Tag Archives: wealth

Since the 2007 election debacle, pervasive hunger has continued to grow in Kenya, while China and the United States promote and backstop the power of leaders who do not care enough

Posted on by
Reply

The population of Kenya has grown roughly 25% since my year “promoting democracy” in 2007-08, from around 40 million to around 50 million. These are loose numbers because they do not reflect anything that is of the highest priority for Kenya’s leaders (and thus those outsiders who promote and underwrite Kenya’s leaders).

Kenya is to conduct a census this year, but the process is politically contentious and corruption makes it hard to carry off undertakings of this nature (another area where the United States seems to be moving toward convergence with Kenya recently). And there is always a new gambit, like “Huduma Namba” that comes along, with the help of Kenya’s politically-connected corporates and foreign corporate foundations, to get in the way of the core functions of the Government of Kenya, like conducting the census.

Unfortunately, although the size of the economy has continued to grow hunger has increased and Kenya remains a “middle income” country where the majority of citizens are inadequately fed. Agricultural performance has actually declined rather than merely grown at an insufficient pace as experienced in many other sectors.

Please take time to read this report from the Daily Nation’ Newsplex: “Poor planning and inaction to blame for food insecurity” There are a lot of important facts and figures, but here is a key summary of where things stand:

But despite the decline in the undernourishment rate, which is, however, higher than Africa’s 20 percent, the prevalence of severely food-insecure Kenyans jumped four percentage-points from 32 percent in 2014 to 36 percent in 2017, resulting in Kenya’s ranking as the eighth-worst on the indicator globally.

Yes, Kenya continues to have a problem with employment as a whole and the failure of the various power generation schemes over the years has been one factor for Kenya’s reliance on imports rather than it’s own manufacturing. But the decline of agriculture is the more immediate and inexcusable problem–and would be much easier to address if it were prioritized–as opposed to yet another questionable power generation scheme.

“Kenya: The Economic Stake of the Kenyatta Family; The Royal Family Jewels” – that CIA report after Jomo’s passing

Posted on by
Reply

 

The CIA Africa Review for September 1978 at pages 12-18 covers “The Economic Stake of the Kenyatta Family”. I have embedded it below for downloading in its recently declassified form from the CIA CREST database at the Agency online FOIA reading room. This report is related to the story in The Standard noted in my post “Standard covers newly declassified CIA report on Kenyatta family wealth acquisition during Jomo’s rule”.  I thought you should read it in full for yourself:

1 Sept 78 Kenyatta wealth – The Royal Family Jewels

The report discusses the acquisition of vast acreage, in significant part grabbed through control of British funding for the buyout of former colonists, along with stakes in large Western companies in Kenya such as Lonrho and Ford Motor Company, along with mines and other enterprises. It also says that Mama Ngina and Sister Margaret were at the time probably the largest traders in charcoal and illicit ivory.

The CIA observed that Kenya appeared to be headed to balance of payments problems which would necessitate austerity measures which could trigger political instability. Resentment was already high about the cost of the Kenyatta family’s self-dealing. The risk was exacerbated by the desire of the incoming Moi faction to deal themselves in.