Search

Amid a rise of misinformation worldwide, this paper examines digital misinformation literacy as it relates to COVID-19 news in East Africa. The study is grounded in inoculation theory and contributes to the body of scholarship examining misinformation literacy beyond the Western world. Data came from a comparative, cross-national survey in Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda (N = 3,203), making this the largest known empirical investigation into digital misinformation literacy in the region within the context of a pandemic. Paper surveys were distributed throughout all three countries in 2021. The data revealed differences in actual and perceived misinformation literacy levels. Kenyans and Rwandans were better at detecting false COVID-19 statements in the media, whereas Ugandans were better at detecting true messages. Similarly, Kenyans' and Rwandans' perceived levels of digital misinformation literacy were higher than Ugandans'. Regarding perceived exposure to COVID-19 information, Kenyans felt they were exposed to fake COVID-19 news online more often than Ugandans, who felt more exposed than Rwandans. This research contributes to the growing literature on digital misinformation literacy, an area which isn't significantly studied in many world regions, especially in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change has been identified as a major challenge in the achievement of sustainable development especially for developing countries like Kenya. There has been a wide acknowledgement that there is a need for long-term strategies for the industry players to reduce their contribution to climate change in line with other industries. Industries and societal sectors have sought ways of mitigating the causes of climate change. The Second International Conference on Climate Change and Tourism, held in Davos, Switzerland, on 3 October 2007, provided practical guidelines for the industry in response to climate change. This paper seeks to evaluate the adoption of the ‘Davos Declaration’ among selected Mombasa hotels in terms of water, energy and waste management. Results indicate that despite wide knowledge among hoteliers on the impacts of climate change and the role hotels can play in its mitigation, most hoteliers are slow in adopting the mitigation measures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The debate on the benefits of renewable electrification in late industrializing economies has mostly focused on improved electricity access and climate mitigation arguments. The literature pays less attention to understanding the opportunities for sustainable industrialization. This paper contributes to the latter with insights from a case study of Solinc East Africa, a Kenyan solar module manufacturer that has remained in the market, despite intense competition from imports of low-cost solar panels. Drawing on in-depth fieldwork in the solar energy sector in Kenya, we apply a global value chain framework to explore how and why Solinc has been able to sustain its business. Our findings highlight the challenges of localizing solar manufacturing in Kenya and suggest it may only be possible in rare instances. Specifically, a unique combination of circumstances and factors were revealed that enabled Solinc to gain several advantages including (i) initial access to knowledge and materials from upstream linkages; (ii) downstream integration and partnerships with key distributors and customers; (iii) close proximity to customers; and (iv) provision of complementary and increasingly high value-added services. Our findings present a more positive perspective on the localization of related services, which we argue deserves more attention in the sustainable industrialization debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In resource poor environments, identifying those most in need of limited available resources is challenging. Kenya's older persons cash transfer programme (OPCT) targeted at the most poor used a 2-stage targeting process to identify beneficiaries, combining community-based selection with a proxy means-test. This paper investigates whether the process "correctly" identified targeted vulnerable older people in Nairobi's informal settlements and whether receipt of the OPCT resulted in an improvement in perceived financial wellbeing. Regression results show that individuals with greater need were covered under the OPCT. Using propensity score matching, the paper evidences that the OPCT improved subjective financial wellbeing among beneficiaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last two decades have seen an increase in climate financing channelled to the Global South from multiple sources, putting a spotlight on climate finance coordination challenges in recipient countries. However, the climate finance coordination debate has largely been centred at climate finance provision at the global level. Emerging literature has called on recipient countries to establish effective climate finance coordination mechanisms. Yet, the calls have not clarified what accounts for an effective coordination mechanism. This paper addresses the gap by analyzing stakeholder perceptions of effective climate finance coordination in Kenya. Kenya has instituted a legal and institutional framework to guide climate finance coordination, but challenges of coordination persist. Using the political economy framework, the paper analyzes political economy factors influencing stakeholder perceptions and climate change policy implementation to identify political contestations that need to be reconciled. Data is drawn from relevant literature, 29 key informant interviews and 4 focus group discussions at the national level in Nairobi and at the sub-national level in Turkana County. Deductive thematic analysis is adopted for coding and analyzing data. Results indicate that different ideologies, interests, incentives, politics, power relations and contestation over resources largely influence stakeholder perceptions of an effective climate finance coordination mechanism and climate policy implementation. The operationalization of the National Climate Change Council and the National Climate Change Fund are the most contested. The paper calls on policy actors to reconcile political issues of contention for recipient countries to institute coordination mechanisms that gain ownership and widespread legitimacy from stakeholders. Underlying political economy factors including different ideologies, interests, politics, incentives, power relations and contestation over resources largely influence stakeholder perceptions of effective climate finance coordination as well as climate change policy implementation. The consequential political contestations need to be reconciled; otherwise, the established coordination mechanism is less likely to gain ownership and widespread legitimacy from climate change stakeholders. This calls for meaningful and extensive stakeholder engagements and consensus building to minimize contention, particularly over the operationalization of the National Climate Change Council and the National Climate Change Fund in Kenya. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public imagination and academic scholarship present queer migrants as being uprooted due to their embodiment of non-normative sexual identities. Drawing from ethnographic research with a male sex worker-led organisation (SLO) in Nairobi, including 41 in-depth interviews with members, this paper explores this perceived uprootedness by highlighting Kenyan queer migrants' multi-layered and multi-dimensional social experiences of home. Using the concept of 'homing', the paper explores the men's lifelong efforts to feel at home, and the embeddedness of queer identities in this process. The SLO generates feelings of safety, acceptance and recognition and provides a 'second home' in the city. In the process of creating ties with chosen families in the city, the men still maintain close ties with family back in their villages, while economic opportunities induce back-and-forth mobilities. The men's individual trajectories might fluctuate yet still fit within a more linear route in which they aspire to acquire land and properties in their ancestral homeland. The analysis of queer homing supports a reimagining of queer people's mobilities that stresses their embeddedness in society and illustrates how it relates to the 'queering' of queer in the African context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper assessed linkage amongst governance mechanisms and efficiency of insurers in Kenya over 8 year period from 2013 to 2020. The study estimated the efficiency of insurers using DEA approach in light of previous literature during the first stage. During the second stage, the bias-corrected efficiency scores were regressed against corporate governance (CG) proxies and control variables using SW (2007) approach on a sample of 53 insurers. Using this two-stage, bootstrapping SW approach, the study documents that the Kenyan insurers are technically inefficient. Overall, the paper presents evidence showing that CG variables influence technical efficiency of insurers in Kenya. Precisely, board independence, gender diversity and audit quality positively and significantly impact Kenyan insurers' technical efficiency. Further, the paper finds that size of the board negatively affect Kenyan insurers' technical efficiency. However, the study established insignificant relationship between CEO duality, intensity of board activities and technical efficiency. The paper makes contribution to the bourgeoning reservoir of empirical works on the insurers' CG-efficiency nexus from an emerging market perspective. Particularly, the article offers empirical insights on some of the least studied CG proxies such as gender diversity, quality of audit and intensity of board activities. The research outcomes also have practical implications for regulators, academia, insurers, government policy makers, practitioners, shareholders and consumers of insurance products by raising their awareness on the influence of CG proxies on the efficiency of the insurers. This is especially beneficial in countries that are pursuing CG and efficiency policy reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper theorizes the gendered consequences of refugee dispossession for social reproduction, focusing on Ethiopian refugees in Nairobi, Kenya. We analyze the Kenyan refugee regime as structured by colonial legacies of racialization and by neo-colonial global political economy strategies of managing 'surplus' populations. We demonstrate that refugees' ongoing experiences of interpersonal and structural violence constitutes an attack on their capacity for social reproduction and argue the 'feminization of refugee survival' is an important gendered consequence. We identify two transnational displacements that produce a new form of racialized enclosure and the alienation of refugees from the means of social reproduction. The first transnational displacement occurs due to their dispossession from support infrastructure for social reproduction in their origin country, and in the host country. A second, invisible but racialized transnational displacement is the refusal of global North countries to take on the anticipated welfare costs of refugee social reproduction. Transformative and re-generative approaches to refugee social reproduction would need to address both forms of displacement. The paper thus urges IPE scholarship to recognize that the crisis of refugee social reproduction is not only produced by global capitalist regimes, but also deeply structured by gendered, racialized, and colonial hierarchies of inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students in protracted crisis settings often face a range of challenges which combine to yield low education outcomes. This paper presents the results from a randomised controlled trial of weekend and holiday booster classes for 7th and 8th grade girls in Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, that aimed to improve girls' education outcomes and increase transition rates from primary to secondary school. While qualitative results suggested numerous advantages of the booster classes, including more freedom to ask questions, smaller class sizes, and kinder teachers, the program did not yield statistically significant effects on learning outcomes, school attendance or noncognitive skills. Mixed-methods research suggests that the limited impacts may stem from implementation challenges including irregular booster class attendance and a lack of appropriate teaching materials. More broadly, the results show the importance of accounting for implementation challenges in the reporting of impact evaluation results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The papers in this special issue describe evaluations of the scaling journey of five different education programmes operating in humanitarian crises. This introduction first presents the research context for these evaluations followed by a synthesis of the overarching barriers and facilitators to scaling across three domains: (1) context, (2) business model, and (3) advocacy and ownership based on a qualitative synthesis. The synthesis showed that implementers often started multiple pilot projects in different contexts rather than scaling-up in one context. We also present a summary of impacts on learning outcomes from impact evaluations of three of the five education programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws from two experiences with decentralisation in Kenya to illustrate the different ways through which the central government has sought to bolster its power at the expense of the local government in the country’s capital, Nairobi during periods of vertically-unified authority. In the first instance, it examines the years between 1983 and 1992 during which the central government appointed a Commission to replace the elected Nairobi City Council. The second period that is examined is between 2017 and 2022 when certain devolved functions were transferred from the elected Nairobi City County Government to a newly established institution appointed by the President, the Nairobi Metropolitan Service. During both periods authority was vertically unified with the ruling parties also being in control of the city. Drawing on a series of interviews with various stakeholders and inhabitants of informal settlements, the paper argues that contrary to what much literature suggests, recentralisation of urban governance not only occurs in situations of vertically-divided authority but can also occur where authority is unified. Some of the conditions that enabled these power consolidation moves together with the outcomes that these generated are also examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses power struggles in the legislation-making processes that produced the Kenyan Community Land Act (CLA), which was called for by Kenya's 2010 Constitution and drafted between 2011 and 2016. It delves into policy debates and multi-actor negotiations that revolved around the redefinition of authority over customarily-held lands in Kenya. The CLA responded to tenure insecurity resulting from historical land dispossessions and on-going land grabbing with policy provisions intending to register (and thus secure) customarily-held lands as the private property of a community, which was officially recognized as a legal persona. Policy debates held during the reform process often drew on binary narratives about land reforms, presented as either market-promoting or community-protecting, thus obscuring institutional power struggles that actually featured legislation-making, which are dissected in this paper. Although the fast-changing empirical realities of Kenyan customary land regimes often defy the 'market versus community' binary, the ultimate policy compromise of the CLA of 2016 was based on the notion of community ownership of land, which hybridizes elements of both these narratives of land reform. The paper argues that studying the power struggles that produced the Act in historical perspective goes far in explaining its hybrid character. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing countries have recognised the need to strengthen their agricultural extension services as an engine for improving productivity, reaching marginalised, poor and female farmers and addressing new challenges, such as environmental degradation and climate change. However, structuring effective and viable extension systems remains a major challenge in most places. This paper studies the Plantwise extension programme in Kenya, an initiative that supports and increases collaboration among actors in the national plant health system, establishes and maintains a network of plant clinics – a physical interface between farmers and crop protection experts – to address the needs of smallholders, and collects key information in the process that can be used for informing policy and for monitoring and evaluation purposes. To assess the programme in Kenya, we conducted a longitudinal mixed-methods evaluation of the programme from 2014 to 2018. Our results show that Plantwise has altered the way the Government of Kenya addresses crop protection. The programme is innovative and improves knowledge at multiple levels. At the farm level, Plantwise has contributed to improvements in the use of agricultural practices, inputs and maize productivity, a major staple crop. The results show that the Plantwise approach is a reasonable alternative to other agricultural extension systems that support smallholder farmers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Critical African Studies is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd 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.)

We studied innovation processes in agriculture and nutrition to discuss a scaling approach that encompasses the technical, institutional, and behavioral dimensions of change. To understand dynamics across these dimensions, we analyzed farmers' innovation processes through two analytical lenses: farmer-centered and structural. Focus group discussions in Kapchorwa, Uganda, and Teso South, Kenya, looked at farmers' choices of innovations. Individual interviews and stakeholder workshops at both study sites increased understanding of the local innovation system. To address local challenges, strive for livelihood aspirations, and fulfill personal taste preferences, farmers selected and adapted practices promoted by a research project. A wide range of additional support providers encouraged farmers to develop innovations in agriculture, marketing, and nutrition. By promoting innovation as a process rather than an outcome, it is possible to address context-specific needs and enhance farmers' adaptive capacities. Scaling these processes necessitates the involvement of innovation support service providers in order to create an enabling environment for experimentation. Analytical dualism highlights the different roles of human agency and structures in innovation processes needed to design successful scaling strategies. This paper sets out a novel approach to understanding the increasingly discussed dimensions of scaling by linking them with concepts from innovation studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Very few Kenyan universities offer modules on Gender or Feminism in their courses. Women are largely under-represented and very few hold senior positions. Due to the few numbers of female faculty, mentorship for young female scholars is lacking. Feminist writing by Female Kenyan geographers in professional geography journals is limited. Collective action among female geography faculty is also largely absent. This is largely due to the lack of feminist advocacy and policies in the universities. My journey to becoming a feminist geographer has received little or no support from the university. I have taken personal initiatives to link up with local and transnational gender associations in order to get insights on current feminist scholarship issues. My lived feminist experience and observations of the struggles of ordinary women in everyday livelihood negotiation have been my main motivation for continuing to do feminist work. Thus, my feminist work has concentrated on women in marginal economic informality. This paper presents my journey as a feminist geographer. It begins with a discussion on the state of feminist geography in three universities in Kenya namely, University of Nairobi, Kenyatta University and Egerton University. This is followed by a presentation of my journey toward becoming a feminist geographer in the absence of a supportive infrastructure. My journey has been inspired by my lived experience. The paper concludes with a call for a concerted effort for feminist advocacy in Kenyan Geography departments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food security represents a key challenge in most Sub-Saharan African countries and in Kenya in particular where still a relevant share of the population lives below a minimum dietary energy consumption. Kenya addresses this concern with a noteworthy policy mix, aiming at giving to the agricultural sector a leading task in improving food security. This paper evaluates the impacts on food security of expanding fertilizer capacities in Kenya, combined with a set of additional policy changes targeting fertilizer use. In a top-down analysis, a specific Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model is linked with a microsimulation approach. Scenarios present overall positive effects on key food security aggregates. The same is true for welfare. Nevertheless, the heterogeneity of households across and within regions suggests that improving input productivity through better market access and service extension are critical to reducing possible discrepancies across farmers, households and regions. The paper concludes on the need for a sound policy mix since increasing fertilizer production alone is not enough to enhance food security evenly. Among accompanying measures, intensifying extension services are essential especially for smallholders in their acquisition of better knowledge on the use of agricultural inputs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper adopts Leiper's ([1990]. Tourist attraction systems. Annals of Tourism Research, 17(3), 367–384. https://doi.org/10.1016/0160-7383(90)90004-B) tourism system theory to examine the impact of COVID-19 on Kenya's tourism sector. The authors argue that tourism remains an important source of national revenue in Kenya and the severe negative effects of the pandemic as well as the resulting government measures to curb the spread of the disease threaten to undermine the gains made in recent years to revive the sector. The paper identifies that while much emphasis has been put on the impact of the disease on countries' national health systems and its epidemiology, few studies have been conducted to examine the relationship between COVID 19 and the tourism sector, especially in developing countries. The paper provides researchers and practitioners with an analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on the social and economic dimensions of tourism in Kenya and concludes with a set of recommendations that can shape Kenya's post-pandemic tourism sector recovery plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses experiences of teaching Canadian literature in the Department of Literature, University of Nairobi, Kenya. For a long time, the University of Nairobi syllabus required that teaching Canadian literature, or any foreign literature for that matter, should be related to an African experience. This paper explores a few possible but unworkable ways on how one could relate teaching Canadian literature to an African experience as a way of establishing its relationship to students in Nairobi, Kenya, which is over 10 000 kilometres away from Canada. On the whole, the paper argues that an effective approach to teaching the literature has been formalist that takes into account fidelity to the nature and function of literature, even as it reveals the universal in the particular that makes the form and content of Canadian literature relevant to Kenyan as well as to African experiences. In the end, the paper points out the past experience of teaching and learning Canadian literature must have been valuable to both student and teacher as two seminars held outside the university demonstrate that Kenyans can relate to it for — after all — literature is universal in the particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a conceptual paper outlining a framework to analyse the main barriers linking knowledge production and application in the area of health in developing countries. It does so through a broad mapping and rethinking of the role of social and technological innovation in health systems strengthening. An analytical framework called the 4F framework – where the four Fs stand for Form, Field, Flows and Functions – is presented. By conducting a very high-level analysis of the barriers and enablers in knowledge production and application in the health sector in Kenya we give an indicative overview of the 4F Framework's potential. The empirical analysis suggests knowledge is often siloed into particular areas. At the macro level, there is insufficient focus on knowledge exchange between policy sectors i.e. health, industry, education. The analysis suggests that the framework provides a means to move from building 'health and wellbeing systems' to focusing on 'competence building systems in the area of health and wellbeing' which will provide a longer term holistic approach to health systems strengthening. The paper ends by presenting a number of recommendations for policy makers to ensure enhanced up-take of both technological and social innovation in health systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tick-borne diseases (TBDs) are major constraints for wildlife, livestock production and human health. Chemical acaricides are widely promoted for the control of TBDs despite the uncertainty that farmers and state support can manage TBDs. This paper explores how spatial biopolitics related to TBDs are enacted by livestock keepers in Laikipia, Kenya. The results show that control of TBDs is the product of indigenous knowledge of pastoral farmers and western veterinary thought with two different logics, sometimes converging but often at odds. The analysis reveals power relations, tensions and contradictions emerging from an attempt to impose a western model for the management of TBDs resulting in marginalization of the pastoralists and their livestock. This paper shows that a practice-based approach, focused on situated agency, can provide an empowering way of understanding the spatial biopolitics of acaricide use and management of TBDs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agro-biotechnology deployment has been very slow in Africa, yet it has potential for enhancing sustainable development and industrialization. This paper attempts to understand the underlying factors that characterize the new technologies' deployment process. It takes buildup of innovation capabilities as the point of interrogation considering that very few products have received regulatory approval for large-scale commercialization in Africa. It uses Kenya's agro-biotech innovation system as a case study. The study finds that creating and accumulating innovation capabilities is much broader than research and development (R & D) capability and entails institutional capabilities that are needed to enhance biotech innovation that may lead to a sustainable industrialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines an emergent naming subculture gaining popularity among ethnic Luo in the urban areas of Mombasa and Nairobi. The paper posits that the naming pattern is embedded in the development of Kenya's ethnopolitical landscape which has placed ethnic Luo at an economically, socially and politically disadvantaged position. Though popular in linguistic and anthropological circles, the field of anthroponymy has received little attention from Africanist historians. This dearth is especially curious since naming systems still bear significant meaning to large segments of the continent's populations. Names are pointers to identities; identities that have been used world over to create binaries of 'us' and 'them'. Every so often, identities have been determinants of individuals' primary existence. Because of its centrality in existentiality, societies constantly consolidate, manipulate and restructure identities in order to fit in, dominate or survive. This evaluation of the development and changes of Luo naming system is therefore an attempt at understanding identities reimagined to adapt to a society's history, systems and structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solicited diaries in audio, written and online forms are increasingly used in qualitative data collection. However, most studies using this approach are set in high-income, high-literacy country settings. This paper discusses the opportunities and challenges of this approach in a low-income, low-resource, low-literacy setting. We used solicited audio-recorded diaries to explore the financial lives of low-income women in Kenya during the COVID-19 pandemic. We enrolled 24 women to submit diary entries every day for seven days. We found that the audio-recorded diaries worked well with low-income women in Kenya, which has high penetration of cell phone ownership. The diaries provided textured, detailed insights into participants' day-to-day challenges, fluctuations, and coping strategies while relying less on recall. Nevertheless, the approach required two pilots to perfect, which may be challenging when research resources and time are limited. This study provides timely evidence on the use of audio-recorded solicited diaries in low-income settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While much of the evidence about innovation amongst SMEs in many developing countries have sought to examine the factors that enhance the propensity of a firm to innovate, far less effort has gone into assessing the factors that hamper it. This paper follows the latter literature to provide an explanation of firm innovation failure amongst SMEs in Kenya by focusing exclusively on external obstacles. By relying on the World Bank Enterprise Surveys and defining innovation as involving product and process innovation, we showed that factors such as political instability and infrastructure, measured as access to electricity, can be critical to firm innovation. We also found that the effects could be context-specific, as the results differ based on various firm characteristics, including firm type, sector, age and size. Our findings provide important policy implications about firm innovation in Kenya as well as the understanding that providing a more conducive business environment is not only critical to enhancing various firm activities but also enhancing innovation performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars tend to present either face-to-face or mediatised audiences as the principal target for election campaign rallies. However, a close eye on the staging of, and popular engagement with, campaign rallies during Kenya's 2022 elections reveals that they constituted a hybrid form of political communication that simultaneously targeted face-to-face and mediatised audiences with tailored messages. Not only were rallies at all levels characterised by such hybridity but also at the presidential level, rallies came to dominate candidates' diaries and the traditional and social media coverage of them leading to what I coin a rally-centric campaign. This paper analyses these empirical realities and the implications for how we should study and conceptualise election rallies and campaigns. It does so by focusing on the relationship between rallies, media coverage and popular engagement with a particular focus on social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing the supply of forest ecosystem services in the tropics is on the agenda of most developing countries' forest policies and most importantly in Kenya which is a low forest cover country. Evidence from past empirical impact assessments show numerous limitations in these assessments such as complexities within local forest communities and challenges in accessing relevant ecosystem services and household income data for impact assessments. This paper attempts to address some of these limitations by estimating joint ecosystem services and household livelihood outcomes at the same time. A survey protocol was designed, pre-tested and implemented with 370 households in two (2) out of the ten (10) forest ecological conservancies in Kenya and with secondary data on selected ecosystem services outcomes. Propensity score matching estimates of the treatment effects of the treated from participation in conservation association show a significant income loss (−57600.11) for households participating in a conservation association with a positive effect on erosion control (3.49) and biodiversity conservation outcomes (0.071) in the Nzoia catchment area. The paper concludes recommending the introduction of a payment scheme with CBCAs household members in reforestation and afforestation programs in the Basin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Similar to previous polls, the 2017 elections in Kenya were closely contested in all the seats. During the 2017 polls, however, social networking sites were widely employed, including in campaigns where candidates not only set up websites but also employed bloggers and social media managers to manage their social media accounts and constantly post their campaign messages. As this paper notes, while social media fostered access to important information on the elections, it was also used to spread fake news intended mainly to win over voters, create fear and alarm, and sometimes disparage some of the independent institutions that were managing the elections. Using data collected during and after the August 8, 2017 General Election and October 26, 2017 repeat presidential contest, this paper examines how fake news was used to advance different political agendas. It answers two main questions: What was the nature of the fake news during the 2017 elections? And, what were the implications of the spread of fake news in the 2017 elections? An examination of these issues will provide a deeper understanding of how fake news featured in Kenya's political discourse in the 2017 elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the Special Collection 'Youth, the Kenyan state and a politics of contestation'. It focuses on youth and the heterogenous ways this social category responds to inordinate state action. Specifically, we foreground the various roles the Kenyan state has played in the construction and politicization of Kenyan youth across time and space. The introduction frames the papers in the Special Collection within a three-pronged argument: First, while we present youth as heterogeneous social category, we argue that their similar experiences of state surveillance and violence warrant analyzing them through a comparative lens. Secondly, we reject ahistorical renderings of youth politics often presented in youth bulge studies, arguing that such analyses have served to disregard and delegitimize the political grievances of Kenyan youth and flatten the diversity of their political activities. Finally we call for an approach to the study of youth politics, which seeks to expand 'the parameters of the political', taking oft-neglected informal spaces of youth political activity as important discursive and material sites of investigation. Taking these spaces seriously as objects of analysis, the papers provide a nuanced assessment of youth as political actors, which problematize reductive dichotomous narratives of youth politics that pit resistance against co-optation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite substantial research on exporting in Africa, there has been negligible if any empirical research on a choice between regional and extra-regional markets as the locus of firms' expansion. Using multiple-case studies, this paper provides an in-depth analysis of the drivers of exports revenue from extra-regional markets. The paper also explores whether two main theories, transaction cost economics (TCE) and resource-based view (RBV) compete or complement each other in explaining the choice of this market category. Data and information from an open-ended interview with four firms and five supporting institutions show that country-specific advantages attract investors with superior resources and capabilities to lucratively exploit preferential market opportunities in extra-regional markets, particularly USA. When choosing the latter over regional markets, firms anchor their operations in the global value chains, the TCE and RBV intertwine in providing further explanations. In conclusion, this study urges governments and business managers targeting high-value markets outside Africa to tie buyer-driven industries such as clothing to similar value chains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper results from a year-long ethnographic study spent with a group of women on the Kenyan coastline who provide older male European tourists with friendship and intimacy. However, for the most part these are asymmetric relationships for while in many instances the men experience emotional feelings of tenderness for their girl-friends (albeit based on concepts of being with an "exotic" woman), for the women a mzungu (a foreign long-term male client perceived as wealthy) represents a potential richer life-style. The paper describes the practices engaged in by the women as they entertain their clients in a theater of romance based often on a deceit and where to survive emotions are on the one hand faked and on the other require self-delusion and distancing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With increasing population and motorization, Kenya as well as other African countries are faced with a tragic road traffic accidents (RTA). This paper looks at 5-year (2015–2020) data downloaded from National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) website, to identify trends and review progress of the traffic accidents in the country. The objective is to assess the prevalence of accidents within affected groups and location to identify trends and generalized causative agency from the reported data. From literature review, research activity focused on RTA in the country is minimal compared to the social significance accidents poses. The data were extracted and classified using Latent Dirichlet Allocation, a machine learning algorithm modelled in Matlab to group reported accident briefs into general categories/topic which are closely related. Four categories were identified as leading causes of fatality in the country: Knocking down victims, hit-and-run, losing control and head on collision. The identified causes point to preventable driver's errors which agrees with other researchers. From trend analysis, fatalities and injuries have increased by 26% and 46.5%, respectively since January 2015 to January 2020. This paper found that injuries in vulnerable road users: pedestrians, pillion passengers and motorcyclist, has seen a foldfold increment compared to 2015 data. From the discussion, urgent fine-tuning of policing to protect vulnerable road user as well as curb the overly decried driver behavior is needed. The paper recommends fine-tuning of data collection, capturing details of accident that will be useful in modeling and data analysis for future planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Weather-related agricultural risks and limited access to credit are serious impediments to agricultural productivity and growth in developing countries. This paper describes a novel insurance linked credit model piloted in Kenya, where insurance markets are effectively absent, and farmers do not borrow because of the risk of losing their collateral. One of the challenges in deigning bundled credit products, in the absence of traded securities, is the actuarial pricing and risk rating of the insurance and the loan product. We develop a rainfall linked risk-contingent credit that transfers drought risk related perils from borrower to lender via insurance mechanism that provide a balance between business and credit risks for smallholder farmers. We describe the methodology used to design and rating of a risk-contingent structured operating agricultural credit instrument using CHIRPS rainfall data from 1981–2016 in Kenya. We illustrate the use of Monte Carlo methods to risk modelling that can be integrated within the general insurance and credit rating framework. The innovative design and methodology presented in this paper are as important as the product delivery mechanism and will be of interest to specialists in development economics and agricultural finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Barack Obama Sr's 1965 critique of the Kenya government's Sessional Paper number 10: ‘African Socialism and Its Application to Planning in Kenya’ reads today as remarkably shrewd and prescient – shrewd in its efforts to navigate the perilous political differences among the major figures and forces of the day including Jomo Kenyatta, Tom Mboya and Oginga Odinga, as well as the false securities of ideologies, in this case the messy, irresolvable debates over the relative values of African socialism, African tradition, and capitalism … prescient in its warnings regarding gratuitous privatisation of productive resources and public goods; excessive disparities in wealth; and uneven regional development. Indeed, he makes an almost forgotten case for the African state (and for good governance, progressive taxation, and effective regulation of private investment). The 1965 article is an improbable yet extraordinarily acute rehearsal of the best critiques of structural adjustment (and its privileging of the private sector against the state) in the 1980s and 1990s and of the failures of unregulated capital in our own era. In a time of spirited animation of big ideas in the first decade of African independence, Obama Sr offered his readers a lesson in the promise of pragmatics in the address to the difficult challenges of economic and political development, nationally and globally. Obama's text is a document to be understood in its specific moment in history. It is also a text with a significant history, to be read and understood again in our own time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper interrogates the role of cartoons in the discursive construction of nationhood and national identity with a specific focus on cartoons published in a Kenyan literary magazine named Kwani? between 2007 and 2008. Kwani? employs cartoons to archive specific events in Kenyan history and articulate a particular view of 'Kenyanness'. Cartoons act as a disruptive art form that guides the process of making meaning out of a text. This function allows cartoons to influence ideological perspectives on certain issues. The article draws on Gerard Genette's concept of the paratext, and Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of the carnivalesque to analyse how selected cartoons in Kwani? influence interpretations of Kenyan nationhood in the context of the 2007/2008 post-election violence. We focus on cartoons that depict the politics of male circumcision, violence in Kibera slums, and International Criminal Court cases that dominated Kenyan political discourse during and after the 2007 elections. The paper examines how the selected cartoons mediate discourses of nationhood and ethnicity in Kenya and concludes that cartoons published in Kwani? in the context of the violence reinforced ethnic polarisation in Kenyan political discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigated the impacts of education on women's empowerment in Kenya using six waves of nationally-representative KDHS data. Our study utilizes the change in educational structure in 1985 as an instrument and finds that women under the new system enhanced their schooling by approximately two years. One year of education prolongs women's timing of the first birth, decreases female genital mutilation for the first daughter, reduces intimate partner violence, and improves women's household decision-making. Our findings are robust to several robustness checks. We examined different paths to explain these results, including information exposure, partner matching, and labor market engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the sexual 'cleansing' of widows and subsequent inheritance is assessed for its socio-cultural significance. Although the practice has been well studied in the context of HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa, it has not been widely examined as an act of sexual violence against women. To address this gap, in-depth interviews were conducted with 27 widows aged 29 to 90 years in Siaya County in Southwest Kenya. A majority of participants stated the cleansing ritual was forcefully initiated, violently fulfilled, and frequently seen as rape. Findings from this study necessitate the identification of the cultural practice of widow cleansing as an act of violence against women. Doing so will facilitate the creation of a legal framework with which to act to eliminate the practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares BAT's business environment in Kenya and Uganda in light of the World Health Organization's (WHO) tobacco control initiative. It also illustrates the use of tobacco tax by Sub-Saharan African countries to address tobacco related conundrums. The comparison revealed elements of government ambivalence towards tobacco business and a possible recourse to tobacco tax to mollify global pressure against big tobacco. The paper uses the partial correlations between tobacco tax and basic economic development indicators across Sub-Saharan Africa and previous World Bank data as indicative of tobacco tax efficacy in controlling consumption in the region. It suggests that Sub-Saharan Africa may find regionally designed tax-based policy guidelines a palatable strategic alternative to global firms (such as BAT) that face a hostile global business environment. A united policy front that fits within the region's institutions can reduce complexity and create efficiencies through lower administrative costs across the region. Such action will make the region relatively more attractive (than it is currently) to foreign investors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

African states have undergone dynamic political processes ever since their struggle for independence. Students have played an important role in political developments and triggered processes of democratisation. In the course of recent waves of protests and political activism, however, students took a more ambivalent stance against both the state and the political elite. This report is based in parts on field research. It discusses the relation between student activism and the political elite in Kenya. During the overall change in the meaning and function of higher education, universities and student activism have played an important role in political development. This report analyses the education system on the basis of (qualitative) research on education and student activism in Kenya. The paper focuses on the education system as an important factor in the recruitment of political elites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Approximately 280 million people around the world suffer from depression, and the rates are higher among women than men. For women living in informal settlements in lower – and middle-income countries (LMICs) the prevalence and associated burden of depressive symptoms may be particularly high. The purpose of this paper was to explore factors associated with possible major depressive disorder (MDD) in a probability sample of women living in Mathare informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya and to identify potential points for intervention and/or support. Quantitative surveys were conducted with 552 women aged 18–75. Possible MDD was measured using the Patient Health Questionnaire and regressed on individual, household/familial-, and community/interpersonal-level factors. Findings highlight the potential importance of factors such as physical health, economic stress, access to water and sanitation, household and family dynamics, and neighbourhood/village differences in possible MDD among women living in informal settlements. We identify potential points for research, intervention and policy including: providing appropriate tangible assistance or interventions to reduce economic stress/strain; expanding access to water and sanitation and, in doing so, reducing potential burdens to physical health; providing and expanding healthcare to include mental healthcare; and investigating family dynamics and bolstering support for families, particularly for those experiencing conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial technology tools have been utilised to create readily available mobile loan platforms for urban-based, daily-wage earners in Kenya. From a financial lending perspective, this development signals greater inclusion and equality in formal bank financing systems. In this paper, however, we examine mobile loans and their repayment from the perspective of women who sell sex in Nairobi, drawing upon the qualitative findings of two community-based studies conducted in close collaboration with sex worker-led organisations serving the sexual health needs of their peers. Our findings suggest that mobile loans may undermine the financial security strategies and economic independence of sex workers, leaving these women in more precarious economic circumstances, which have been shown in other instances to have effects on sexual risk taking and vulnerability to HIV infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although internal structural factors in emerging democracies and factors related to the electoral process and contest remain indispensable in understanding post-election violence, they are not sufficient in an era of full-fledged neoliberal globalisation, enshrined in the Washington Consensus and the productivist development model enforced by the World Bank. Accordingly, this paper approaches electoral violence in Africa through the lens of unfettered, unregulated capitalism. Based on insights from Belgian historian Éric Toussaint, it assumes the posture that violent contestation of state power, in Kenya, is also indicative of the insatiable pursuit of profit, by global capitalists. Grounded in historical data from Human Rights Watch annual reports (1991–2008), it tests, through Kenya's first four multiparty elections conducted during the Moi and Kibaki eras, covering the period 1992–2007, the hypothesis that 'Aid and debt relief inconsistencies by donors and international financial institutions have emboldened the Kenyan government to disregard human rights, leading to impunity, which has yielded post-election violence'. It finds, partly, that 'donors seem willing to countenance harassment and intimidation of the Kenyan government's critics as long as the government continues to liberalize the economy and retain a multiparty system in name', an element that could also explain post-election violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article combines insights on colonial monetary policies and daily practices of money use, to discuss the impact of international monetary developments on the local usage of money during the rupee crisis in East Africa (1919–1923). To do so, the paper will follow two related lines of investigation. On one hand, it will analyse the protests against the depreciation of East African cents. Even if Africans were excluded from decision-making processes connected to currency, this organized protests offer an example of how Africans could make their voices heard in the official arena in which currency matters were discussed. On the other hand, the article will investigate individual acts of appropriation and rejection of colonial currencies that African societies developed during and after the rupee crisis. These acts partly altered the boundaries of subordination imposed by the colonial regime and made the process of colonial monetization a prolonged and negotiated transition that was, in part, shaped by monetary practices on the ground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper starts with an analysis of the twin purposes of an examination reform programme originally launched in Kenya during the 1970s: first, to broaden the spectrum of cognitive skills being tested; and second, to set up a feedback system based on the performance profiles, providing schools and teachers with guidance as to how pedagogy and learning might be strengthened. Then, in a change of time perspective, the paper looks back over 30 years of implementation experience, examining the reasons why some components of the original programme have proved more sustainable than others. A final section discusses three key issues which have emerged in recent years, and considers their implications for policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Patterns of HIV prevalence in Kenya suggest that areas where various cultural practices are prevalent bear a disproportionate burden of HIV. This paper examines (i) the contextual effects of cultural practices (polygyny, male circumcision) and related sexual behaviour factors on HIV prevalence and (ii) the extent to which specific cultural practices in a community/county might explain existing ethnic variations in HIV prevalence in Kenya. The analysis applies multilevel logistic regression to data from the 2012/13 Kenya AIDS Indicator Survey. The results reveal striking ethnic variations in HIV prevalence in Kenya. The prevalence of polygyny in a community is positively associated with HIV prevalence, while a higher level of male circumcision in a county is protective for both men and women. The effects of these factors are stronger for men than women at both individual and contextual (community/county) levels. These cultural practices and associated risk factors partly explain existing ethnic differences in HIV prevalence in Kenya, but there remain significant ethnic variations that are not explained by these cultural practices or related sexual behaviour factors. These call for stronger empirical evidence to offer stronger theoretical explanations and inform effective policy and practice to address HIV epidemic in adversely affected communities in Kenya and similar settings in sub-Saharan Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do legislative Committees in emerging democracies spend their time? Committees are organisational devices for expanding valuable legislative time. Existing works posit that Committee work reflects legislatures' need to rationalise their processes and outputs, acquire specialised expertise and information, and improve members' electoral prospects by maximising policy impact. However, not all legislatures have the capacity to significantly shape policy design, influence executive agency behaviour during implementation, or advance their members' political careers. This paper argues that in legislatures that fall in the latter category, Committee work focuses on maximising the personal benefit of individual legislators, as opposed to being geared towards policy impact or electoral goals. These findings increase our understanding of the industrial organisation of legislatures in emerging democracies where the executive-legislative balance of power favours the executive branch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how mobile communication and mobile banking is used by women in rural western Kenya (Elgeyo Marakwet), a resource-constrained area where women must carefully monitor the flow of money through their households. Also, women face structural inequality. Among other things, polygyny (one husband and several wives) is legal. Based on the inductive analysis of 25 interviews with women, and using the lens of intersectionality, we examine their use of mobile banking. We examine how mobile technology plays into the management of the household economy, and how it is used in extramarital relationships. We discuss how women use mobile communication in their collective savings groups (chama). We see how the mobile phone can be the locus of tensions within the household and how mBanking both supports the lives of the women but also how this can eventually undercut social support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to investigate how political and technical factors influence climate finance coordination in different country contexts. Emerging scholarly and policy literature calls for the improved coordination of climate finance to enhance the effectiveness of multiple sources of funding for adaptation and mitigation purposes, with country ownership over coordination emerging as a potential approach. However, few studies have examined how climate finance coordination unfolds at the national level in developing countries. This paper presents findings from a comparative assessment of climate finance coordination practices in Kenya and Zambia, drawing on semi-structured interviews, policy documents, and relevant literature. Specifically, the paper investigates how political and technical forces shape climate finance coordination in contexts with varying country ownership over the coordination process. We find that political factors relating to power dynamics, framings of climate finance, and vested interests play a strong role in shaping how actors interact, hampering coordination efforts within the climate finance landscape in both countries. This adds a new dimension to calls for greater country ownership, which we suggest needs to be paired with a critical examination of political struggles and contestation. Underlying political factors relating to conflicting vested interests, different framings and discourses, political will, and power dynamics play a substantive and overarching role in shaping climate finance coordination in Kenya and Zambia. These political factors limit the extent to which greater country ownership translates to better or more effective coordination of climate finance; as such, ownership needs to be examined in the context of political struggles and contestation. Instead of just aiming to improve coordination through more formalized coordination structures, capacity building and reduced fragmentation, countries also need to be more transparent and acknowledge the deep-seated interests within the climate finance landscape, to make visible the winners and losers of various coordination mechanisms and structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mental health research is needed in African countries in order to improve quality of care at local levels. This paper presents the results of a study conducted in 2018 among one hundred care givers in two peripheral primary health care facilities in rural Kenya. Opened interviews were performed, with the aim of eliciting relevant issues. The body of knowledge generated by the Global Mental Health (GMH) movement was used as the theoretical frame of reference. Five broad topics emerged as particularly significant in the specific context of this study: a. a globally negative perception of mental illness; b. a lack of trained professionals associated with limited opportunities for task-sharing or task-shifting; c. an intense stigmatization of affected individuals; d. the importance of strengthening the collaboration between the formal health sector and traditional healers, and, e. the necessary efforts to be made in order to reach patients living in remote areas. Our study highlights the importance of actively detecting mental disorders, promoting initiatives to reduce stigma and adapting western designed tools for specific settings in low and middle income countries (LMICs). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Refugee children have often witnessed or experienced trauma, violence, and death. While conflict harms the psychosocial well-being and emotional development of children, an inclusive educational environment can serve as a safe haven for refugee students. Drawing on qualitative data collected between 2015–2017 in Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, including 81 semi-structured interviews and extensive feedback gathered during teacher training workshops, this paper examines the micro-level disciplinary practices among teachers that promote or impede the inclusion of refugee children. The paper presents the tension between teachers' own negative experiences with corporal punishment as students, and their justification for using corporal punishment as teachers. Additionally, it highlights the role that continuous professional development plays in making positive changes to teachers' beliefs and practices. The authors argue that providing a safe space for reflection and discussion on corporal punishment and positive discipline is pertinent to reducing negative practices and stress the key role teachers play in creating such environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]