Regional disparities in economic development : the Kenyan experience

Abstract

This is a country study. Our concern is with regional disparities in economic development of Kenya. The study attempts to delineate the trends of regional inequalities l« among Kenya's eight regions. This is done by examining the available data since independence. Hence, the study covers a twenty year period (1963-1983). Five variables have been chosen for this analysis. These are land, agriculture, urbanization, industrial production and social services i.e. education and health. Chapter I is introductory in that it prasents a general geographical overview of Kenya. This includes a discussion of the physical features such as climate, vegetation and topography, and how the latter three have influenced the country's demographic distributions. Chapter II analyses the regions of Kenya i.e. how they were formed, the people inhabiting them, their distribution and densities. The chapter also examines the types of land available in terms of its quality classification and how such lands are distributed regionally. Land distribution on the basis of tenure is discussed in Chapter III. Three systems of tenure are examined. These * The terms "regions" and Provinces are used inter- -changeably throughout the study.

are government lands, freehold lands and trust lands. Our purpose here, is mainly to try to show how these three categories came to evolve and the economic impact these systems of tenure may have had on the lives of the Kenyan people. Chapter III also discusses the process of land reforms in Kenya. This is done at two levels, namely, land registration and land settlement· schemes. In Chapter IV, we extend our discusoion of land to include land utilization as a prelude to the pattern of agriculture in Kenya. This is done sequentially by first analysing small farm production. Then, we move to discuss large-farm production before combining small and large-farms together. Thereafter, we juxtapose livestock production on the latter t\O in order to present a general pattern of the agricultural sector as a whole. Urbanization is discussed in Chapter V. Our approach in this section is basically normative. We have avoided indulging in unnecessary polemics about the development of urban primacy and instead have only given the data to show that urbanization is accelerating rapidly in Kenya. But by doing so, the idea has been to show the dwindling nature of traditional societies as a result of demographic adjustments caused by rural-urban population drift. The industrial sector is discussed in Chapter VI where we examine the development policies from the first to the fourth plans. Our aim in this chapter is basically to reveal