No More English than the Postal System: The Kenya Boy Scout Movement and the Transfer of Power

Abstract

Decolonization in Kenya meant more than the transfer of political power: the end of colonial rule was part of a larger social transformation, where Africans struggled to master and adapt the political and social institutions they inherited from Britain. The attempt by the Kenya Boy Scout movement to successfully navigate the period from 1959 to 1964, when colonial officials, nationalist political leaders, and the common people alike negotiated the meaning of independence, exposes the social tensions inherent in this process. The "Africanization" of Kenyan scouting embodied larger debates—over political economy, education, race relations, and juvenile delinquency—that made this a particularly turbulent period in Kenyan history.