The Development of a Local Machinery Industry in Kenya

Abstract

There is a little-known machinery-producing sector in Kenya that not only continues to survive but even to prosper, at least in pockets, albeit not impervious to the enumerable constraints which dog the local market. The success stories are few, however. It would indeed be surprising if this were otherwise, considering the nature of the overall economy, since industrialisation is constrained not only by the obvious limits of domestic demand, but also by the official preference given to the development of traditional exports, which has meant that the intensity of the industrialisation drive has been weakened by progressive reliance on the foreign-exchange earnings of cash crops.1 This increasing dependence is ironic in view of the fact that the stimulus for this kind of industrialisation is often precisely to diversify the economy away from the reliance on traditional primary exports.2