Editorial

Kenya ranks amongst the 10 most unequal countries in the world and the fifth in Africa, and the gap between the richest and the poorest citizens widening.

Kenya ranks amongst the most unequal countries in the world and the fifth in Africa. What this means is that in Kenya the gap between the richest and the poorest citizens is wide.

Inequality is not a recent phenomenon in Kenya. As early as in 1972 an Employment, Incomes and Equality report by International Labour Office in Geneva stated the following:

“Since independence, economic growth has largely continued on the lines set by the earlier colonial structure. Kenyanisation has radically changed the racial composition of the group of people in the center of power and many of its policies, but has had only a limited effect on the mechanisms which maintain its dominance – the pattern of government income and expenditure, the freedom of foreign firms to locate their offices and plants in Nairobi, and the narrow stratum of expenditure by a high-income elite superimposed on a base of limited mass consumption.

Indeed, the power of the center over the periphery may well be greater today than it was before, since there is now a closer correlation of interests between the urban elite, the owners of large farms and the larger foreign-owned companies”.

Today inequality remains a fact in Kenya and is one of the main challenges to confront. As the Inequality study carried out by SID in 2004 documented 10% of the richest households in Kenya are controlling more than 42% of the total income.

In an interview with Partner News, Minister for National Planning Hon. Anyang Nyong’o, brings a thought-provoking dimension by saying ‘I don’t remember anywhere in history where capitalism has developed without inequalities.”

The perception of Kenya being a capitalist country has to date collided with the idea of redistribution between the rich and poor. Yet, without a more equal distribution of basic resources of life; land, water, income, education among others the increase in poverty is likely to raise beyond the current 60% of the population.

What is beyond doubt is that the issue of inequality matters in its own right. As the Swedish Ambassador to Kenya, Bo Görranson, writes in this issue, inequality is “not only an injustice; it is also detrimental to economic and social development.”

This issue of Partner News explores how Kenyans experience inequality in their everyday lives. And it also conveys the voices of those who see and suggest avenues for change.