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On Improving the Lot of the Poorest: Economic Plans in Kenya
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 May 2014
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The goal of improving the economic lot of the poorest (the “worst-off”) has become important both in public discussions of the Third World development and in technical discussions among economists. In this essay, I shall focus upon the difficulties of implementing such concerns as they are expressed in two major documents on the economy of Kenya. The first of the two was prepared by the International Labour Office and financed by the United Nations Development Programme (and will henceforth be called the ILO/UNDP Report): ILO/UNDP, Employment, Incomes and Equality (Geneva: ILO, 1972). The second study was prepared by the World Bank as part of its series of country economic reports (and will henceforth be called the World Bank Report): International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Kenya: Into the Second Decade (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press for the World Bank, 1975). That the two reports largely agree on formulation of goals is evidenced by the following lines from the World Bank's 1975 report:
The strategy proposed by this report calls for a relative shift in resource allocation to programs designed to increase production among the mass of small scale enterprises, particularly small scale farmers and African businesses found in the informal sector. … In particular, we feel that this is the only practicable method of dealing with Kenya's two troublesome problems—unemployment and rural poverty—in the foreseeable future. … This report has therefore endorsed the recommendations of other recent Bank reports, as well as [the] ILO/UNDP report, that a larger share of resources be allocated to present and proposed programs to assist small scale African farmers and businessmen.
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- Copyright © African Studies Association 1978
References
NOTES
1. An example of the public discussion is Haq, Mahbub ul, The Poverty Curtain: Choices for the Third World (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976)Google Scholar. Technical discussion is summarized in Economic Justice, edited by Phelps, E. S. (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1973)Google Scholar. The philosophical stimulus has been Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971)Google Scholar.
2. World Bank Report, page 326.
3. These data are given in detail in the WB report, page 53, Table 3, which reports a different total on page 52, Table 1.
4. WB Report, page 262; ILO/UNDP Report, pages 172-173.
5. See Leys, C, Underdevelopment in Kenya, University of California Press, 1974, pp. 28–40 Google Scholar; Brett, E. A., Colonialism and Underdevelopment in East Africa, Nok Publishers, N.Y., 1973, pp. 171–185 Google Scholar.
6. For indirect evidence, see ILO/UNDP, pp. 166-167. See also C. Leys (op. cit.), pp. 85-98.
7. Scott, MacArthur, and Newbery, , Project Appraisal in Practice, London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1976, pp. 348–52Google Scholar.
8. (Cf. Ch. Asp, “Social Classes and the Government in Kenya,” Working Paper No. 3, World Enployment Programme Research, ILO, Geneva, 12/75). They do not see that such a Draconian program is needed.
9. On the background, see C. Leys (op. cit.), pp. 28-33.
10. East Africa Royal Commission 1953-1955 Report, Cmd 9475, attacks the exclusiveness on economic grounds, pp. 190-198.
11. On the inequality, cf. survey data quoted in Elliott, , Patterns of Poverty in the Third World, New York: Praeger, 1975, pp. 19-31 and 101–109 Google Scholar.
12. For this history, see Sorrenson, M. P. K., Origins of European Settlement in Kenya (Oxford University Press, Nairobi, 1968)Google Scholar.
13. East Africa Royal Commission, 1953-1955 (op. cit), Chapter 20, and maps included in the Report. It is remarked there that the Masai area called “Trans-Mara” has good rainfall, but that surely does not include the bulk of Narok District.