A Critical Assessment of Kenya’s Poverty Alleviation Approaches- Towards an African Jurisprudential Perspective

Abstract

Historically, Kenya’s development agenda has directed immense resources towards mitigating poverty. This is equally true of contemporary development plans such as the Kenya Vision 2030 or its most recent enunciation under the Big Four Agenda. Yet, as of the 2019 Census and other reports, the poverty incidence continues to escalate with millions of Kenyans still in extreme poverty. This study uses the examples of select government policy documents and periodic reports on poverty and poverty alleviation to, firstly, critically interrogate the successes and failures of the Kenyan government’s historical and contemporary approaches to poverty alleviation and, secondly, investigate the extent to which they resonate with the lived realities of Kenyans as exemplified in their African Ontology and Philosophy of law perspectives. The study argues that there is a disconnect between policy, related legal and institutional frameworks on poverty alleviation and the actual lived realities of Kenyans. These realties are encapsulated in the underlying socio-economic, political and cultural dispositions of the varied Kenyan communities which constitute their customary law and norms, and can generally be summed up as including the place of community; notions of wealth, poverty, justice and equality; individuality, personhood and the concept of human rights; collegiality; participation and representation etc. To establish the disconnect, we investigate the extent of the incorporation of these perspectives in policy and legal responses to poverty alleviation. The study first identifies the broad policy initiatives, then classifies them into three distinct categories, namely Classical Approaches; Social Approaches and Contemporary approaches, based on Duncan Kennedy’s periodization in the Three Globalizations of Law and Legal Thought. To identify the root cause of the disconnect and place it within its proper context, the study equally investigates, firstly, the extent to which the approaches were influenced by the Three Globalizations of Law and Legal Thought and Policy Transfer and Diffusion, and secondly, assesses their policy frameworks critically using analytical tools borrowed from Wanjiku Kabira and Masheti Masinjila’s ABC of Gender Analysis, and by way of a review of the Kenya government’s periodic reports since 1963 on its policy initiatives and their failures or successes in addressing poverty and poverty alleviation. The study concludes that persistent poverty in Kenya is partly attributable to the historical disregard of the lived realities of Kenyans in the formulation, consideration, adoption and application of policy and related legal and institutional frameworks on poverty and poverty alleviation. Hence, it notes, that while policy prescriptions and the enabling legal and institutional frameworks look magnificent on paper, they have continually failed to connect to the actual lived realities in Kenya. From this assessment, we make a case for the utility of the African Ontology and Philosophy of law as a potential bridge for connecting law in the books and law in action in relation to poverty alleviation in Kenya. Using a mixed methodological approach, the study relies on Critical Legal Studies, Socio-legal theory and African Legal Theory to demonstrate, that for poverty alleviation, the contestation between the African and the received Western conception of law, development and social justice account for the gap between law in the books and law in action. Case law affirms that indeed this disconnect is the result of a persistent clash between African Philosophy and Western legal and policy influences. The study thus concludes by typologizing an African Philosophy of law perspective to law and development for poverty alleviation in Kenya. We propose the conception of a hybrid approach to poverty alleviation which incorporates African Ontology and Philosophy of law perspectives by conferring legal validity to some cross-cutting African customs and cultural practices to bridge the apparent disconnect.