“AFRICAN SOCIALISM AND ITS APPLICATION TO PLANNING IN KENYA” - Then…and now?

The following excerpts are taken from the government’s Sessional Paper Number 10, published in 1965 and co-authored by Mwai Kibaki.

Statement by the President:
Since attainment of our Independence just over eighteen months ago, the Government has been deciding the measures that will ensure rapid economic development and social progress for all our citizens…
All along the Government has been guided in its approach to developmental matters by the declarations contained in the KANU Manifesto. In this we declared that our country would develop on the basis of the concepts and philosophy of Democratic African Socialism. We rejected both Western Capitalism and Eastern Communism and chose for ourselves a policy of positive nonalignment. Read the story »

Decades of Development…or Decay? - James Kibera

Kenya at the Crossroads Again
I received today my very own copy of African Socialism and its Application to Planning in Kenya (sometimes referred to as Sessional Paper Number 10). No 10 was obtained at the princely sum of 55 shillings, up from 50 shillings, and the day passed quickly reading it and other little gems from that time frame. One of the relevant articles was a critique, written by Barak H Obama senior, of that Sessional Paper. Obama really tore into not only the content of the paper but the ideology of its authors. Both of the papers in question were written in 1965, and the absorbing thing about the ideas and writing of that time is how relevant they are today. The depressing thing is that not only have we moved more in a circle than a straight line over the past four decades, we have probably in some ways decayed instead of developed…. Read the story »

Problems Facing Our Socialism - Barak H. Obama

The following critique, originally published in the East Africa Journal in 1965, was written by Barak H. Obama, father of the current US Democratic frontrunner, in response to the Kenyan government’s ‘Sessional Paper No. 10,’ which had been published earlier that year. The author of the Sessional Paper was Mwai Kibaki. Obama senior was working on his doctorate in economics at the time.

Since many of the African countries achieved their independence there has been much to talk about African Socialism. More over, there has been no individual or country which has at any time defined this socialism, nor has there been any common ground among the leaders as to what they meant when they talked of African Socialism. Read the story »