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Kenya’s constitution of 2010 provides for recognition, protection, and registration of community land. This is significant because it recognizes customary tenure after decades of historical bias towards private property and brings to the fore the uniqueness of the African commons. We revisit the debate on managing communal land by reviewing the process of implementation of the Community Land. The paper is based on a review of the legal framework, discussions on the implementation of the Community Land Act and authors interaction with communities through workshops. It concludes that while the Act promises greater protection for commons, implementation challenges continue to hinder realization of the promised rights and benefits. Procedural uncertainty in the implementation process, tension in the formalization of customary tenure and institutional overlaps are identified as key bottlenecks in the process. The paper argues that laws should be aligned to community systems and practices to achieve best results.

This paper is about the contested use of urban space, focusing on the appropriation of informal trading spaces by street traders in Kisumu, Kenya’s third largest city. The objective is to understand the access to and control of the trading streets around Jomo Kenyatta Sports Ground. These trading places are understood as a resource. I argue that legal and political contradictions create an ambiguous institutional environment. These ambiguities contribute to the development of conflicts in the use of these trading places and give advantages to actors with a key position, particularly the brokers acting as an interface between street traders and authorities. The empirical material for this study comes from surveys carried out in Kisumu between April and December 2016. 26 semi-structured interviews, three life story interviews and two focus group interviews were carried out, mainly with street traders. The first part of this paper develops the theoretical approach and the ambiguity of the street trading institutional environment. The second part deals with the daily struggle for trading places and then it focuses on projects by local authorities about street trade management. These projects increase the process of fragmentation of street traders’ associations.

While Kenyan colonial subjects became citizens at independence, women were excluded from state resources, social services, and full political enfranchisement. This was neither the decolonizing future they had been promised nor the one they had envisioned; for Kenyan women, independence often held more symbolic than material meaning. Continued landlessness – which overlapped with perpetuated structural gendered inequalities and various forms of political exclusion – coloured the ways in which Kenyan women made sense of independence. Relying on archival and oral sources, this article explores how Kenyan women were prohibited from exercising the fullest rights offered and protected by the early postcolonial state. In examining the multilayered politics of women’s marginalization, this paper elucidates how these exclusions shaped political imaginations, and in particular, Kenyan women’s notion of temporality, often marked by a sense of stasis or being placed outside of time. “There Was No Change” thus not only sheds light on the broad question of how gender shapes temporal logics, but it also contributes to an emerging literature on gendered notions of time during political transition.

The importance of anchoring environmental management in a country’s constitution cannot be over-emphasised. Kenya attained its independence from British colonial rule in 1963 but environmental management issues were not explicitly provided for in the constitution. The promulgation of a new constitution on 27 August 2010 heralded a comprehensive provision for environmental management in Kenya. This paper reviews these specific provisions and their implications, and concludes that the country is now positioned to better manage the environment. The paper also cautions that the implementation of these provisions is the most important phase after promulgation. It thus urges Kenyans to be vigilant, like they were during the search for the new constitution, and to ensure that they actualise their ‘right to a clean and healthy environment’, among other provisions.

The EU frequently prides itself with being the largest donor of official development assistance (ODA) in the world and consequently claims a lead role as a major global actor in international development. This paper examines how this role of the EU is exercised and perceived by the EU’s development partners in East Africa through a qualitative research approach centered around semi-structured interviews and participant observation. The paper thereby does not evaluate perceptions or judge their reality value, it rather emphasises the existence of different perceptions and how they vary depending on the eye of the beholder and the policy field under consideration. It further argues that conceiving of one coherent international role of the EU reveals limited insight; instead a more diversified view of the EU as both an appealing geopolitical model and a resented geoeconomic power is presented. Moreover, it suggests that conception and implementation of European development policy should be more consultative and perceptive in order to dispel perceptions of the EU as a neo-imperial power.

The commodification and patrimonialization of nature have often been studied separately or considered as contradictory. Following research that highlights the combination of these social logics in tension, this article questions their intertwining by focusing on a seemingly innocuous ornamental plant : the rose intended for bouquets. The paper focuses on the process of creation, which is less studied than that of production or preservation, in order to analyse the characteristics of the new varieties, commercial objects with symbolic values and codified uses. Based on empirical data, the article shows the evolution of cut roses bred in Europe and produced in Kenya, by tracing the partial diffusion of the aesthetic of pseudo-ancient varieties. It shows how the intertwining of market and heritage logics, materialised in the aesthetics of a plant, shed light on the dynamics of a globalised production sector.

School feeding is an important development tool and is related to at least three Millennium Development Goals. School farming has been largely overlooked in the urban agriculture literature but with many parents nowadays unable to afford school lunches for their children, it can play a vital role in reducing the costs involved in providing nutritional meals for pupils. This paper examines school farming in an urban setting, namely Nakuru town, Kenya and looks at the current practice, the extent to which school farming contributes to school feeding programs, and the challenges it faces and how these can be overcome. Based on a survey done in almost all primary and secondary schools in Nakuru, it shows that school farming and school feeding are now common practice in the town and that in many cases school farming does indeed contribute to school feeding programs. However, much more is possible and the paper indicates how various constraints in terms of land, water, support and leadership might be overcome.

Copyright of Cahiers d'Études Africaines is the property of Editions EHESS and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In response to the rise in extremist violence within Kenya, the Strengthening Resilience to Violent Extremism Programme was launched to counter the threat of violent extremism (VE) and prevent the radicalisation and recruitment of vulnerable youth. To assess the extent to which the Programme was able to achieve its objective, an evaluation of the Programme's key component – a mentoring and counselling-based project intervention, was conducted between 2017-19. In total, 347 youth, identified as being 'at risk', were included as part of the evaluation. This paper presents the principal findings of the evaluation and assesses the effect of the intervention on three key dimensions: the youth's attitudes, their social networks and levels of awareness of the risks of VE and the strategies for countering violent extremist activities. Using logit models and controlling for any confounding effects of socio-demographic differences, the evaluation finds evidence of improvements in the at-risk groups' knowledge of the risks posed by VE groups as well as the strategies for countering VE. However, mixed results were noted in the groups' attitudes towards violence, their levels of self-confidence and the extent and diversity of their social networks. Across two of the dimensions, more significant effects were also observed among 'at-risk' groups who were employed versus those who were unemployed. Some variability in outcomes was also found among at-risk groups who had been exposed to the intervention for longer compared to those who had been in the Project for shorter periods. Taken together, these findings underscore the need for extending the Project's existing engagements and incorporating a nuanced and sustained approach for engendering more long-term change. The analytical insights presented also offer critical lessons for designing and implementing similar interventions in Kenya and in the wider global context.

The article examines the results of the Commission of Inquiry into the Illegal/Irregular Allocation of Public Land related to the case study of the Mau forest (Rift Valley region). The Commission’s work (2002-05) has brought to light the close link between land and political patronage, illustrating how land allocation has been used by the political, judicial and military élite to pursue their own political and personal interests. The paper aims to reflect on the effects of the Ndung’u Commission Report in the south-western region of the Mau forest; in particular, it analyses the process of “degazettement” that in the period of democratic transition (1991-2002) led to the conversion of large portions of forest into agricultural land.

The Luo are a Nilotic people living in western Kenya, north-eastern Tanzania and in western Uganda. Their language, Dholuo, forms part of the Western Nilotic group of languages. This article presents the traditional kincepts (kinship terminology) of the Luo people as described by elders living in Central Sakwa location, Siaya County, western part of Kenya. The kincepts for consanguine as well as affine relatives in up to three ascending and five descending generations are described. The paper applies a combined linguistic and anthropological approach. Linguistically, the terms are analysed in relation to current Dholuo vocabulary, grammar and modes of expression. Anthropologically, the Luo kinship rules of patrilineality and virilocality are considered. The domain of kincepts is a research field bringing together linguistics, anthropology and history. It contributes to the inquiry of diachronic linguistics, which can provide insights on the development and interaction of related languages as well as population groups’ migratory patterns not least in parts of the world where written historical sources are scarce.

INTRODUCTION: Pregnant women need access to skilled attendance at birth and emergency obstetric care (EmOC) to avert maternal deaths. While poor EmOC services may explain the high maternal mortality, inadequate knowledge of providers is also part of the problem. This forms the basis of this paper, in a setting where 50.2% of women deliver in a health facility but maternal mortality remains high at 531/100,000 live births, compared to the national average of 362/100,000 in Kenya. METHODS: a facility based cross-sectional survey was conducted in 2018 with a set of knowledge questions extracted from the averting maternal death and disability toolkit. Providers knowledge for maternal and newborn health (MNH) was assessed by interviewing nurses on duty in the maternity units. Data were entered in Ms Access and exported to R version 3.6.2 for descriptive and logistic regression analysis. Ethical clearance was obtained from Kenya Medical Research unit. RESULTS: a total of 55 nurses were interviewed. Majority (71%) of the respondents were diploma nurses. The overall knowledge score for MNH among the providers was adequate with a score of (64%). Generally, the midwives and higher diploma nurses consistently scored higher than diploma nurses in all the topic areas of MNH. In the mixed linear regression, determinants of knowledge score were seen in provider-level variables. CONCLUSION: overall, the providers scores were higher on intrapartum and newborn care compared to scores on care for complications. We conclude that in-service training on EmOC to providers is critical to reduction of maternal mortality.

In the recent past, E-commerce has been growing rapidly, the tremendous growth of online companies mushrooming everywhere. This has created many business opportunities for the different segment of business in Kenya. Business to Business, Business to Consumers, Consumers to Consumers, However, we will concentrate on the Business to Consumers form of business. Therefore, this paper will do research reviews on issues of security, privacy, and trust surrounding e-commerce in Kenya to ensure that the consumers gain trust in these online companies. The purpose of the study will be to provide solutions facing e-commerce in terms of the trust, security, and privacy. Consumer distrust is a major concern, mainly regarded as the protection of private information and the fear of the risk of being exposed to online fraudulent activities. This has been the main obstacle to e-commerce in Kenya. With all the benefits that online business present to the companies and consumers, it is the best interest of the companies to increase its trustworthiness to its users. Some of the online crimes will be analyzed and solutions provided with practical guidelines to achieve confidence in the online business environment. The research will be significant to scholars, government, academicians and other stakeholders in the implementation of policy and laws that can govern E-commerce in Kenya. This will be made possible by analysis of the Jumia company which has been operating in Kenya for the last for the last five years with the tremendous growth and been preferred by most of the consumers in the country. It will demonstrate how different reviews conducted previously were of additional value to the current research. The research shows the challenges faced by e-commerce and also provides the possible solutions for the challenges. In the conclusion, it recommends what the government, online companies, and consumers should do to embrace online business and reap the full benefits of e-commerce.

The paper investigates the deforestation process in the Mau Forest (Kenya), highlighting the actors involved and the underlying relations of power. The proximate causes of the deforestation are three: agriculture, wood production and infrastructures. In this context of pressure on natural resources, local communities have developed different projects to reduce deforestation and promote alternative development strategies, especially through the Community Forest Associations (CFAs). These dynamics show that deforestation is a complex issue whose solutions lie primarily outside the forest itself and that it should be tackled with suitable policies on crucial issues such as land, agriculture, infrastructure and indigenous peoples.

Great post-independence migration from rural areas to urban centers has brought contact and competition to African linguistic gene pools. In Nairobi, Kenya, the main contestants are a trio of English, Swahili, and the indigenous language, making the duel a truel. Though the obvious outcome has been an ecological imbalance in socioeconomics (Mufwene 2008), few studies, other than Laitin and Eastman (1989: 52), have addressed the motivations and constraints on the speakers of the dueling languages. This paper introduces the concept of the truel from game theory (Kilgour & Brams 1997) to analyze and illuminate the linguistic tussle between an ex-colonial language, a native lingua franca, and local African Urban Youth Language (AUYL) practices (e.g., Sheng and Engsh). Mufwene and Vigouroux (2008: 23) argue that the elite keep the ex-colonial language as an entitlement. Nationalists support Swahili as a Pan- Africanist unifier. Historically, however, no one wishes to support anyone else’s mother tongue, so the indigenous language loses out. A series of motivations for each language variety is described, and it is shown that in each case, the player takes a rational strategy in the competition, but produces the illusion that the indigenous language has lost out. This new approach dramatically reduces the impression that the native speaker of indigenous African languages has lost the linguistic battle, and hence makes the rational choices of linguistic practices clearer.

The decision for refugees to return should be an ‘informed decision’ based on “objective, accurate and neutral” information, including on the limits of assistance upon return [UNHCR, 1996]. This article presents findings from the spontaneous return of refugees from Kenya to Somalia in 2014 to illustrate the risks that uninformed decisions, and the weakness of networks, can pose post-return. Without information and networks, returnees fall short of the levels of preparedness and resource mobilisation [Cassarino, 2004] needed to make returns a positive and sustainable experience. Based on 160 qualitative interviews with refugee returnees and key informants, in Kenya and in Somalia in 2014-2015, this paper asks the following: were refugees’ access to information and networks in 2014 sufficient to allow for a sustainable return to Somalia?

INTRODUCTION: aqueductal stenosis is the commonest cause of congenital hydrocephalus. The scope of this paper is to highlight the disease burden of hydrocephalus attributed to aqueductal stenosis which still remains unknown in our setting. METHODS: in a descriptive cross-sectional study, 258 records of patients diagnosed with hydrocephalus were analyzed after ethical approval from Kenyatta National Hospital- University of Nairobi (KNH-UON) ethics and research committee from January 2010 to May 2016. Patients with a diagnosis of hydrocephalus due to aqueductal stenosis were included in this study. Patients age, sex, mode of delivery, associated comorbidities, presenting complaints, neurosurgical intervention performed, Kafarnosky score were recorded. Data were divided into 2 sets based on the patient's age i.e. whether 1 year or 12 years. Data were recorded on google data collection form and analyzed using Google spreadsheets. RESULTS: out of 258 cases of hydrocephalus, 52 had aqueductal stenosis. Male to female sex ratio for this condition was 3:2. There were 25 cases 1year and 27 cases 12 years old who were diagnosed with hydrocephalus due to aqueductal stenosis. Associated conditions were bilateral congenital talipes equinovarus, spina bifida, Arnold Chairi malformations, meningitis and HIV. The presenting complaints differed according to the age groups. Neurosurgical interventions included Endoscopic Third Ventriculostomy (ETV) in 21 cases, insertion of Ventriculoperitoneal (VP) shunt and ETV were done in 3 cases while the rest had only insertion of VP shunt. The Kafanosky score improve from 50 pre-op to 19 cases achieving a score of 100, six months post-op. CONCLUSION: aqueductal stenosis contributes a significant burden of morbidity in patients with hydrocephalus. Clinical presentation differs according to patients age. Accurate diagnosis and treatment remain a cardinal to improving patient outcome.

Copyright of Comparative & International Education is the property of Canadian & International Education and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

INTRODUCTION: achieving the healthcare components of the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals is significantly premised on effective service delivery by civil society organisations (CSOs).However, many CSOs across Africalack the necessary capacity to perform this role robustly. This paper reports on an evaluation of the use, and perceived impact, of aknowledge management tool upon institutional strengthening among CSOs working in Kenya's health sector. METHODS: three methods were used: analytics data; user satisfaction surveys; and a furtherkey informant survey. RESULTS: satisfaction with the portal was consistently high, with 99% finding the quality and relevance of the content very good or good for institutional strengthening standards, governance, and planning and resource mobilisation. Critical facilitators to the success of knowledge management for CSO institutional strengthening were identified as people/culture (developed resources and organisational narratives) and technology (easily accessible, enabling information exchange, tools/resources available, access to consultants/partners).Critical barriers were identified as people/culture (database limitations, materials limitations, and lack of active users), and process (limited access, limited interactions, and limited approval process). CONCLUSION: this pilot study demonstrated the perceived utility of a web-based knowledge management portal among developing nations' CSOs, with widespread satisfaction across multiple domains, which increased over time. Providing increased opportunities for collective mutual learning, promoting a culture of data use for decision making, and encouraging all health organisations to be learning institutions should be a priority for those interested in promoting sustainable long-term solutions for Africa.

The paper examines youthful practices in the Samburu pastoralist age set system as they evolved into tropes of warrior girlfriends inciting masculine violence. Through a close examination of a well-publicized Kenyan court case surrounding the suspicious death in 1931 of Theodore Powys, a British settler, this paper documents the shaping of a discourse about feminine agency and masculine bravado among the youth that eventuated in harsh state-sponsored collective punishment of a pastoralist Samburu community. Colonial officers and European settlers strategically deployed Samburu youth “culture” in the form of girls’ sexuality and young men’s martial role in the tense, globally significant milieus of land policy and conflict in ways that persist in the twenty-first century. Thus, girls’ sexuality has had political implications that far exceed the lives of individual girls.

Whilst mobility has long been a key theme within African archaeology, its study has usually focussed on cases of far-ranging nomadism, particularly amongst ‘hunter-gatherer’ pastoralist populations. Conversely, changes in the form and distribution of sedentary settlement have most commonly been studied across wide spatio-temporal ranges that do not consider the role of mobile livelihood practices at scales appreciable to the people who actually performed them. This paper seeks to rectify this scholarly lacuna through the practical application of the concept of ‘shifting sedentism’ amongst the communities of Kenya’s northern Elgeyo Escarpment. Combining archaeological/contemporary household survey data with local oral histories, this paper explores how the incremental movement of individual housing compounds has contributed to the gradual shift of Marakwet settlement across the landscape over the past two centuries. Shifting patterns of residence will be linked with broader trends in mobile livelihood practice that extend across the surrounding landscape and run through multiple generations. These practices have themselves adeptly incorporated many major changes to community lifeways—including the introduction of new crops, Christian missionisation, road building and the growth of small commercial centres. Such practices embody a particularly flexible approach to socio-cultural continuity, in which situational mobility has been vital in ensuring the overarching resilience of these communities and the rugged landscape they call home. Fine-grained and multi-disciplinary approaches are key to the recognition of mobility’s importance within such otherwise sedentary contexts, and it is hoped this particular study will inspire further such efforts across the continent.

This review examines the existing tobacco control research done in the country. It further identifies key gaps present in research and gives recommendations on priority research areas required to implement effective tobacco control programmes. Published literature, technical reports and reports by the Ministry of Health were reviewed. It included studies that measure tobacco use and its effects, monitor progress of tobacco control, or articles that are discussing tobacco control policy. The review was conducted in January 2013 and included 18 papers. There are six studies that assessed the prevalence of current tobacco consumption which yielded prevalence's of between 3.8%-19%. Only one study tried to determine an association between Tobacco use and Health. Studies that monitored progress of legislation indicated that the country lacked coordinated efforts for tobacco control, enforcement was weak and monitoring of the existing tobacco legislation was poor. This review has demonstrated that Kenya has made efforts to generate knowledge on tobacco control through research. However there is lack of research that demonstrates the effects of tobacco consumption on health and studies that detail the impact of the various tobacco control interventions.

This paper seeks to establish the effect of region of residence on neonatal and post-neonatal mortality inKenya, using the 2003 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey data. The results show significant regionalvariation in neonatal and post-neonatal mortality. Both neonatal and post-neonatal mortality were alsofound to vary significantly according to household wealth status, household water supply, and toilet facility,maternal age at birth, preceding birth interval; antenatal visits and type of place of delivery. It was only postneonatalmortality that also varied significantly according to maternal education.The study recommends that concerted efforts be made to reduce high neonatal and post-neonatal mortalityin the high mortality areas. These could entail strengthening existing family planning, child survival and HIV/AIDS programmes alongside improving households’ access to piped water supply and household hygiene practices.

The main question pursued in this paper is how power is performed and manifested in some of the dramatic texts by post-colonial African writers, especially in the infamously dictatorial contexts such as Kenya. A corollary question raised is how the politically minded dramatist survives, and what indeed are the dramatic ingredients that have made for perishing, imprisonment, banishment and exile in those same circumstances. Lastly, and in passing, the question is posed: what is the role, if any, of the 'Kenyan subaltern', so to speak, in his historical predicament, in the presumed and foregoing relations of power? These questions are answered by way of a comparative foray into the works of two Kenyan playwrights, Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Francis Imbuga. An attempt is made to theorise the implications of one's ' lives and methods' as represented by the world famous and widely known, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, in fact better known as a major African novelist, and the intensely, even satirically dissident, Francis Imbuga. It is recognised that there is a need to subject the formal elements deployed by some post-colonial African playwrights to more comprehensive analyses, and to in fact, interrogate their own representations of history. A major interest here is to re-read the aesthetic, and/or other formal parameters, especially those outside the political domain that seem to have made Francis Imbuga 'survive', including within the educational curriculum, in spite of his intensely and sometimes highly subversive body of plays. By comparison, Ngugi's methods are [re]considered in the play, The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, in an attempt to indicate why the dramatist's methods and in-built artistic strategies are critical, not just to our understanding of the reaction of the political establishment, but equally so, to Ngugi's continued prominence in the readings and interpretations of colonial (and postcolonial) Kenyan political history.