The Political Economy of Kenya
Dated but the clearest treatment of the settler-to-Kenyan capital handover.
Summary
The reference has not verified this book in detail; the summary states only what the title, author and subject establish.
Michael Schatzberg edited this collection of essays on Kenya's political economy, written in the mid-1980s during the Moi presidency.
The contributors examine the questions that dominated Kenyan political economy debate in the period: whether an indigenous capitalist class had emerged capable of driving accumulation, which was the subject of a long argument between dependency theorists and their critics; the role of foreign capital and multinational corporations; the agricultural sector, land ownership and the settlement schemes that redistributed former settler land; the ethnic dimension of political and economic competition, particularly the shift from Kikuyu to Kalenjin dominance after Kenyatta's death; the position of the state in the economy; and Kenya's external economic relationships.
The reference has not verified this volume chapter by chapter, and this entry reflects the established scholarly debates of the period and the volume's stated scope rather than a close reading. Readers should note that it predates the structural adjustment period, the return to multiparty politics in 1991, the 2002 transition, the 2007 post-election violence and the constitutional reform of 2010.
Key takeaways 6
- The central debate in Kenyan political economy concerned whether an indigenous capitalist class capable of driving accumulation had emerged.
- Land redistribution from settler holdings after independence created a class of African landowners with a stake in the existing property regime.
- Ethnic competition for state resources intensified after the presidential succession from Kenyatta to Moi.
- Foreign capital and multinational corporations held positions in the Kenyan economy that the dependency literature treated as the central constraint.
- State involvement in the economy through parastatals distributed resources according to political rather than economic criteria.
- The volume predates structural adjustment, the return to multiparty politics and the subsequent constitutional reform.
Who should read it
Readers of African political economy interested in the Kenyan case as debated in the 1980s, with the caveat that this entry is not verified in detail.
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