Good pre-election Kenya report from Carnegie Endowment

Saskia Brechenmacher and Nanjira Sambuli have released an excellent pre-election report for the Carnegie Endowment’s Pivotal Elections in Africa series produced jointly by Carnegie’s Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program and Africa Program.

Moreover, as other analysts have noted, a recurring pattern of dealmaking between political insiders also serves to protect the economic and political power of a narrow elite class, while undermining more meaningful forms of political accountability. Politicians have incentives to mobilize voters to secure their place in elite bargains; yet once those bargains are struck, the needs of communities tend to fall by the wayside at the expense of elite interests. This pattern helps explain why inequality in the country has spiraled: according to Oxfam, “the number of super-rich in Kenya is one of the fastest growing in the world,” with “less than 0.1 [percent] of the population . . . own[ing] more wealth than the bottom 99.9 [percent].”

“The Specter of Politics as Usual in Kenya”

What do you think?

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.