INFLUENCED AND DETERMINED THE NATURE OF KENYA’S POST INDEPENDENCE ECONOMY. Kenya is located in East Africa and borders Somalia to the northeast, Ethiopia to the north, Sudan to the northwest, Uganda to the west, Tanzania to the south, and the Indian Ocean to the east. The country straddles the equator, covering a total of 224,961 square miles (582,600 square kilometers Kenya just like a majority of other third world country was colonized by the British. In 1886 and 1890 Britain reached agreements with Germany that delineated a boundary between British territory in Kenya and German territory in Tanganyika (part of present-day Tanzania) to the south. The Imperial British East Africa Company was chartered in 1888 to administer Kenya, but it failed. In 1895 the British government formally took over the territory, which was renamed the East Africa Protectorate. Most Kenyan communities protested against this loss of their social, economic independence though some communities who could not retaliate, collaborated with the new masters in town. “it is a great deal easier to describe to describe the gradual expansion of Europea+n hegemony in East Africa than it is to present the varied reactions of individual East African peoples to this formidable alien intrusion. The broad spectrum of reactions, from enthusiastic collaborations to embittered resistance, is familiar enough, but it is not easy to make watertight generalizations.” (1) Following World War I, protests against settler supremacy and the policies of the colonial government intensified among Kenyan Africans. Much of the opposition during this period came from educated Kenyans who objected to the government’s high taxes, labor-control policies, and a general lack of opportunities. One of the first opposition movements to emerge was the East African Association, which was banned by colonial authorities in 1922. In the 1920s and 1930s African protests focused on local issues and remained within the boundaries of the ethnic units recognized by colonial rule. Although the British moved to provide greater economic, educational, and political opportunities for Africans, African nationalism continued to intensify and to spread among all of Kenya’s ethnic groups. In 1960 and 1961 the British rapidly took steps to end settler supremacy and establish independence for Kenya with African majority rule. Colony-wide political parties were formed and eventually on the first of June 1963, Kenya became an independent nation. As an independent country, Kenya was initially a constitutional monarchy, with the British monarch as its nominal head of state and a prime minister as head of government. In December 1964, however, Kenya became a republic with a president as both head of state and head of government. Kenyatta was chosen as the country’s first president. By this time KADU had dissolved, and its members had joined KANU. Colonialism had not developed Africa nor was it constituted to do so. Economically colonialism had linked Africa tightly to the world’s capitalist system dominated by Europe and later the U.S.A. African countries it needs to be repeated produced raw materials and imported selected manufactured goods. There were to be sure, enterprising Africans during the colonial era. Some became cash crop growers or traders; others were absorbed as workers or miners. In each case the Africans did not control the economic system in which they were absorbed in, nor did they determine the economic fortune. It would be folly to argue that Africans were passive participants in the colonial capitalism. Walter Rodney argued convincingly that the sum total of benefits accruing from the colonial period was amazingly small for Africa. What during colonialism was selective investment by European and other foreign capitalists in those enterprises that promised immediate profits with little risks, these enterprises had not been conceived as part of a coherent national plan for development but rather for their profitably to foreign investors. Politically colonialism was a dictatorship. It was imposed by violence and maintained by violence, ruling with utter indifference to the opinions of the governed-the Africans- colonialism perpetrated a reign of terror by silencing its opponents through detentions, exile and even outright extermination. Colonial administrators were appointed not elected. They owed their allegiance to foreign centers of power, represented in the colonies by governors. They were not accountable to Africans for their actions nor did they pretend to be constrained in their actions b y local opinions. The colonial system was also socially racist. The era of modern imperialism in the nineteenth century, which of course marked European expansion in Africa, was also the era of scientific racism. Western scientists and academics articulated the theory of a ‘great chain of being’ in which the white people were at the top and the black people at the bottom of the human part of the chain. This racism given was a distinct part of the culture of imperialism as Europeans advanced in Africa and was often used as a justification for this expansion. Colonialism therefore not only despised Africans but also denigrated their cultures and abilities to effect change, to improve themselves. To fully appreciate the emotional charge that often accompanied the struggle for African independence, one has to know that this was also a struggle to regain African dignity and respect. Decolonization refers to the undoing of colonialism, the unequal relation of polities whereby one people or nation establishes and maintains dependent territorial governments over another. It can be understood politically (attaining independence, autonomous home rule, union with the metro pole or another state) or culturally (removal of pernicious colonial effects.) The term refers particularly to the dismantlement of the Neo-Imperial empires .As a social and economic and political phenomenon and process,, decolonization represents much more than the attainment of political independence. .it implies the achievement of economic and social freedom from former colonial masters. In the context of this discussion it refers to the emancipation of Kenya from British control and domination. Political independence was viewed, even by conservative nationalists, as the path to redress the economic and social neglect and injustices of the colonial era. One of the key aims of decolonization is economic freedom. Activists and ordinary citizens in supporting the struggle for independence expected an improvement in their living conditions. The desire to live better explains political support for nationalists and nationalism. There is no political party that did not promise better living conditions for its citizens during the struggle for ‘uhuru’. There was a general outcry against the economic exploitation by colonialists. To achieve economic independence the achievement of political independence was seen as a crucial step. The performance of African countries such as Kenya many years after the attainment of independence has not been impressive. Hunger, political strife, severe limitation on civil liberties have all grown in intensity leading many observers to conclude that African independence has been an abysmal failure. This harsh assessment it has to be emphasized has not been limited to external agencies and foreigners, many of whom can easily be accused of malice. Many local evaluations and appraisals of the economic, social and political performance of African countries have tended to provide evidence of stagnation and even regression in development. Economic stagnation has been recorded despite ‘vast amounts in aid from 1962 to 1978. In Kenya, the problem of economic independence had two major interrelated components. In the first instance the inherited economic institutions did not have the capacity to lead to sustained growth and development. They were established to exploit and no develop these countries. They therefore offered no reliable foundation for the future. The second problem concerns leadership. Many of those that assumed political leadership on the attainment of independence also inherited this exploitative system. This included the salary structure, economic privileges, power and authority for a few. It has for example been noted that the in majority of former British colonies, the corresponding patterns of enumeration characteristic of the public sector during the colonial rule remained largely intact .Economic decolonization could not be realized if these institutions were left intact and especially if a few people in the positions of power exploited them to enrich themselves and left the rest of the population poor and stagnant. The path that post-colonial economic development took in Kenya was greatly influenced by the events that unfolded between 1940 and 1963. The transformation of Kenya into ‘a developing nation’ was achieved through a much forceful infusion of the local economy with international capital. This process heightened in the aftermath of the Second World War partly because the economic boom that had characterized the war period did not abate. Further impetus for growth was derived from the high prices offered for agricultural produce on the international market. This elicited expanded European settler land use in Kenya thereby worsening the scenario of landlessness among Africans and helping to generate the mau mau rebellion(Zeleza 1989).Though militarily defeated the mau mau rebellion became a catalyst for economic and political change in Kenya as the contradictions of European domination were brought to the surface. Therefore 1954 became a crucial year redefining the role of African agricultural production in Kenya’s economy. It marked the onset of crucial state policies with the overall effect of accelerating the transformation of the political and economic structures of Kenya. The swynerton plan and land reform program of 1954 set in motion measures that would systematically alter the posture of African commodity production. The result was a much closer linkage of African agriculture with international capital, a process that irrevocably undercut the privileged place of settler estate production within the political economy of the country. The economic crisis following the first Lancaster House constitutional conference was of such magnitude that the Nairobi stock exchange fell sharply, the building industry virtually collapsed and unemployment shot up dramatically. The economy was contracting precisely at the time that tens of thousands of detainees were being released and restrictions against Kikuyu, Embu and Meru workers had been dropped. After the emergency was lifted, many of the returning detainees and forest fighters either found their lands had been forfeited and redistributed, or their previous landlessness had irrevocably been confirmed through land consolidation programmes, which had been fully taken advantage of by pre- emergency landowners and loyalists. Incidents of rioting, illegal squatting and land seizures were reported from the central province. There was apparently a revival of oathing, an ominous development, which a decade earlier had served as a prelude to the outbreak of Mau Mau. In response to this impending explosion, the ‘yeoman’ and ‘peasant’ schemes only introduced in 1961 as a means of bailing out the settlers and buying off the expanding African bourgeoisie were quickly abandoned in favour of a more comprehensive land settlement programme that would include at least some of the landless. Thus were born the controversial land settlement programmes that would be known as the Million Acre Scheme, after the 1.2 million acres which were allocated to 35,000families in the 1960’s.other squatter schemes were to be launched after independence. But over half of the settler lands were transferred almost intact by sale to wealthy Africans organized in partnerships or limited liability companies. Thus a new land policy based on class, instead of race, was being established in Kenya. The agrarian crisis was accompanied by a labour crisis. There was a resurgence of worker militancy despite the rising unemployment. The threats to the labour control system that the labour unrest of 1960-63 provided, as well as the current agrarian crisis, were symptoms of, and themselves accelerated, the transition from the colonial to a post-colonial state and society .In line with these changes was the compelling need to transform the relations of production in Kenya in order to align them in tune with the needs of growing industrial investment by international capital. Due to the growth of import substitution industries from the 1940’s, the use of punitive sanctions to attract and retain labour had to be repudiated in favour of positive incentives that entailed increased wages. The added impetus to the process of import substitution industrialization derived from the fact that the Second World War created conditions of siege for its entire duration, subsequently leading to the colonial authorities encouraging manufacturing industries to provide essential commodities for European populations residing in the colonies. Therefore between 1940 and 1963, Kenya’s economy became closely tied to international interests, in general and British capital, in particular. This provided the background against which these external interests would exercise a strong influence on the theory and practice of development throughout the post-colonial period in Kenya. The colonial and post-colonial economy was anchored around a few primary commodities for exports and on the importation of most capital goods in a typical imperial pattern. This neocolonial posture of the economy elicited heated national debate about the direction that post-colonial Kenya needed to take. In the ensuing political debate, the political left that later coalesced into the Kenya Peoples Union (KPU) espoused an economic doctrine that advocated the values of social egalitarianism. In what Professor E.S. Atieno-Odhiambo calls the “programmatic tradition of Kenyan nationalism” the exponents of this view opined that the purpose of uhuru should have been, to give land to the landless, to reward Mau Mau freedom fighters and to depart as much as possible from British neocolonial control. The government’s response to this policy was the annunciation of the policy statement that came to dominantly inform development policy in Kenya after independence known as sessional paper number 10, on African Socialism and its Application to development in Kenya (1965).The objectives set out in the document sought to intertwine African pre-colonial conceptions of development with the modern ideas in order to accelerate economic development in Kenya. At the level of theory it rejected both western capitalism and Eastern communism, committing itself instead to the pursuit of a mixed economy. It privileged economic development as a critical component for successful economic planning in the country. Nonetheless, the goals of economic growth were severely beset by a critical shortage of resources, such as domestic capital, trained and experienced manpower, as well as foreign exchange. Owing to very low per capita income, it soon became apparent that Kenyan citizens lacked the capacity for augmenting domestic savings and initiating processes of capital formation sufficient enough to spur economic growth. Political negotiations leading to independence are often discussed in terms of unholy alliance between the African elite and the white liberals striking a neo-colonialist bargain with the metropolitan power. This is an over-simplication and distortion of facts. The truth of the matter is that a much tougher negotiation was carried out among African leaders themselves, especially between KADU and KANU, which produced a national consensus upon which the Kenyan constitution was based. This was the work of African leaders themselves, for which they should be credited for. The period between 1961 and 1963 is crucial in the making of the Kenyan constitution. By October 1961, it was evident that all hopes of a united Kenya under Jomo Kenyatta’s leadership had been shattered by the fear of domination that gripped the non-kikuyu-Luo nationalities at this time. A spirit of tolerance and understanding was necessary for if political independence which guarantees freedom and equal rights for all was to be achieved. However this was not be the case. The Kenyatta era, which lasted until 1978, was a period of considerable social change and economic growth for Kenya. Kenyatta appointed members of many different ethnic groups to government positions and encouraged the people of Kenya to come together as Kenyans, rather than focus on their different ethnic alignments. Many whites had left the country when Kenya became independent, and Kenyatta divided their land among blacks. These Kenyans were encouraged to grow export crops such as coffee and tea on their new land. Aided by a steady flow of foreign investment, largely from Britain, Kenya’s economy flourished. The standard of living rose for most Kenyans, and the nation’s economy became one of the fastest growing in post-colonial Africa. While personality clashes and jostling for influence cannot be discounted altogether for an era noted for its turbulence and the presence of powerful figures with independent bases for support, they should not to be overstated either. Indeed the fiercest protagonists, Mboya and Odinga, both Luo were also members of KANU. Kenyatta’s capitalist economic policies and pro-Western orientation provoked division within KANU. Kenya’s vice president, an ethnic Luo named Oginga Odinga, resigned from the government in 1966 and formed the Kenya People’s Union (KPU), which drew a great deal of Luo support away from KANU and presented the Kenyatta government with a challenge. In 1969 Tom Mboya, an influential Luo cabinet minister, was assassinated, resulting in a further loss of Luo support for the government. . Kenyatta surmounted these challenges through the use of state power: detaining opponents without trial, banning the KPU, and filling government positions with his supporters. At the root political factionalism during this period laid a society suffering from acute underdevelopment. Uneven development in Kenya as in other colonial formations, had historically corresponded to, and been intersected by, regional, ethnic and class factors Kenyatta made appeals for ethnic solidarity among Kikuyu, and many Kikuyu achieved influence and considerable wealth under his rule. However, the president resisted attempts by Kikuyu to remove his vice president, an ethnic Kalenjin named Daniel arap Moi, from the position of successor. The central province, populated mostly by Kikuyu, had continued its relatively fast level of development. This ensured that the kikuyu petty bourgeoisie, numerically the largest in the country, would be central to any postcolonial dispensation. But during the Emergency, political leadership of the nationalist movement had passed onto a petty bourgeois leadership that was predominantly Luo, the second largest nationality in Kenya, inhabiting a region that had significantly been penetrated by colonial capitalism, albeit in different forms. The same could not be said of the rift valley and coastal regions and peoples where colonial capitalism was less developed and their bourgeoisie were much smaller and more vulnerable at the national level. The Kalenjin people of the Rift Valley region, unlike the Luo, lived in close proximity to the so-called European highlands bordering their areas. The kalenjin feared the possibility that not only would the kikuyu override these claims, but they might also colonize their areas, especially now that there were tens of thousands of landless Kikuyu who were now agitating for land. The official anti-kikuyu propaganda of the Emergency and exploitation of the rural unrest of the unemployed Kikuyu ex-squatters in the Rift-Valley advanced by radical political leaders such as the young Mark Mwithaga in Nakuru and G.G Kariuki in Laikipia, only served to inflate these fears. Meanwhile the coastal people had developed fears of the economic domination by the ‘up-country peoples’ who already formed the bulk of the labour force. Underlying the broader regional cleavages, were local social, economic and political divisions which provided a basis for local factional leadership rivalries and future inter-ethnic and inter-regional political realignments. This underdeveloped state of the economy meant that independent Kenya would have to formulate policies that would not only arrest Kenya’s mounting urban and rural poverty and decay, but would also put the economy into the hands of indigenous people. One such policy was the Africanization of the Kenyan economy. The acquisition of independence itself in Kenya was itself the culmination of efforts at resolving the contradictions that had been raging in the colony as early as 1914.This contradictions revolved around the conflicting interests of Africans, Europeans and Asians in Kenya’s political economy. The Devonshire White paper of 1923 was a manifestation of early attempts made by metropolitan authorities to resolve these contradictions. But in the 1950’s a more tangible effort to resolve these contradictions was through agrarian reform policies that rendered the notion of a settler driven economy obsolete. Inevitably, these strategies necessitated the elevation of a new anchor for the country’s economy. According to William OChieng’, “independence did not only mean bringing vital decisions under the control of the indigenous bourgeoisie, it also enabled them to make important economic decisions which enhanced their economic standing” (2) The strategies instituted to break the heavy foreign dominance in the major sectors of Kenya’s economy such as agriculture, industry and trade were manifold. In the area of commerce and industry, the independent Kenya government invoked legislative measures in an effort to launch Africans into trade and commerce. Since the declaration of the East African Protectorate in 1895, the British imperial authorities had facilitated the penetration and entrenchment of Asian(Indian) merchant capital as stimulant to commodity production by African communities in Kenya(Fearn 1961). This afforded Asian capital a privileged status with the attendant implication that by the time Kenya attained independence in 1963, Asian commercial capital was poised to gain a hold on the country’s economy. In addition to legislation, efforts at the economic empowerment of Africans in Kenya were reflected through the proliferation of state credit institutions by which Africans could access capital. “Pre-eminent among these institutions was the Industrial Commercial Development Corporation (ICDC). Established in 1964, the ICDC presided over the Commercial Loans Revolving Fund through which Africans were facilitated in setting up micro-businesses. Between 1964 and 1972 more than 2,542 citizen traders received financial assistance worth 3.5 million pounds through this ICDC scheme, and between 1974 and 1975 total loans given out to 1,087 citizen traders and industrialists amounted to 2.7 million pounds. The other corporations and agencies which the state has used for resource and capital mobilization and the transfer of capital to Kenyan citizens include the various cooperative societies, the Kenya Industrial Estates (KIE) formerly a subsidiary of ICDC, the Development Finance Company of Kenya (DFCK), the Kenya Tea Development Authority (KTDA) and the Industrial Development Bank (IDB). The Kenyan citizen businessmen whom the government sought to establish within the capitalist mode of production were, on the whole, small retail traders, bar-owners, small transporters, builders, jua-kali manufacturers, hoteliers and the like”.(2) Apart from the foregoing strategies, the independent government of Kenya took requisite measures that attempted to align the operations of multinational commercial firms within the overall objectives of africanization. The Trade Licensing Act of 1967 limited the ability of multinational firms to dominate the economy. This was reflected in efforts to confine their commercial activities to the urban areas of Kenya. Indications that Kenya’s africanization efforts were having the desired effect were borne out by the fact that many multi-national companies described the competition in Kenyan wholesale trade as much greater than in most less developed countries they operated in. The consequence was that no single multinational held more than 10% of market share of wholesale trade in Kenya. Land transfers and Agricultural policies also had a great bearing on the nature of Kenya’s post independence economy. Kenya is primarily an agriculture country; as such agriculture was regarded right from independence as the crucial springboard of Kenya’s economic, social and industrial growth. Indeed, the majority of Kenya’s industrial establishments are primarily concerned with the processing of food and other agricultural products. But Kenya’s agricultural problems were acute at independence. As the land issue had been at the root of most of Kenya’s political troubles, it was necessary to find a solution to it the interest of stability and growth. Perhaps the most important set of single decisions underscoring the future of African agriculture in Kenya came in the 1950’s regarding African land and tenure and registration. These decisions were contained in the recommendations of the East African Royal Commission of 1953-1955, which deprecated the system of African communal land ownership and argued for individual title deeds, and also in the Swynerton plan of 1954, which argued that the reform of African land tenure was a prerequisite of agricultural development. Consolidation, enclosure and registration of title, it was argued, would make credit obtainable for improvements and enable progressive farmers acquire more land. Thus the Land Registration Ordinance of 1959 and the Registered Land Act of 1963 were enacted to achieve individualization of tenure among the African people. The above land laws and the de-racialization of the White Highlands in 1959 enabled the colonial government, under Governor Malcolm Macdonald and the post-colonial state, under Jomo Kenyatta, to effect a near revolution in land redistribution and in Kenya’s agricultural transformation in the period after 1960. For example through the Swynerton plan implementation the value of recorded output from small holdings rose from 5.2 million pounds in 1955 to 14.0 million pounds in 1964, coffee accounting for 55% of the increase. (Ogot.B.A and Ochieng.W.R: Decolonization and Independence in Kenya,) Elsewhere in the country then, the Kenya government pursued a vigorous policy of food production and food surplus for export. The 1960’s in particular, were characterized by the large proportion of public expenditure on the agricultural sector, particularly on land transfers and adjudication, research, veterinary services, training, livestock marketing, crop development, machinery and soil conservation services, which employed about 6,000 people .After independence the KANU government tackled the land issue and landlessness by a massive resettlement of African farmers on the previously European-owned firms. Funds were raised from the World Bank and the Colonial Development Corporation for the purchase of farms and their settlement of a low density to provide annual monetary incomes, in addition to subsistence and loan charges of 100 pounds and more. But a large number of farms were also transferred to Kenyan citizens as intact units, usually with financial assistance from public funds. Wealthy, indigenous Kenyans, including well known personalities in the public life, also bought farms directly from the departing Europeans, usually with loans from the land bank. “Colin Leys observes that by 1970 more than two-thirds of the old European mixed farms had been given to 50,000 African families. The remaining third, roughly 1 million acres, which were still in European hands, would mostly be purchased over the next decade” (3). All this agrarian changes and policies did a lot to transfer capital into the hands of indigenous farmers. In the period 1958-1968 the gross firm revenue of African smallholders in Kenya grew from a little under 8 million pounds to over 34 million, an increase of 420 per cent in a decade. The largest single growth in this growth was coffee production, ‘which was worth little over 1 million pounds in 1958, and nearly 8.5 million pounds nine years later. (Gavin Kitching: Class and Economic Change in Kenya). The process of decolonization in the 1950’s and 1960’s had tremendous effects on the stratification of the Kenyan society in terms of wealth and poverty. One of the major objectives of the Kenyatta government after independence was to remove inequalities inherited from the colonial period. Sessional paper number 10 of 1965 states as one of its objectives as follows: ‘the state has an obligation to ensure equal opportunities for all citizens, eliminate exploitation and discrimination, and provide needed social services such as education, medical care and social security’. Some of the inequalities came into being as a result of the uneven penetration of capitalism, a need for western influence into the country right from the onset of colonialism. Kenyan towns such as Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu and Nakuru, would also be centers of capital, industrial and commercial concentration. The vast areas of the Rift-Valley, Coast Province and North-Eastern Kenya were to lag behind in the development of labour, education and agriculture. It follows that at independence some parts of Kenya were highly economically developed and modern while others were still using the indigenous modes of production. While acknowledging the excellent progress which Kenya had achieved since independence, a World Bank report of 1975 identified unemployment, poverty and income distribution as the disappointing aspects of Kenya’s development story. ‘In many respects’ it said, ‘the performance of Kenya’s economy has been quite remarkable in comparison to most other African countries faced with similar problems. Only with respect to the growth of unemployment and its impact on the poverty of the lowest income group has Kenya’s performance been rather disappointing’ It was clear from both the ILO and the World Bank reports that the much advertised Africanization of jobs in the public sector and the transfer of farms and businesses to a few petty bourgeoisie and peasants in the first decade of independence had only amounted to the replacement of a few Europeans, but this did not fundamentally alter the structure of the former colonial economy. Kenya’s economy is still externally oriented, making it highly open and vulnerable to external factors. The country’s external trade has also been characterized by large balance of trade deficits as imports continue to exceed exports. If Kenya’s economic performance has been both distorted and inhibited by its structural relationship to international capital, poverty within a large segment of Kenyan society has also been aggravated by secondary factors-including landlessness, adverse climate and soil conditions in some parts of the country, lack of adequate or relevant education, low wages, high cost of consumer goods and unemployment. Another major focus of government policy and development planning after independence was education. “ Education lay at the heart of the independent government’s attempts to foster social change and promote development. Upon the achievement of internal self-government on 1 June 1963, the then Prime Minister Jomo Kenyatta identified three enemies-ignorance, sickness and poverty- to be overcome by an independent Kenya”(2). The prime minister and his government were under no illusions, as to the magnitude of the task before them. The nation needed to dramatically increase school enrollments in order to attain its development goals. Within one week of independence, therefore, the government appointed the Kenya Education Commission, under the chairmanship of Professor S.H.Ominde, to survey the country’s existing resources and advice the government on future strategy. After eight months the Ominde Comission, as it came to be known, produced part one of its report, dealing with broad questions of policy. The commission’s recommendations had a profound influence on national thinking on education. The Ominde commission endorsed free primary education as ‘a valid objective of educational policy’. The commission also stressed that the government’s efforts in primary education should be directed towards areas in which the percentage enrollment falls seriously below the national average. Most importantly, moreover the commission concluded that, given the new nation’s need for highly trained manpower too great an emphasis should not be put on primary education. To facilitate rapid economic development, secondary and higher education would have to receive highest priority. The commission also endorsed integration, with a single curriculum but different fee structures, for Kenya’s racially divided education system. The thinking of the commission was reflected in other government planning documents produced during the first years of independence. Seen in a broader social context, therefore, the education system merely reflected the dominant economic, political and social structures and social norms of the time. Since the education systems largely reproduce rather than alter the economic and social structures of the societies in which they exist, the decision to follow the capitalist, less egalitarian, path to development that marked the post independence years led inevitably to the continuation of a social structure based upon wealth, which was characterized by large gaps between the rich and the poor. The education system, shaped to meet the needs of the colonial elite, was, not surprisingly, largely continued as a most effective way of perpetuating the interests of the postcolonial and economic elite and expanding its numbers. As with education, improving healthcare was viewed as a priority by the independent government. The ‘new’ government’s first development plan covering the period 1965-1970 emphasized the need to improve health as an important pre-requisite for development. Specifically, the government aimed to increase the number of doctors while at the same time replacing expatriate physicians with Kenyans.(Kenya had 7.8 doctors per 100,000 population at independence). The first step would be to provide a medical school at the newly renamed Kenyatta National Hospital. In particular the government pointed towards the development of rural health centers. The expansion of healthcare facilities during the Kenyatta era represents one of the most successful social welfare initiatives of the period. Despite the fact that it was not always able to provide facilities to keep pace with population growth, that it came nowhere near providing a health centre for every 20,000 of the population by 1978, and there were only 9.5 doctors per 100,000 population in the latter year, most Kenyans had access to substantially improved healthcare facilities at the end of the Kenyatta presidency. CONCLUSION Traditionally, Kenya’s economy was based on farming, herding, hunting, and trade. With the establishment of colonial rule, however, Kenya was brought into the world capitalist economy. Under the British, Kenya developed an economy based on the export of agricultural products. The colonial government encouraged the settlement of European farmers in Kenya to provide a greater supply of exports. From World War I (1914-1918) through the mid-1950s, produce grown on settler farms and estates, such as coffee, sisal (a fiber used to make rope), and tea, dominated Kenya’s exports. Meanwhile, African households were encouraged to produce commodities for subsistence and for sale in local markets, and to work on European farms producing export crops. The process of decolonization in the 1950’s and 1960’s came along with policies that influenced and determined the path of Kenya’s post independence economy. It can be rightly argued that, the path that post-colonial economic development took in Kenya was greatly influenced by the events that unfolded between 1940 and 1963. The transformation of Kenya into ‘a developing nation’ was achieved through a much forceful infusion of the local economy with international capital. The Kenyan independent economy displayed characteristics of an under-developed economy at the periphery: the preponderance of foreign capital, the dominance of agriculture, the limited development of industry and heavy reliance on export of primary products and import of capital and manufactured consumer goods. Following independence in 1963, the country largely retained the salient features that had typified the colonial political economy since the 1950’s. This approach remained so despite the deliberate institution of new policies whose thrust was towards greater Africanization and localization of the economy. The policies undertaken in agriculture and land transfers, industry, education, and even health merely reflected the dominant economic and social structures of the Kenyan society .The decision to follow the capitalist, less egalitarian, path to development that marked the post independence years led inevitably to the continuation a social structure based upon wealth, which was characterized by large gaps between the rich and the poor. END NOTES 1) Africa since 1875 by Robin Harlet: page 571 2) Decolonization and African Independence a book edited by B.A Ogot and Ochieng.W.R: page69, 86-87 & page 90. 3) Class and Economic Change in Kenya by Colin Leys: page 136. BIBLIOGRAPHY Carter G.M. and P .O’ mera. (1985).African Independence: The first 25 years. Bloomington: Indiana University Press Collin,L.(1980) Class and Economic Change in Kenya,New Haven: Yale University Press. Gifford.P.and W.M Roger. (1988). Decolonization and African Independence, New Haven: Yale University Press. Kitching G. (1980).Class and Economic Changes in Kenya. Yale: University Press. Ogot.B.A and W.R Ochieng. (Eds) (1995).Decolonization and Independence in Kenya: Nairobi, East African Education Publishers