INTRODUCING RACE AS A VARIABLE INTO THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF KENYA DEBATE: AN INCENDIARY IDEA

Abstract

The debate on the nature and development potential of 'indigenous' capitalism in Kenya seemed to have petered off indecisively in the 1980s. At that time some form of socialism was still an option for some of the debaters. Following the seemingly-global acceptance of free-enterprise as the developmental model of choice, however, the Kenya debate has been resurrected but in a different intellectual guise. In line with the revival (especially in the United States) of culture and ethnicity as determinants of economic prosperity, some non-Kenyan authors have faulted the 1980s literature for leaving out Kenyan-Asian capitalists, the principal protagonists of local entrepreneurship, who, it is argued accounted for Kenya's outstanding development performance in the high-growth years before independence in 1963, and the onset of economic regress under the Moi government in the early 1 980s, by dint of their industry and cultural heritage. Without giving in to the undeserved Asian-bashing which this thesis has provoked in some Kenya-African political circles, this article provides evidence that credit for Kenya's economic achievements is more widespread and more race neutral. So is credit for the corruption and crass mismanagement that has characterized the Moi years. Considering the low intellectual pay-off and the high political dangers inherent in careless introduction of race and culture as operating variables to explain growi, the article advocates greater attention to analytical concepts that show more promise in accounting for inter-ethnic differences in material prosperity. These include law-based governance, a stable macroeconomic environment, and the strengthening of'social capital' at community level. THE DEBATE ON whether indigenous capitalism in Kenya could underwrite the economic transformation of the country, with or without the support of international capital, was all rage in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Michael Chege, a Kenyan, is Director of the Center for African Studies, University of Florida Gainesville, Florida USA. He previously worked with the Ford Foundation in Eastern and Southern Africa. 1. See the chapters by Michael Cowen, Colin Leys, Raphie Kaplinsky, and John Henley in Martm Fransman (ed.), Industty and Accumulation in Africa (Heinemann, London, 1982), pp. 142-231; the contributions on agrarian capitalism in Kenya by Peter Anyang' Nyong'o, Michael Cowen, Shadrack Gutto, Apollo Njonjo and Mukaru Nganga in Review of African Political Economy, 20 (1981); and Bjorn Beckrnan, 'Imperialism and Capitalist Transformation: critique of a Kenya debate', Review of African Political Economy, 19 (1980). Revisiting the debate ten years on, Colin Leys makes the case for giving more attention to the political calculations of African capitalists in 'Learning from the Kenya Debate', in David E. Apter and Carl G. Rosberg (eds.), Political Development and the New Realism in Sub-Saharan Africa (University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, 1994), pp. 220-43.