Kenya: Strategies for Development

The Kenyan economy cannot be viewed in isolation either from its own past or from the world economy. The past determines not only where it is today, in terms of distribution of industry, employment, technology, trade, resources of manpower, etc., but also the possibility of exercising policy options. Economists tend to regard policy as the autonomous factor to be manipulated by eager, rational decision-makers in the pursuit of declared objectives. Policies too are part of the fabric of social struggle, and are the outcome as well as, in turn, a cause of historical developments. While its history limits and in large part determines current and future possibilities, this history itself is largely conditioned by the impact of events outside Kenya or Kenyan control, what is often termed ‘the world system’. Current options are likewise limited by this system. The following chapter aims to emphasise this perspective, so that the current situation may be viewed as a link which simultaneously is part of and joins two chains, one chain to the past, another to the world system. Two questions, which underlie most of the discussion here, are thereby raised. First, in what direction do the chains lead? Secondly, how determined is the system; to what extent do decision-makers today have any freedom of choice?1