Ideas
Populism and the Global South
14 min read.In a major analysis of current developments at the level of the world and multinational market of late capitalism, Esteban Mora grapples with the phenomenon of so called ‘right wing populism’ not only in the West, but in Third World regions as well. He asks if Africa’s decades of trauma now confront metropolitan and central capitalist countries, as the road where they are heading.

The origins and formation of ‘right-wing populism’ from the point of view of Marxist economics and their impact of these processes for Africa must be understood from observing the world market from an internationalist and multinational point of view.
The policies of ‘right-wing populist’ movements come from the big multinational financial and productive capitals, not from the local national bourgeoisie. This big financial and productive capital has as a goal the elimination of the fragmentation to the concentration and centralization of value, which is being caused by multinational production itself, at least as it has been functioning until now.
In addition, the international bourgeoisie has an understanding of East Asia’s economic ascension, right wing populists see these regions advance in the multinational market (where East Asia is now the centre of industrial production on the planet), as a result of the intervention of the state in the economy. It is from this characterization (and these goals) that they define themselves as ‘nationalists’ or ‘anti-globalists’, but always within the frame of multinational capital and competition.
Let me illustrate this with a couple of examples.
Both Hungary and Poland, or even Austria, have intensified the economic activity of their sovereign wealth funds or equivalent funds, for the investment of state capitals within their economies. In the same way, Hungary and Poland are characterised by the nationalization of certain companies and assets, and by the great support of the state through state and public subsidies (coming mainly from the structural funds of the European Union, which are composed of state and public European budgets) to subsidize multinational companies and their operations within their countries, as well as social spending in general.
That means it is simply inaccurate to argue that they are ‘protectionists’ or ‘nationalists’ in the classic sense of the 20th century.
So, the convergence of the Viktor Mihály Orbán government in Hungary or the Polish government with certain multinationals is as great as any other globalised economy, but it is focused on state interventionism. It is worth restating the point. These governments see East Asia’s success and the ability to now compete at the multinational level as almost entirely due to their state-led or state-oriented support or intervention. Therefore, these ‘populist’ governments promote this economic perspective to prevent the fragmentation of concentrated and centralised capital.
It is also important to stress that multinationals arriving in different regions and countries, are producing growth and the development of mainly small and medium industrial enterprises. So, in East Asia the overwhelming majority of industrial companies are small and medium sized, instead of factory-scale, and they are vertically integrated through outsourcing or portfolio investment, which means part of the profits stays within those companies and is not automatically ‘repatriated’ to the multinational, in turn this benefits the host country and companies, and creates the possibility that the Asian Tigers, China or India, or even Turkey, Israel or South Africa, of developing multinationals themselves.
Trumps Tariffs and Brexit
Another example comes from Brexit and the trade war between United States and China, provoked by Donald Trump’s tariffs. None of these policies make the slightest economic sense for either the internal markets of England or the United States. The first ones to oppose and criticize Brexit or US commercial tariffs have been precisely the local big, medium and small bourgeois from those countries, for which inputs, raw materials and means of production, as well as exports, are all affected.
While multinational capitals who can produce anywhere in the world remain largely ‘immune’ from these policies. When production was located inside the nation-state, protectionism made sense, but with the internationalisation of the division of labour and multinationals, it can only affect the internal markets and not the companies with production sites all over the world.
Let’s look at these processes in a little more detail. Through tariffs (and Brexit, hard or soft, will produce tariffs for trade between England and the European Union) multinationals accomplish the deterioration of the conditions of production for their respective competitors and at the same time promote the movement of multinational production to regions more favorable to their interests.
This ‘movement’ of multinational production could stop the ‘spill over’ of productivity, knowledge and profits to those centres or possible centres of world production (for example, against China’s growth, in the case of the US trade war). So, we see in this process a way of preventing the fragmentation and competition at the level of the world market. From this follows that American multinationals are moving their productions sites from China to Vietnam or Malaysia, for example.
Again, it has to be stated that it is impossible to understand these policies (both Brexit or American tariffs) without appreciating that they come in part from multinational capital, as a form of intervention in the multinational market, not at the level of nation-states, but at the international and multinational level.
I would argue that we are seeing a shift from commercial freedom characteristic of the World Trade Organization, for example, and the extensive phase of the internationalisation of the division of labour in late capitalism to an intensive phase based on the intervention of the state at the level of the world market. From this follows the resurgence of the state by ‘right-wing populism’, as economic intervention increases the role of the state as a centre or point of concentration of power (which has come to be known as ‘neo-fascism’).
Contradictions, questions and solutions
As I have already argued, the world centre for industrial and high-tech production (in East Asia), is not composed of factory-scale companies or processes, but of small and medium sized companies. In the same vein, the biggest component in intra-regional trade in East Asia, as the industrial centre of the world, is not based on finished products, but intermediate parts and components, which come and go from Vietnam to Malaysia, or from South Korea to China, etc. On top of this, it is the state and sovereign wealth funds, for example, which allow this concentration of power to take place. From Singapore to Vietnam, each has working mutual funds or wealth funds of different types, and they all have intensified their involvement in the economy in recent years.
All bourgeoisie economic analysis and research on the multinational market from recent years is questioning neoliberal policies, and describing not without surprise, the incredible performance of economies and multinationals where countries have state-led types of policies for their own multinationals (subsidies, trade barriers, lower interest rates, etc), like India or China, and how this seems to be working much better than Western non-interventionism for the growth and rise of those countries. This change in perspective is a change in bourgeoisie consciousness, in the face of the incredible ascension of Asia as a real competitor, and the possibility of reproducing the same success in the West through the same state-oriented policies (from which wealth funds are just one example).
Poland and Hungary are not the only European countries expanding production through state funds, but we see the same processes from Turkey or from Persian Gulf states, or even India and China. Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan recently formed the first sovereign fund in the country, under his own personal management. Similar processes can be seen in Gulf States, with funds under the control of their royal families, or under Hussein el-Sisi and the state-military elite who are in charge of Egypt’s industrial sector.
Even Jair Bolsonaro’s Brasil has immediately focused on pension funds reform, which would allow private investment through those funds, just as we have seen in Austria, Hungary or Poland where state funds are starting to invest in the private and multinational sectors.
We need to remember that even though the US and UK still maintain hegemony in terms of the financial control of assets at the multinational level (demonstrated in Gerard Duménil and Dominique Lévy’s 2018 book), it is the Chinese financial sector which surpasses the Triad in terms of revenue and profits; they may control fewer assets, but are producing the largest revenues of all and China is doing this through exactly these types of sovereign funds. By ‘Triad’ I mean the three historically dominate centres of the world economy from the late 1940s until the end of the 20th century: the United States, the European Union and Japan.
How do these wealth funds work? Wealth funds are very similar to bank capital, which is the definitive characteristic of financial capitalism. But the difference is that it is not based on dividends, and you don’t need to work around stocks and dividends from specific companies, but you can participate on the ‘pool’ of financial assets invested in different companies all at once, getting a percentage of total profits or revenues controlled by the wealth fund.
This allows for a faster way of diversification and centralization of profits and value, even more resolutely than bank capital in some senses. Instead of a stock which represents a percentage of the profits for a single company, etc, the percentage you own on a wealth fund is equal to a percentage of the profits not only for one company, but for all the profits from all companies the wealth fund finances all at once.
‘Right wing populism’ or ‘nationalism’ has meant a turn to the state and its financial assets and capabilities, in stark contrast with neoliberalism, where all talk was about a minimal state. It is crucial to point out the historic discrepancy between neoliberal ideology (that states that the state should not interfere with markets) and the neoliberal political projects and practices (that actually reshapes the state, assigning to it clear fields of action, private property right protection, fiscal incentives, privatisation of the public etc.)
Alain Lipietz (1997) actually studies how job deregulation and reduction of the state’s involvement is stronger in the Triad, where the flexibilization occurs at the level of the job market and not the internal productive process, and the opposite happens in the Global South: the state is more involved comparatively (although there are also examples of privatization, structural adjustment programs, etc, in Africa or Asia!), the flexibilization occurs at the internal level of the production process, and not at the level of the job market which is highly organized and centralized, etc.
The same process where sovereign wealth funds from the Global South turn into competitors at the multinational level,is at play when multinational production fragments itself into small and medium companies through ‘spill overs’: state-led economies perform better in the world market by subsidizing their multinationals. Equally sovereign funds from countries with state-led economies have the biggest concentration and centralization of financial assets.
The consensus among bourgeoisie economists is that state subsidizing of multinationals is the reason for the Asian miracle, and the reason they even entered the multinational market in the first place. This means an intensified competition, both for the market and the state. The whole Huawei controversy or the trade negotiation between the US and China over state subsidies, show the motives and the purpose of ‘right wing populism’.
This explains the convergence of libertarianism with conservative statism in the United States, where Trump erases regulations at the same time as his administration applies tariffs. It may also explain the United Kingdom’s Tory government’s announcement of the end of austerity, and the possibility of state planning.
Falling profit rates
These processes, I would argue, can only be explained by the fall in the profit rate (and its different multiple causes) within multinational companies, which makes it impossible for multinationals to simply buy up companies and integrate them vertically as their own. The companies are instead forced to reduce costs through outsourcing, in combination with ‘offshoring.’ The state, in this situation, turns into a point of comparative and relatively high concentration of capitals, compared to the reigning fragmentation throughout the rest of the economy, where the rate of profit keeps falling, or where the economy continues to fragment into small and medium companies.
This explains the historical rise of sovereign and wealth funds in peripheral economies of the South, allowing them to become real competitors at the multinational level against the Triad. It is these processes that force or propel the formation of this ‘right-wing populist, ‘anti-globalist’ or ‘nationalist’ movements.
Of course, state intervention or fragmentation are not the real causes of East Asia’s rise nor of the increasing competition at the multinational level. From a Marxist point of view, the historical fall in the profit rate hits the Triad and developed countries the hardest, in terms of its expanded reproduction. Why? In Marxist terms this is because of a bigger organic composition: more expensive equipment and raw materials (constant capital) compared to the labor component (variable capital), which causes the fall in the profit rate itself.
The process is relatively simple: if profit is derived from what is extracted from ‘the labour component’, it is in the economies of the Triad with a high concentration of constant capital that we see profit rates in a historical, downward spiral. The difference between the profit rate and the accumulation rate (gross investment) is considerably smaller than in peripheral or underdeveloped countries.
As the 20th century Polish revolutionary and Marxist economist Henryk Grossman explained, even if the profit rate falls immediately after the organic composition of capital rises, it can maintain itself above the accumulation rate and sustain expanded reproduction, but only for a while. After a certain period, the profit rate will be inferior to the accumulation rate, and this is where troubles begin: expanded reproduction needs to be held back, which is precisely what neoliberalism is.
Instead of big investments and rising wages to augment profits and productivity, we see the opposite: the cutting costs rationale, and the reduction of real wages. In peripheral or underdeveloped countries, constant capital was cheaper, and so organic composition was lower and profit rates higher. This allows for extended reproduction to have more space to develop in peripheral countries instead of in the Triad.
As it has been shown, the fall in the profit rate works with different causes, specifically the exploitation rate, the unemployment rate and the new value rate in conjunction with the financial variable (the reduction in the financial profit rate), to create crises (See Carchedi, 2017).
These issues are of such vital importance to capitalist development that they must be explained carefully. The difference between the profit and accumulation rate was greater, so peripheral countries were suddenly in the position of sustaining expanded reproduction, as we have seen in the Asian Tigers or China and India, while the Triad had to immerse itself in the cutting-costs rationale of neoliberalism to hold back expanded reproduction. This is the crux that explains East Asia’s resurgence against the West today, in Marxist terms. Just as neoliberalism is not the cause of the crisis, rather the reaction by the bourgeoisie to the reality of the historical fall in the rate of profit since 1973/4, so ‘right-wing populism’ is a reaction against the consequences (state interventionism and fragmentation at the multinational market level) of that very same historical process.
The processes at work in the Global South
The internationalisation of the division of labour of late capitalism integrated the bourgeoisie of the Global South not only into the financial aspect of imperialism, but into its multinational aspect, through the emerging industrialisation of areas of the South. This took place through the so-called ‘Taylorism’ and ‘peripheral fordism’, as Alain Lipietz’s described it in 1997.
This caused the political erasure of the so-called progressive bourgeoisie in the South, which also eliminated the conflict between anti-colonialist ‘bourgeois’ movements from the Third World and the Triad. It was a huge triumph for the Triad’s class project to have finally eliminated this faction al conflict between anti-colonial layers of the bourgeoisie from the South and themselves.
It eliminated reformist, social democratic and import-substitution programs in the South, precisely because industrialisation was now realised by multinationals, instead of their own nationalistic and anti-colonial projects and at the same time integrating them within the circuits of multinational capitalism.
The internationalisation of the division of labour of late capitalism first defined by Ernest Mandel, seems to have had two different stages: an expansionist stage, with the conglomerates boom of the 1950’s and 1960’s, and the industrialisation and vertical integration of productive processes all around the world.
Today we enter a stage where expanded reproduction shrinks or contracts (due to the fall in the rate of profit), and multinationals stop integrating vertically in the classic and strict sense, and decide to outsource or seek portfolio investments as the main way to diversification.
Portfolio investments are different from Foreign Direct Investment and vertical integration in the sense that they allow for the Southern bourgeoisie to stop being simply passive investors, and allows them to start to behave like active investors, integrated not only as minority partners of multinationals, but as members of the multinationals themselves.
The first stage of the internationalisation of the division of labour saw the Southern bourgeoisie’s integration into financial capital in a passive way, but the end of the expansive phase of late capitalism has allowed them to turn this relationship upside down: the Triad’s bourgeoisie turns into passive investor, and the South has taken charge and control of the multinational means of production.
These processes have seen the integration of the anti-colonialist class faction of the South, into the industrial and multinational class faction of the multinational Triad over the last forty years. This has also changed the character of the Southern bourgeoisie from a simple ‘comprador’ class, into a managerial multinational faction (not a new class, as Duménil and Lévy argued in 2018) which deals and controls directly in the businesses of the Triads multinationals.
The Southern bourgeoisie is still a ‘small partner’ of the Triad or what Paul Baran described in the 1960s as the lumpen-bourgeoisie, but instead of a nation-state bourgeoisie, which produces for its own internal market, or trades the imports and exports of its internal economy, or produces agricultural products, etc, it now controls the means of production of major multinational assets. In a word, the South’s bourgeoisie has stopped producing for its internal market only, and started to produce for multinationals.
If we follow Karl Marx’s work, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, there are two contradictory tendencies here: the absorption of the Southern bourgeoisie into a single international class (with all of the unevenness and dependency that continues to characterize this class), and at the same time, the revulsion based on the increasing competition this multinational integration produces.
This means the international bourgeoisie moves from away from the conflict that characterised 20th century anticolonialism and industrialisation/import-substitution, to act as a unified faction or class under the financially dominant faction of the global class. At the same time, it integrates heterogeneous factions into multinational competition, acting not as a dominant minority faction, but as an entire class.
This contradiction between governing as a faction or as a class, explains precisely the mixture of fascistic characteristics, and democratic and republican elements. If you govern as a whole class, you govern through parliamentary and democratic dialogue on how to run society. If you govern as a particular faction among others, you will try to impose your faction’s view on the others, and rule above your own class. The internationalisation of the division of labour in late capitalism, eliminating the internal factional conflict between the Triad and the Third World, creating at the same time an intensification of competition and control from multinational capitals seem to be explained by this enormous historical development.
These processes explains the entire political climate and movement to the right, and the virtual disappearance of a progressive bourgeois element from Central America to Africa itself – the transition from progressive (bourgeois) struggles to the so-called neoliberal age. This represents an intensification of the class struggle between a more compact international bourgeois class, and a proletariat with a smattering of allies in parliaments or in mainstream political parties.
Finally, to Africa
For Africa, this divergence in expanded reproduction related to the fall in the profit rate – which produces the phenomenon I have just described – has enabled the economic ‘boom’, just as it facilitated peripheral countries on the continent attempting to transform themselves into Asian Tigers, or to see the so-called BRICS as a vehicle to their development and growth, etc.
It does not mean that profit rates have not fallen in Africa or other peripheral countries, it rather means peripheral countries, because of their own underdevelopment, can expand reproduction more decisively than their central and metropolitan counterparts.
This demonstrates how capitalism feeds off ‘backwardness’ itself. We should remember as well, that the so-called economic ‘boom’ in Africa has not translated into the improvements in the lives of peasants and workers, rather the improvement of the economic figures for certain extractive companies on the continent. The boom in GDP growth rates has not translated into higher living standards for workers and the poor on the continent.
At the same time, Africa has something very valuable to teach to the rest of the world: Africa, more than any other continent, thanks to its fragmentation of land and smaller commercial integration, knows very well what it means when the state is in relative terms, a bigger point of concentration of capitals compared to private merchant or financial capitals. Just like in Asia or Latin America, the state in Africa turns into a great possibility for the bourgeoisie to accumulate bigger sums of capital quickly, and dispose of them in any way they want, if they have the state-power to do so.
Like sovereign wealth funds today, Africa knows what it means for the state itself to turn into a medium for capitalist enrichment and profit making, and not a neutral ‘people’s state’ which eliminates class contradictions. This turns the fight (even the electoral fight) for the state into a bitter struggle of factions, which, as we know, has already led to disastrous scenarios (from civil wars, to total state repression) or to apparently ‘progressive scenarios’ – until recently Ethiopia was the poster-boy of this ‘success’ – which hides exactly the same process of using the state and state-funds to finance private and multinational production.
At the beginning of his administration, Trump was accused of wanting to turn the US into a ‘Third World strong-man government’, which besides the racist undertones of the comment, was essentially correct. The concentration of power in the state, plus the concentration of specifically economic power in the state, which seems to be the characteristic of ‘right wing populism’, is indeed very common to us here in the so called ’Third World’ – with the fragmented character of agriculture, land tenure, and commercial integration, etc.
Africa understands this world better than others, since the continent has a long history of seizures of state power in order to control the economic concentration and centralization of state budgets, assets and capitals.
At the end of this short essay I should repeat myself: ‘right wing populism’ shows how capitalism feeds off backwardness. The cheapest solution for multinational companies is to control the state in order to stall falling production (a movement very similar to the international bank and state budgets bailouts that happened during the 2008 crisis). The world may now be facing Africa’s recent history. Do Africa’s decades of trauma confront metropolitan and central countries, as the road where they are now heading?
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This article was first published in the Review of African Political Economy Journal.
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Ideas
Northern Kenya Comes in from the Cold: A New Dawn for Kenyan Democracy?
Marginalised in the colonial era and ignored after independence, northern Kenya has experienced significant change over the past decade. But will the new trend endure?

The development projects that have been initiated in northern Kenya over the past decade are indicative of the promise of a new democratic ethos in the country. The various “flagship” projects — roads, an airport, infrastructure… — formally break the link with northern Kenya’s heritage of a past of deliberate marginalization.
These changes are attributed to the revival of a robust human rights programming, advocacy and implementation at regional and national level; the 2010 constitution, transitional justice mechanisms (the national cohesion and re-integration process and the Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission processes); Sessional Paper No. 10 of 2012; Vision 2030; a changing understanding of the value of land and other forms of productivity; and the strong advocacy work of northern Kenya’s civil society and allied pro-democracy reformers of the last two decades.
In northern Kenya the space for democratic engagement and respect for human rights was constricted from the word go.
New narratives are emerging in which socio-economic and governance prospects for northern Kenya are clothed in positive practical experiences. Northern Kenya is not only poised to rightfully partake in its democratic share but also to impact Kenya’s democratic profile in a substantive manner. But will these new trends endure?
The colonial Northern Frontier District
The future of northern Kenya was inauspicious from the start: Kenya became a British protectorate in 1890 and a crown colony in 1920. In the intervening period, the British struggled to create a buffer territory between the Italians and Ethiopians on the one side and the settled southern territory on the other. The move was prompted by rivalries between Italian Somaliland, the Abyssinian Empire and the British East Africa Protectorate. The rivalry was caused, in particular, by Abyssinia’s worrisome expansion southwards that started in 1895. The Northern Frontier District (NFD) ended up being the buffer zone. The NFD comprised that swath of territory comprising of upper eastern region, north-eastern region and the northern Rift Valley.
The NFD was declared a “closed district” to Kenyans from the south, who required special permits to visit. This resulted in the perception by the locals that they were not part of the “Building Kenya “project.
Between 1941 and 1950, with the exception of French Somaliland, all Somali territories were administered by the British. With the fall of Italian forces in 1941, the British could now expand their economic and political policies across all Somali territories and the Bevin Plan to unify all Somali territories under Britain was adopted. This inspired Somalis to seriously begin to consider the idea of a Pan-Somali nation.
Having been determined by the British to be a “wasteland” from which “no resources” could be extracted, it followed that, in the view of the colonialists, the territory warranted little investment being nothing but a financial drain. In the 1920s, the most the colonial authorities could get out of the drylands of northern Kenya was the livestock (30 cattle and 50 sheep) that the communities paid every year as tribute. However, it soon emerged that the Somali community was defaulting, putting a strain between the locals and the authorities.
The NFD was declared a “closed district” to Kenyans from the south, who required special permits to visit.
Social services were essentially non-existent. There were no hospitals built in the early years of colonial rule. Education lagged behind as there was no school in the province until 1946 when the first one was opened in Isiolo. In any case, to Muslim communities, schools were deemed to be the proselytizing agents of Christianity. Even the Christian missions were not permitted in the NFD since the British feared they would generate aspirations in the locals that that they would not be able to fulfil. Quranic schools could be found in every home where a Maalim taught the Quran and the hadiths (Prophet Mohammed’s teachings). There was only one provincial hospital which was located in Isiolo whose one doctor would make visits to the districts. A few trunk roads had started being built in the 20s that linked major towns like Wajir and Garissa.
The reality was obviously different in the south of the colony. On reaching Isiolo, a community member travelling south would declare that “they had reached Kenya. This was a matter of them being conscious of the fact of their difference and understanding that their loyalty would be questioned by what they called the “down Kenya” authorities on account of their irredentist aspirations.
By the 1920s northern Kenya had already been relegated to a future full of arbitrary pre- and post-independence policy-making, and unaccountable bureaucracies with their attendant misuse of power. The link between governance and civil society participation was a mirage. Apart from having to contend with unjust legal systems, the residents of northern Kenya did not participate in decision-making. NFD was essentially characterized by almost nothing else other than gross socio-economic, cultural and political marginalisation. It was clear to all that the region was not to be a welcome and integral part of the new Kenyan “nation-building project”. As long as NFD residents paid their taxes and conflict among them did not arise, they were left to their own devices.
State of emergency
The British held a referendum in 1962 with the objective of seeking to find out if northern Kenya residents preferred territorial unity with the young Somali nation to the north or with the future republic of Kenya. Residents overwhelmingly voted to secede and join Somalia. Jomo Kenyatta’s response was unequivocal: “Not an inch of Kenya” would be taken way. A four-year guerrilla war ensued involving sections of northern Kenya residents. It is reported that by the time the Shifta (Amharic for bandit) war technically ended in November 1967, nearly 2,000 people had been killed.
On reaching Isiolo, a community member travelling south would declare that “they had reached Kenya.
The Kenyan government declared a state of emergency on 28 December 1963, barely a fortnight after Kenya became independent. This marked a turning point in the relationship between the Kenyan government and north-eastern Kenya. The declaration of the state of emergency had been prompted by the formation of an alliance between the Gabra, Borana, Rendille and Somali pastoralist communities that was expressed in the form of a political party called the Northern Kenya Progressive Peoples Party (NPPP) which, since 1960 had become the vanguard for agitating for the secession of the region from Kenya. Perceived to have been the main agitators for secession, suspicion regarding the political views and citizenship of Kenyan Somalis has endured.
Social exclusion and marginalization
In northern Kenya the space for democratic engagement and respect for human rights was constricted from the word go. The colonial authorities had little time to foster inter-community harmony, instead forcing these communities to submit to the status quo. Statehood as an idea was in this case bereft of intercommunity coherence. The colonial authorities proceeded to allocate development resources to what were perceived as “high potential” areas that would provide good returns on investment because they had adequate water and fertile soils. This essentially consigned the so-called “arid lands” to social, economic and political marginalization and infrastructure development and other basic services were to be denied to the perceived “non-productive regions” for many decades to come. This is how northern Kenya — from Turkana and Pokot in the north-west to Mandera and Wajir — came to represent the perfect case of historically marginalized societies in Kenya.
Since the region was primarily governed from a security point of view, conversations around basic needs were barely allowed. It is for this reason that Hannah Whitaker argues that while scholarship predominantly and conveniently cites Somali nationalism and the influence of the external Somali state as the main driving factor for the Somali movement to secede, little is said of the internal socio-economic grievances that the northern Kenya residents then held. These long-standing grievances remain pertinent to this day. As Dominic Burbidge equally notes, the concerns of the communities in the north “include land access for cattle grazing, availability of water points and access to markets”. He adds that cattle rustling in the north during the colonial period was caused by poorly regulated borders with Somalia.
What is surprising is that successive post-independent governments have adopted the colonizer’s attitudes and approaches towards the region, including the divide-and-rule strategies that were frequently employed by the colonial authorities. This has come at great expense to Kenya’s nation-building project and to the livelihoods, freedoms and democratic rights of the residents of northern Kenya.
The multidimensional nature of the marginalization of the north has been documented in its social, political and economic aspects. Being both the cause and effect of marginalization, poverty cuts across such factors as gender, geography, and ethnic groups, among others. A case study of social exclusion and marginalization, the region has suffered exclusion from development projects and basic services that would ordinarily be availed to other regions or ethnic groups. Economic and social marginalization has prevented the residents of this region from accessing basic services, and has denied them income opportunities and even access to jobs. The extent to which various other Kenyan regions have been resourced and developed over the years can be gleaned from the glaring disparities reflected in GPD records. For instance, for decades before the democratic transition that brought Mwai Kibaki to power, nearly 45 per cent of the nation’s employment was based in only 15 towns. This exacerbated the ethno-regional profiles of political and economic discrimination.
It was the practice since colonial times for Kenyans from the south to be appointed to head the provincial administration and the security forces up in north. Local leaders with a better appreciation of the local dynamics were left out of key decision-making processes. Those with a little education could be appointed chiefs and sub-chiefs but were more often named to even less prominent positions. The state preferred to consult its external allies for assistance whenever it was confronted with an issue. Notable appointments of northern Kenyans emerged after the failed 1982 coup. The coup prompted the then president Daniel arap Moi to begin to systematically build alliances with marginalized communities such as the Maasai and Somali. Hussein Maalim Mohamed was appointed Minister of State in 1983. His brother Mahmoud Mohamed was named Chief of General staff in 1985.
Old narratives and alternative narratives
A critical impediment to realizing a democratic and equitable governance and development system in northern Kenya has had to do with lingering misconceptions by the policy makers, media and other development actors about pastoralists, their culture and livelihoods. These misunderstandings often dovetailed with neo-classical economics that linked exclusion and social inequality to perceived individual or group character flaws, or strengths, or culture. Certain groups, for instance, would be socially excluded based on what the dominant interests felt were their own faults.
It was the practice since colonial times for Kenyans from the south to be appointed to head the provincial administration and the security forces up in north.
The centuries-old practices and way of life of pastoralists contribute to food security stabilization in the drylands ecology and provide them with adaptive skills to confront a variable climate. Yet policy makers do not see this. Instead, they hold that it is a “backward, wasteful and irrational livelihood” that occurs in “fragile, degraded and unproductive ecosystems that simply generates trouble to non-pastoralists”. Edward Oyugi explains that the 2010 constitution provided for devolution as a policy instrument, broadly and vaguely intended to reign in runaway marginalization and the social exclusion of different actors of the Kenya society on the basis of such factors as ethnicity, region, gender, negation, urban versus rural and class and other identity forms. This was specially to assist us move away from the neoclassical thinking where we blamed or celebrated others based on non-functional attributes. Thus the need to stop thinking about the industrious-crafty Kikuyu, the happy-go-lucky coastal, the pleasure-loving Luo, the culturally backward Maasai, the obedient Kamba, etc.
Pastoralists have always been portrayed as permanently embroiled in conflicts when they are not victims of droughts. Depicted as largely lacking agency, their own adaptive capacity is rarely acknowledged.
Agitation for democratic reforms and social inclusion
During the constitutional reform processes, Kenyans agitated for the removal of the centralized political system, strongly rooting for a decentralised system to take its place. Kenyans fervently called for the equitable representation of all regions in national government. Pastoralists from the north joined other communities that had missed out on any significant and representative appointments to national government offices. An example of the inequitable allocation of national government positions can be gleaned from Jomo Kenyatta’s presidency during which 28.5 per cent of cabinet ministers were Kikuyu. During the presidency of Daniel Arap Moi the percentage of Kikuyus in the cabinet dropped to just about 4 per cent while that of the Kalenjin rose sharply to 22 per cent. In addition, in the 70s, 37.5 per cent of permanent secretaries were from the Kikuyu community while 8.3 per cent were from the Kalenjin community. In 2001 the percentage of permanent secretaries from the Kikuyu community dropped to 8.7 per cent while that of the Kalenjin rose to 34.8 percent. This was again reversed when Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu, ascended to the presidency in 2001.
Changes in policy, law, rights programming and practice
Essentially, the democratizing project in Kenya and elsewhere was hugely aided by the strongly revived human rights programming, advocacy and activism that was experienced in Africa from 1990’s onwards. It was from this human rights language that a raft of regional and national legislations and policy frameworks were promulgated from the year 2001 onwards. This set the pace for the categorical recognition of the economic, social and cultural rights of pastoralists and other minorities. Significantly, most of these legal and policy instruments which came to benefit pastoralists and other minorities were as a result of this robust human rights re-awakening across Africa. This human rights revival was largely driven by the newly formed continental structures such as New African Partnership for Development (NEPAD — which came to represent a new vision for Africa’s development). During this period, all states within the African continent had become parties to international human rights conventions. In the years after 2001, states were obligated to respect the principles and objectives of NEPAD. Critical to some of these principles were the primacy of international human rights law which essentially provides that that legal obligations deriving from international human rights law have primacy over any other obligation. States were therefore under obligation to ensure that all their commitments — economic, financial, and commercial programmes — were aligned with international human rights law. Moreover, NEPAD established accessible, transparent and effective mechanisms to assess the exercise of responsibility, be it at the national level or at the level of the institution. These commitments were to be assessed through the procedures of the African Peer Review Mechanisms.
Understanding the existing human rights normative frameworks and their legal obligations by states for the purposes of advocating for government compliance became a requirement for the marginalized groups in northern Kenya and other parts of the country. This came in handy whenever they needed to engage in strategic litigation at various junctures in their efforts to seek redress for the violation of their economic, social, cultural and development rights. A number of communities that lodged complaints with the regional human rights mechanisms received precedent-setting decisions.
Pastoralists have always been portrayed as permanently embroiled in conflicts when they are not victims of droughts.
In the Endorois case against the Government of Kenya, the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights elaborated the scope of the right to development. Article 22 of the African Charter states that all peoples have the economic, social and cultural right to development. The 2010 constitution seeks to strengthen national unity through building diversity as a crucial object of devolution. By recognizing the rights of collective identities, it vindicates the significance of self-governance and improved participation in decision-making as rights of communities. To this extent, it categorically identifies pastoralists as a collective identity whether nomadic or a “settled community that because of its relative geographical location has experienced only marginal participation in the integrated social, and economic life of Kenya as a whole”. The constitution further extends opportunities for redress for the marginalization and social exclusion that pastoralists and any other minority groups may have experienced when it makes provisions for affirmative action programmes in matters relating to representation in governance and in other areas related to education, access to health, employment, infrastructure and water.
Fortunes of Kenya’s first democratic transition
The 2002 democratic transition in Kenya under President Mwai Kibaki, and the attendant transitional mechanisms following the 2007 post-election violence had transformative policy ramifications for the future of northern Kenya. The transition provided hope and impetus for pastoralists and other minorities to advocate for their rights. In effect, policies directed at combating the social exclusion of certain groups began to be designed and implemented. These policies were couched in a language that saw social exclusion and inequality as not being merely a function of the operation of ideological choices, systems or structural conditions but as unjustifiable human rights violations under many human rights conventions. In the main, they emphasized recognition of the principle of non-discrimination and equality as fundamental elements of international human rights law which meant that states could not engage in the mischief of justifying less development for some groups or regions for whatever reason as has been the case previously. The principle of indivisibility of all human rights reinforced this position, clarifying the universality, indivisibility, and interdependent nature of rights. The preamble of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, notes:
“Civil and political rights cannot be dissociated from economic, social and cultural rights in their conception as well as universality and the satisfaction of economic social and cultural rights is a guarantee for the enjoyment of civil and political rights”.
The African Union Policy Framework on Pastoralism (2010) set the stage not only for the recognition of pastoralism but also for the inclusion in the constitutional and legal texts of states. The enactment and implementation of the National Policy for the Sustainable Development of Northern Kenya and Other Arid Lands (Sessional Paper No 12), as endorsed by the cabinet in 2012, followed suit and reversed the provisions of Sessional Paper No.10 of 1965 that had entrenched discrimination in resource allocation based on perceived “high potential”, those associated with crop agriculture, to the detriment of the drylands where pastoralists reside. It is this 2012 Sessional Paper that comprehensively laid the ground for a series of flagship projects that were to be implemented in northern Kenya as part of the Vision 2030 development strategy.
Infrastructure galore
When a team of 50 men and women embarked on a 510-kilometre walk to campaign for the tarmacking of the Isiolo-Moyale Road on 7th November 2004, few thought that one day their dream would be realized. Northern Kenya is not only poised to rightfully partake in its democratic share but also to impact Kenya’s democratic profile in a substantive manner. But will these new trends endure? Only Kenyan citizens on the one hand — and not just the people of northern Kenya — and the state institutions, on the other, can guarantee that.
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This publication was funded/co-funded by the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of The Elephant and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.
Ideas
Reimagining Futures of Agriculture and Bioeconomy
A recent workshop brought together scholars, agricultural practitioners, and activists. Stefan Ouma, Eugen Pissarskoi, Kerstin Schopp and Leiyo Singo summarise some insights from a vital discussion from the degrowth and the critical agrarian studies communities discussing visions of agriculture which do not rely on growing productivity.

The transformation of the fossil-fuel based economies to a “bioeconomy” – an economy whose raw materials come mainly from renewable sources – as envisioned in the early industrialized societies of the Global North will make biomass the bottleneck resource of the 21st century. Visions of bioeconomy and agriculture which dominate debates both in the Global South and the Global North share the belief that the best means to alleviate the resulting challenges consists in increasing agricultural productivity. Critical agrarian studies scholars and activists have often flagged the negative impacts of capitalist visions of bioeconomy and agriculture, calling into questions the dominant and often capital-driven paradigms that seek to envision and implement particular agricultural futures. Interventions on roape.net and in the journal have powerfully contributed to those debates.
Many of these interventions have had a focus on Africa or the Global South more generally. But what are the visions of agriculture of those who are not in a position of political or economic power both in the Global North and the Global South? Does there exist a shared vision among them? Also, many of these interventions in one way or another are against ‘modern’ forms of agriculture, which often implies being against the industrial productivity paradigm that underpins capital-driven agricultural futures. While this paradigm has a long history, going back to the work of 18th century philosopher John Locke, and resurfacing during both colonial and post-colonial attempts to ‘modernize’ African agriculture (as Andrew Coulson shows here), it is often not clear what role ‘productivity’ would play in alternative visions of agriculture. What would make an agriculture without productivity growth attractive to small producers such as smallholder farmers and livestock keepers? Do indigenous communities and the degrowth movement (which lately has received more attention by critical agrarian studies scholars, see here and here) have their own conception of productivity or an own attitude to it? Given the recent calls that we need a deeper dialogue between degrowth and decoloniality scholars, how could decolonized conceptions of productivity capture more space in public debates and policy circles? These questions foregrounded the reflections and conversations of the workshop aptly named: Beyond Productivity: Reimagining Futures of Agriculture and Bioeconomy, held as a digital event on 8 October, 2021.
The workshop drew about 40 scholars, agricultural practitioners and policy activists from different countries including Germany, Ghana, France, India, South Africa, Tanzania, United Kingdom, and the United States. We deliberately wanted to span boundaries and gather diversely positioned scholars and activists, many of whom would normally not share the same space. This diversity, we believe, influenced the contributions and deliberations during the workshop. Of course, the theme of the workshop itself – the role of productivity for a radically sustainable agriculture and bioeconomy – constitutes a puzzle. There are contradictory attitudes towards it, even within more critical academic circles, as well as among grassroots movements representing peasant farmers and livestock keepers.
In the following, we present some insights from the discussions about this “productivity puzzle”. A lengthier documentation of the workshop’s debates can be found here.
Part 1: Role of Productivity in Agricultural Visions
The first session brought together visions of agricultural practices, which do not strive for further increase in land or labour productivity. The contributions were made by Henryk Alff and Michael Spies (Eberswalde University for Applied Sciences), Theodora Pius and Lina Andrew (Mtandao wa Vikundi vya Wakulima Wadogo Tanzania (MVIWATA), member of La Via Campesina), Christina Mfanga (Tanzania Socialist Forum), Gaël Plumecocq (French National Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment Toulouse), Leiyo Singo (University of Bayreuth), Paula Gioia (Arbeitsgemeinschaft bäuerliche Landwirtschaft (AbL), Germany, member of La Via Campesina), Richard Mbunda (University of Dar es Salaam), and Divya Sharma (University of Sussex). The discussions took part in parallel breakout rooms addressing the differences and similarities of the visions presented in the session.
It is incontestable that a rise in productivity can improve people’s livelihoods. However, the established notions of “productivity” are strongly influenced by capitalist imperatives. They contribute to class differentiation and uneven capital accumulation in countries such as Tanzania as several participants pointed out. These notions of productivity have been exported to Africa.Meanwhile, the idea of productivist agriculture has become deeply entrenched in farmers’ own reasoning. Due to that, they consider productivity increases as a means to rising incomes which, in turn, they need since a growing number of needs cannot be satisfied without cash.
Most participants agreed that mainstream notions of productivity need to be adjusted by recognition of additional values, for instance, frugality (or simplicity) and the well-being of the future generations. Given that we already have reached a planetary state of climate breakdown, visions that do not envision productivity rise are deemed more realistic compared to what is formulated within the conventional productivity paradigm. Agro-ecology is an option to increase productivity in quality, not quantity. Qualitative productivity improvements rest on incorporating a wide range of social and ecological values and not merely economic ones. Additionally, legal, and political frameworks that are formulated in a deliberate, collective manner could help to develop a commonly shared vision of a future agriculture and the role of productivity in it.
Some participants mentioned that the allegation of low productivity is used to continue the alienation of farmers from their means of production (seeds/land) across Tanzania. It is used to help “modern seeds” penetrate rural areas. While it is true that many farmers, especially young ones, increasingly consider agriculture as a dead-end, agriculture has rather been made to be not rewarding. Additionally, the role of brokers at the interface between farmers and markets should be critically scrutinized.
Another key question is that of political power. How can other visions of agriculture become effective? Recent policy dynamics in Tanzania provide a vital example. Despite some of well-known shortcomings, the previous regime under late-President Joseph Pombe Magufuli shared certain visions with small-scale farmers, e.g., banning trials on genetically modified organisms. Magufuli also took away land from investors that had been obtained under questionable circumstances. The current regime, however, supports investors. “For the government, investors are business partners, but for the majority these are enemies, not development partners.”, argued Christina Mfanga.
The session ended with a paradox. While we can raise several critical points about the thrust for productivity, it can be patronizing to say that small-scale farmers don’t want productivity. If asked, many farmers would probably agree that anything reducing their workload is good. At the same time, this does not mean to go down the corporate road to productivity. Another question that emerged was: “Who are the people”? How do we account for social differentiation, and potentially differentiated interests, among the peasantry and livestock keepers?
Part 2: Towards Decolonization of Productivity?
Introducing the second round of the workshop, Stefan Ouma raised the linkage between productivity and coloniality, emphasizing that notions of productivity cannot be understood without considering the colonial experience. Colonial administrators already promoted modernisationist discourses on raising productivity among ‘backward’ African producers, a rhetoric that still shines through the contemporary productivity gospel. Endorsement of economic prerogatives such as efficiency, labour productivity, and the coupling of private property and the ideology of “improvement” have European origins and buttressed colonial expansion.
Two keynote addresses were presented by Julien-François Gerber and Emmanuel Sulle followed by the commentary by Wendy Wilson-Fall. Subsequently, participants discussed in three groups the following questions:
What would make an agriculture without productivity growth attractive to smallholder producers?
Some participants suggested focusing on the plurality of productivities instead of abandoning the notion of productivity at all. This plurality should integrate social and environmental forms of productivity, such as the freedom for smallholder farmers to decide which crops they cultivate when and which crop quality they want to achieve, which is an important issue for smallholder farmers.
Other participants, however, pointed out, that the established political-economic rules make an agriculture decoupled from productivity growth unattractive. It is unrealistic to make a beyond-productivity-agriculture attractive to a young generation within the existing economic systems. The macro-level is vital since the dominant economic framing of agriculture in politics and business makes agro-industrial notions of productivity (in the narrow sense) a prerequisite. As a consequence, these participants called for a paradigm shift towards a decommodification of agriculture. This decommodification will have implications on the decolonization of agriculture since the redistributive and alienating dimensions of capitalist markets are central issues for both political projects.
Do indigenous communities and the degrowth movement have an own conception of productivity or an own attitude to it? How does it look like?
In his plenary presentation, Julien-François Gerber pointed out that the degrowth movement stresses a plurality of values among which an agricultural system must balance: well-being, meaningful work, resilience to shocks, land and labour productivity among others. Land/labour productivity (and the resulting monetary income) constitute only a part of the valuable properties of agricultural systems.
This picture of a plurality of values which need to be adequately balanced actually represents the realities of indigenous farmers and pastoralists in sub-Sahara Africa and Latin America. These groups balance the productivity of ecosystems and non-human organisms (“livestock”) with the productivity of social bonds and relationships in a different manner than the industrial farmers in the Global North. The latter put more weight on the land and labour productivity and less weight on livestock’s well-being and intensity of social bonds.
A remarkable difference lies in the fact that while the degrowth vision is largely aspirational, the pastoralist economies of provisioning are an already existing reality. Their common point – the requirement of balance amid a plurality of values – is far from being recognized by the political mainstream in the Global South or North.
How could decolonized conceptions of productivity capture more space in public debates and policy circles?
Taking the case of Tanzania, a largely agrarian society, discussants acknowledged that the country’s politics are dominated by urban elites. Therefore, without a broader movement taking on the existing ruling class, nothing will change. Those working with grassroot movements pointed out that the “people are there, but funding is the issue”. Christina Mfanga came across a lot of struggles among farmers which are “extra-organizational” (outside of organized farmer groups and movements) and thus less visible. Most of the movements she mentioned are not donor dependent. The involvement of donor funds is often a setback for radical struggles.
Researchers need to get closer to the grassroots to learn about the real struggles of the poor. Richard Mbunda emphasized the need for research that is strongly grounded in decolonial conceptions of agriculture. Data is helping the proponents of hegemonic models of productivity to speak, so alternatives need data, too. We need to have a larger discussion about decolonizing productivity and associated research. We should turn the Global North-South axis upside down; “we” in the Global North can learn a lot from the Global South in terms of human-environment relations.
Conclusion
The debates at the workshop have demonstrated that there are similar objections raised against the dominant, capital-driven visions of agricultural futures (see here and here) and the bioeconomy (see here and here) by scholars and activists from different parts of the world. The dominant visions both in the Global North and the Global South endorse the goal of productivity growth. In light of mainstream economic theories, the socio-economic institutions established in the early industrialized societies of the Global North, and their values – which have been exported to other parts of the world- productivity growth seems to be an indispensable condition for a flourishing life.
However, as the workshop debates stated, there are grassroot movements in the Global North – which are small and politically unrepresented – who object to the pursuit of further increases in land or labour productivity and who search for socio-economic models which do not depend on growth of economic aggregates yet enables life to truly flourish. There are also communities in the Global South – often politically marginalized and currently in existential crisis such as the Maasai in Tanzania – which have preserved and still realize ways of life in which growth of productivity does not play a significant role.
As such, there is fertile ground for fruitful exchange and mutual learning between critical agrarian studies researchers and activists studying these marginalized communities and grassroot movements and activists striving for recognition of their values from the Global North and the Global South. Such an exchange should avoid the temptation to romanticize these communities and movements, taking their internal contradictions and struggles around cultural values and practices seriously, as Andrew Coulson reminded us in the aftermath of the workshop.
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This article was first published by ROAPE.
Ideas
Boda Boda Justice
Local and national institutions should move beyond perpetuating harmful narratives about boda boda riders and instead leverage their capacity to contribute towards grassroots processes of protection and justice.

We are all familiar with the idea that we, as people, plan, but those plans can be quickly altered by the animate and ever-moving process of life. On October 5th, I had a pretty straightforward plan for the day, and having an accident that could have taken my life was certainly not part of it. I was jogging along my regular route when, ahead of me, I saw a car turning into a wide driveway at great speed. I instinctively slowed down to allow the car to turn, only to be hit from behind by a motorcycle that had veered off the road.
Thrown into a ditch but fully conscious, I touched my head and felt it to be completely drenched. Before I looked at my hand, I readied myself for the eventuality that it was blood I was feeling, and that this could be my last day alive. To my relief, it was just mud. I slowly moved each part of my body, to find that I had no severe injuries. I picked up my glasses, stood up, and processed that I was, indeed, alive. A crowd quickly grew around me, with people asking me who to call, or whether I wanted go to hospital immediately. Through tears, full of adrenaline and in a state of shock, I insisted that I wanted to go home; I hadn’t jogged far. I got onto one of the many boda bodas that had gathered at the scene, and home I went.
Some 20 minutes later, as I was getting into a car with a family friend to be taken to the hospital, still in a state of shock and disarray, a boda boda rider approached me. He is a rider in the local area, so we were familiar with each other. He happened to have seen me leave for my jog before the accident, and was at the same place as I was being brought back, covered in mud and crying, some ten minutes later. He explained that he had been told what had happened, that he knew who had hit me and that he was willing to participate in a justice process. I won’t go into what I went through both physically and emotional here except to say that I had avoided a neck fracture and wore a brace for a few days to allow a slight injury at the back of my neck to heal. The shock took a few days to wear off, and I remain very aware of the fact that October 5th could have gone very differently.
However, what I learned from this experience is that there is an organized structure within the boda boda community that has the capacity to administer justice at the grassroots level, which the local boda boda rider wanted deployed. The episode highlighted the social, political and economic consequences of the way in which this working-class community is perceived by the wider society, and how Kenyan society could change for the better if these broad-brush and often negative societal perspectives were abandoned.
Several months before the incident, a group of boda boda riders had been recorded violently physically and sexually assaulting a woman whose car had hit one of them along Forest Road. The ensuing aggressive and outraged discourse across social media targeted the boda boda community and its collective culture. Given the nature of the injustice faced by that woman—an incident that I can only imagine would leave a person emotionally impacted long after the assault itself—the uproar, indignation, and anger of Kenyans was not misplaced.
What I learned from this experience is that there is an organized structure within the boda boda community that has the capacity to administer justice at the grassroots level
However, even with my limited experience of the country, I felt uneasy about the state’s knee-jerk reaction which was to take all boda bodas off the road in response to the incident. Firstly, I think that the culture of women being subjected to sexual violence as a result of men, or society in general, experiencing emotions like anger towards who they are and what they do has less to do with who boda boda riders are as people, and more to do with what patriarchy has normalized regarding how women should suffer the consequences when men get emotional.
Secondly, the dogmatic nature of the car drivers vs boda boda riders conversation on Twitter felt unfair. Months before the Forest Road incident, I had been part of a small group of people that had spent hours trying to help a boda boda rider that had been hit and badly injured by a car that had then fled the scene. Bystanders at the scene supported the boda boda riders pursuing the car in question, even though they were aware that he might be subjected to violence if caught.
Thirdly, I just couldn’t see where the post-Forest Road social media discourse was going and I was nervous to wade in with what, in the face of the national outrage, felt like a fickle personal opinion of a guest in the country naively suggesting “not all boda boda riders are…” I kept quietly to myself the thought that this just wasn’t who I had experienced the boda boda community to be. Not being a Swahili speaker, one of the ways in which I navigate new parts of Nairobi, and the country generally, is by locating the nearest boda boda stage if I need to ask for directions or for any other help. I have come to know boda boda riders in a way that the capitalist culture doesn’t allow you to get to know the service providers you engage with on a daily basis. But it would have seemed tone-deaf to contribute this experiences to the discourse at the time, although I was reminded of them again following of the October 5th accident.
Bystanders at the scene supported the boda boda riders pursuing the car in question, even though they were aware that he might be subjected to violence if caught.
Victor* the boda boda rider that approached me on my way to the hospital, is the security officer of the local boda boda riders committee. This is why, when he saw that I had been injured and learned that it was as a result of being hit by a boda boda rider, he made it his personal responsibility to advocate for me in a dialogue involving the police, the owner of the bike, the local boda boda community and the person who had hit me. This process lasted a week before I decided to stop pursuing the case because of the intimidation that Victor was facing from boda boda riders in the area. As the week unfolded, I was not only struck by Victor’s commitment to ensure that I obtained justice, but I was struck by his belief in the system that he was a part of and within which he was a leader, a system that I think many Kenyans don’t know exists, or if they do, aren’t sure of its purpose or its effectiveness. Even though in my case the effectiveness of this system was compromised because of the power relations between the owner of the bike and others in the local area, it has inspired me, time and time again, to see Victor organize and mobilize a grassroots system that he has played a role in creating, for the cause of community-based justice.
A few days after we stopped pursuing the case, Victor and I sat down for an interview. Victor, who is 26 years old, has been a rider in the area for just over two years. Prior to that, Victor had been working in personal and housing security. In his words, it’s because of that experience that he was encouraged to take on the role of security officer and was elected by an overwhelming majority. “First of all, you have to understand, when you see a boda boda rider, you need to know that he is not only standing there for the money. We are keeping an eye on our surroundings in order to keep it secure,” was how Victor began his response to my question about the specifics of his role as a security officer. He went on to explain that “When anything happens regarding boda bodas, a security officer is the first person that is asked, ‘What happened?’ It doesn’t matter if it is 1 am or 3 am in the morning; if there is an incident, I have to wake up and attend to the situation, to understand what happened, who was involved, and what process is required moving forward. If you consider my area, it is part of my job to know every corner of it and be aware of every person operating in my constituency.” Victor explains that each boda boda committee that exists per constituency has a chairperson, security officer, treasurer, and secretary. “As committees, we are known by the NTSA [National Transport and Safety Authority], local police, and local community elders,” he says. People can serve in these positions until they move on, there is no term limit, and, he adds, one does not earn more for taking a leadership position. Sometimes, a person who has received help from a boda boda rider or from the committee will offer compensation in the form of materials such as boots or jackets, or cash. “We also support people financially. If a driver needs to repair his bike because of a hit, or if he needs to pay for damages caused and can’t afford it, we can organize amongst ourselves to support the person affected and be repaid slowly,” Victor explains.
It has inspired me, time and time again, to see Victor organize and mobilize a grassroots system that he has played a role in creating, for the cause of community-based justice.
I asked Victor whether the level of organization that he was describing was present before the Forest Road incident. “After [that incident], measures got much stricter when it comes to registering with the NTSA. It used to be easy. You could talk to someone at any stage and you can start driving. Now it’s much more organized. There was the president’s order that this is the case, but even us, it is something that we took very seriously. You know, it causes you shame when someone from your community harms others.” When I asked Victor why he does this work, and why he pursued my case so vigorously, he shared the following moving reflections: “I didn’t study security or go past Form 2, but this comes from inside of me. I feel very good when I know that everybody in my surroundings is safe and secure. The only reason that I do this is because I care about justice and fairness.” Interestingly, towards the end of our discussion, Victor also described a brief encounter he had had with the recently elected Governor of Nairobi, Johnson Sakaja. “I told him that we need to know each other; he needs to know us guys and we need to know them.”
As an Oromo who is actively engaged in the liberation struggle going on in Ethiopia today, I cannot help but feel a connection between the way Oromo grassroots cultural and political processes and institutions interested in the administration of justice have been misrepresented by the political and economic elites (of all ethnicities), and the way the reality of the boda boda community’s collective life has been similarly unjustly misinterpreted. If local and national institutions could move beyond perpetuating harmful narratives about boda boda riders in order to keep them at the margins of society and use them as political scapegoats when convenient, they could play a productive role in empowering and resourcing this community’s capacity to organise for grassroots justice and projection.
“The only reason that I do this is because I care about justice and fairness.”
Speaking off the record (but giving permission to use this information on the record), Victor told me about a domestic violence dispute that he was able to safely intervene in because of the work he does as a security officer. The victim in question was over 30kms away from Victor’s station, but because he could identify her as a member of his local community whose safety he feels personally responsible for, he took effective action to protect the woman. Even if—like in any institution where power and people are involved—the security institution within the boda boda community is not perfect, it is one of the many ways through which grassroots processes of protection and justice can have a transformative impact where more formalized institutional processes fall short. There is great scope for the latter to be empowered by the former in order to achieve that which I think we all want: to live safely and freely.
*Name has been changed to protect the rider
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