This book explores the key milestones in education, gender, and policy that Kenya has achieved since independence, the challenges of this experience, and the future prospects. This edited collection of chapters also aims to illuminate the lessons learned from the experiences of the postcolonial period as well as postulate on the way forward. Through this exploration of the Kenyan experience since independence, the authors present an optimistic view that despite the many obstacles and challenges, the country still has promising prospects as a nation.
This book explores the journey that Kenya has travelled as a nation since its independence on December 12, 1963. It seeks to advance understanding of the country's major milestones in the postcolonial period, the challenges and the lessons that can be learned from this experience, and the future prospects.
"This book documents important milestones in the epic journey traversed by the Central Bank of Kenya over the last 50 years, putting into perspective the evolution of central banking globally and within the East African region, and contemplating future prospects and challenges. The book is timely, mainly because the global financial landscape has shifted. Central bankers have expanded their mandates, beyond the singular focus on inflation and consider economic growth as their other important objective. Financial crises have continued to disrupt the functioning of financial institutions and markets, the most devastating episodes being the global financial crisis, which broke out in 2008 and from which the global financial system has not fully recovered, and the unprecedented challenges posed by the global coronavirus pandemic. Bank regulation has moved from Basel I, to Basel II, and somehow migrated to Basel III, although some countries are still at the cross-roads. The book originated from the wide ranging discussions on central banking, from a symposium to celebrate the 50 year anniversary on 13 September 2016 in Nairobi. The participants at the symposium included current and former central bank governors from Kenya and the Eastern Africa region, high level officials from multilateral financial institutions, policy makers, bank executives, civil society actors, researchers and students. The book is an invaluable resource for policy makers, practitioners and researchers, on how monetary policy and financial practices in vogue today in Kenya have evolved through time and worked very well, but also about some pitfalls"--
This book explores the journey that Kenya has travelled as a nation since its independence on December 12, 1963. It seeks to advance understanding of the country's major milestones in the postcolonial period, the challenges and the lessons that can be learned from this experience, and the future prospects.
This is the most interesting general Kenyan social history that I have had the pleasure to read for many years. It fills a large gap in the colonial history of Kenyan women as they negotiated changes in the most domestic areas of their experience. - John Lonsdale, Trinity College, Cambridge
Since independence from Great Britain in 1963, Kenya has survived five decades as a functioning nation-state, holding regular elections; its borders and political system intact and avoiding open war with its neighbours and military rule internally. It has been a favoured site for Western aid, trade, investment and tourism and has remained a close security partner for Western governments. However, Kenya's successive governments have failed to achieve adequate living conditions for most of its citizens; violence, corruption and tribalism have been ever-present, and its politics have failed to transcend its history. The decisions of the early years of independence and the acts of its leaders in the decades since have changed the country's path in unpredictable ways, but key themes of conflicts remain: over land, money, power, economic policy, national autonomy and the distribution of resources between classes and communities.While the country's political institutions have remained stable, the nation has changed, its population increasing nearly five-fold in five decades. But the economic and political elite's struggle for state resources and the exploitation of ethnicity for political purposes still threaten the country's existence. Today, Kenyans are arguing over many of the issues that divided them 50 years ago. The new constitution promulgated in 2010 provides an opportunity for national renewal, but it must confront a heavy legacy of history. This book reveals that history.
On December 12, 1963, people across Kenya joyfully celebrated independence from British colonial rule, anticipating a bright future of prosperity and social justice. As the nation approaches the fiftieth anniversary of its independence, however, the people's dream remains elusive. During its first five decades Kenya has experienced assassinations, riots, coup attempts, ethnic violence, and political corruption. The ranks of the disaffected, the unemployed, and the poor have multiplied. In this authoritative and insightful account of Kenya's history from 1963 to the present day, Daniel Branch sheds new light on the nation's struggles and the complicated causes behind them.Branch describes how Kenya constructed itself as a state and how ethnicity has proved a powerful force in national politics from the start, as have disorder and violence. He explores such divisive political issues as the needs of the landless poor, international relations with Britain and with the Cold War superpowers, and the direction of economic development. Tracing an escalation of government corruption over time, the author brings his discussion to the present, paying particular attention to the rigged election of 2007, the subsequent compromise government, and Kenya's prospects as a still-evolving independent state.
In sub-Saharan Africa, older people make up a relatively small fraction of the total population and are supported primarily by family and other kinship networks. They have traditionally been viewed as repositories of information and wisdom, and are critical pillars of the community but as the HIV/AIDS pandemic destroys family systems, the elderly increasingly have to deal with the loss of their own support while absorbing the additional responsibilities of caring for their orphaned grandchildren. Aging in Sub-Saharan Africa explores ways to promote U.S. research interests and to augment the sub-Saharan governments' capacity to address the many challenges posed by population aging. Five major themes are explored in the book such as the need for a basic definition of "older person," the need for national governments to invest more in basic research and the coordination of data collection across countries, and the need for improved dialogue between local researchers and policy makers. This book makes three major recommendations: 1) the development of a research agenda 2) enhancing research opportunity and implementation and 3) the translation of research findings.
