‘Donor-driven’ neoliberal reform processes and urban environmental change in Kenya

Abstract

In this article, I heed the call by some scholars to focus on ‘actually existing neoliberalism to better understand how neoliberal processes play out in particular places and times. Through the lenses of urban political ecology, I explore the environmental impacts in Kenya of what I term ‘donor-driven’ neoliberal reform processes using the 1990’s privatization of Karura Forest in Nairobi as an entry point. My findings suggest that the regime of former President Moi improperly privatized more than half of Karura Forest to raise funds to support his re-election in 1997. The regime creatively used neoliberal discourses of privatization and private property rights to mask an illegal transfer of a key urban public forest to private interests. I argue that this transfer suggests that, in a context where Western donors largely dictated neoliberal reform in Kenya, the donors’ failure to anticipate how local political dynamics might complicate reform implementation, combined with their contradictory neoliberal policy agendas for the country, played in the hands of a regime whose survival depended on its ability to maintain patronage networks.