The failed Africanization of commerce and industry in Kenya

Abstract In the 1970s, a number of authors challenged the dependency perspective with respect to Kenya. They maintained that a viable domestic capital class, nurtured by state sponsorship, had emerged since independence. This article questions the revisionist interpretation of state-business relations in Kenya. Kenya does possess a dynamic entrepreneurial sector, led mainly by Kenyan Indians. Government efforts to aid African entrepreneurs, or to establish a vigorous state capitalist sector, have been ineffective. This is evident from surveys of the state enterprise sector, private manufacturing and commerce. Revisionist authors tended to overestimate the capacity of Kenyan state agencies to implement policy goals, and they neglected the political context of Africanization as an instrument of ethnic patronage for state leaders.