W2A011K
<#/><I> <h> From negative liberty to positive liberty - towards a constitutional theory of change in Kenya </h>
<#/>This paper attempts to understand and interpret the current political changes in Kenya. <#/>In doing so, it constructs a theory that could assist in the explanation of these changes. <#/>In this effort, the paper traces the liberal theory of the State out which it extracts the concepts of negative liberty and positive liberty. <#/>It then becomes clear that negative liberty has to do with the defining of the limits of State power and the zoning, as it were, of the independence of the individual. <#/>It turns out to be an exercise in the vindication of the rights of man and the rights of the citizen. <#/>To this effect, the paper states that negative liberty, was and still is a basic constitutional principle of the modern State.
<#/>On the other hand, the paper points out that positive liberty is closely linked to the notion of democracy, or popular sovereignty. <#/>The concept of positive liberty, the paper concludes, consists in the people having a say in all decisions that affect them. <#/>Positive liberty is not content with limited government, it seeks to know who is governing and how he is governing.
<#/>The paper then straddles Kenya's constitutional experience across the two concepts (an exercise that brings out the graphic details in the contradictions between Chapter V of the Kenyan constitution and the Preservation of Public Security Act) and concludes that the current need for change emerges from the readiness to redefine the limits of State power (negative liberty) through democracy (positive liberty).
<#/>Kenya is at a constitutional crossroads. <#/>With laws that have been conspicuously tilted in favour of State power, there is now a fierce need to reverse the situation and transfer 'power to the people'. <#/>The repeal of Section 2A of the Kenyan Constitution, no doubt, heralded this new-found public thirst for more fundamental changes in the Kenyan laws. <#/>The rationale for state-oriented laws and constitution in Kenya is not difficult to find for two reasons, namely: a)the leadership's concept of liberty; and, b) pre-occupation with the element of peace and security.
<#/>It can be argued that the Kenyan leadership is still by far, what could be described as 'first generation' leadership. <#/>Those in it owe their origin, or their place in politics, at least for those in the top hierarchy, to the struggle for independence. <#/>In this sense, the political mind of this generation can be said to be closely attuned with that of Hobbes and Machiavelli. <#/>For them, like Hobbes, the 'liberty of the commonwealth' consists, as we know, in its independence. <#/>Machiavelli too, when speaking of political liberty (<foreign/>Vivere <foreign/>libero, <foreign/>stato <foreign/>libero), seems to have this meaning especially in mind. <#/>Liberty was to him primarily the absence of foreign rule, and only secondarily opposition to tyranny. <#/>The rule of his 'new prince' was justified in so far as it succeeded in establishing a strong government, not in restoring a kind of liberty which he considered no longer possible, at any rate in Italy, in view of the prevailing corruption of political life.
<#/>Thus the ideology which presided over the 'new principality' seems very far from being one of a 'liberal' type. <#/>Yet it is <-/worth while> pausing for a moment's reflection before accepting this judgement as final. <#/>It can in fact be asked whether the very demand for a strong state, for a firm foundation of law and order, which is so evident in both Machiavelli and Hobbes and which alone would suffice to explain the rise and success of absolute monarchy in Europe, was not in itself, notwithstanding every appearance to the contrary, a demand for a liberty of sorts.
<#/>Take the famous sentence at the beginning of chapter xvii of The Prince, one of the most outspoken, and perhaps one of the most terrifying, passages in Machiavelli: 'Caesar Borgia was reputed cruel; nevertheless, the cruelty of his repaired the Romagna, united it, and restored it to allegiance and peace.' Consider what are the benefits, the goods, the attainment of which justifies the merciless action of the new prince in Machiavelli's eyes: union, allegiance, peace. <#/>These are values closely similar to those which Hobbes invokes in order to prove the need to <-/foresake> the state of nature and to enter the 'civil state'.
<#/>Indeed, nothing is more revealing than the list Hobbes draws up of all the good things that are missed in the state of nature, with the clear implication that they can be purchased by putting an end to that state, i.e. by setting up a 'common power', a State.
<#/>'In such condition (he writes in one of the best-known and most impressive passages of Leviathan), there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instrument of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short'.
<#/>Here, as in a photographic negative, we get a clear picture of what are the values, the benefits which, according to Hobbes, are attained in the state. <#/>These values are both material and spiritual: they concern the comforts of life as well as the improvement of the mind. <#/>They are what in modern terms we should call 'cultural values'; and cultural values are always, in some way or other, associated with liberty, with the free display of human initiative and energy.
<#/>On the basis of the foregoing analysis of Machiavelli and Hobbes regarding the theory of the State, what justification can be advanced for comparison their mentality and that of the first generation of leaders in Kenya?
<#/>True, neither Machiavelli's nor Hobbe's State has much in common with the modern, 'liberal' State. <#/>The 'prince' of the one, the 'sovereign' of the other, know no brakes to their power. <#/>If freedom simply means independence, they alone are 'free', because their power is limited only by force and their will is the supreme law. <#/>Yet, the entrenched belief in Kenya that the country's Chief Executive is above the law, although not stipulated in the constitution, has over the years helped in mystifying the powers of the Chief Executive to the point of resembling the 'prince' and the 'sovereign'. <#/>Matters do not end there! The belief that the Chief Executive is above the law could be explained by the leadership's pre-occupation with peace and security. <#/>The Public Order Act and related laws that jealously guard the State through various explanations of state security have had a <-/cummulative> psychological effect on the people and the head of state on the concept of state power and those who wield it. <#/>To the people, the head of state is the state personified. <#/>The incarnation of the state. <#/>Granted this position, the head of state has seen no reason to equate his personal security to that of the state resulting in tyranny.
<#/>Nevertheless, if the purpose of power is to guarantee peace and security, the all-embracing action of law must come to a halt at a certain point, if only to allow the enjoyment of all those goods which are the fruit of peace and security. <#/>The justification of law and order lies precisely here. <#/>Thanks to them, those obstacles are removed which would otherwise prevent that enjoyment if peace and security vanished.
<#/>The spirit of the Kenyan law seems to subscribe to this notion of liberty, compelled to do so by its bias for State security. <#/>Yet, this </OM> a wholly negative approach to the concept of liberty. <#/><quote_><quote/> In other words, citizens are free only in that sphere which is not regulated by law: <foreign/>legis, <foreign/>libertas <foreign/>civium. <#/>Let us, then, give this liberty its proper name. <#/>Let us call it 'negative liberty' as Alexander d'Entreves does. <#/>But we do so on condition that in this respect we number even Hobbes among 'liberal' authors. <#/>For indeed the greatest philosopher of Absolutism seems to take a fairly generous view of what is or should be the liberty of the subject, if it includes 'the liberty to buy, and sell, and otherwise contract with one another; to choose their own abode, their own diet, their own trade of life, and institute their children as they themselves think fit; and the like'.
<#/>Thus, when from the origin of power we turn to considering its exercise, negative liberty appears as the first and perhaps the most significant justification of the modern state. <#/>Under that heading we can begin by listing both the removal of obstacles and the assurance of a sphere of individual independence described by Hobbes himself as the task of the State. <#/>But evidently that liberty could not be held to be secure or complete until a third condition was fulfilled, until the line was firmly drawn where power must be brought to a halt, until in one word, the limits of state action were definitely established.
<#/>It seems almost paradoxical that here once again it is Hobbes who points the way. <#/>He does so by pointing out that laws should be good laws. <#/>He points out that only such laws are to be approved which do not impose useless restrictions or burdens. <#/><quote_>'<quote/>
<#/>The analogy between laws and hedges is revealing. <#/>'Good laws' are only those which are indispensable for securing men's peaceful co-existence. <#/>They should act as boundaries to that sphere which is reserved for the decisions of individuals alone. <#/>Once again we are confronted with the concept of negative liberty; but this time that concept is used as a legal standard, as a measure of the limits which the State should not overstep; though, <-/ofcource> from Hobbe's standpoint, there is nothing to prevent it from doing so. <#/>It is fascinating to find the same taken up by Locke. <#/>For laws to act as hedges is to him their greatest merit and their proper task. <#/>Indeed, it is precisely by doing so that laws, contrary to Hobbe's opinion, are the condition of liberty, since <quote_><quote/>
<#/>Locke, of course, was and still is the chief philosopher of negative liberty. <#/>As a complete formulation of the liberal conception of the State, the Second Treatise of Government has probably been equalled only by another classic, John Stuart Mill's essay entitled, On Liberty. <#/>Mill discusses in more up-to-date language the problem of the defence of the individual against the pressure of social forces unknown in Locke's day. <#/>But both writers, like all others who share the same liberal inspiration, are concerned to secure that sphere of individual independence which Hobbes, and many 'absolutist' writers after him, regarded as a gracious gift from the sovereign. <#/>No doubt the principles to which they refer in defining the duties and powers and limits of State action are widely different.
<#/>Locke turns to the law of nature and of reason, which precedes the State, and to the natural rights of man, which are inalienable and <-/imprescriptible>. <#/>Mill appeals to the principle of utility, 'utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of a man as a progressive being.'Further, in defining the ends to be secured the emphasis is different.
<#/>To Locke the reason for the existence of the State, or to use his own words, the reason why men join together in the social compact, is the 'preservation of their lives, liberties and estates', the three basic goods which he sums up in one 'general name, property'. <#/>Mill on the other hand, draws up a long list of liberties which society must respect, but then he too sums them all up in a single sentence: legitimation> of power is linked to an essentially negative concept of liberty. <#/><-/<-/<-_<-/<-/<-/<-/<#/></I>
W2A012K
<#/><I> <h> Effects of Working Mothers on Child Development in Kenya </h>
<#/><#/><h> Child Rearing in African Traditional Society </h>
<#/>Child rearing in Kenya was <-/traditionaly> a responsibility of the mother, grandmother and other members of the extended family. <#/>Durojaiye (1976) observed that a traditional African child was born into a family where it was completely accepted regardless of the prevailing economic and domestic strains in the family at the time of the child's arrival. <#/>In the first two years of life, the child was almost in the company of the mother-experiencing her affection, a sense of belonging and having all his needs constantly met. <#/>As the child grew, it received informal education from the mother, other members of the extended family and also from the society. <#/>Those people were friendly, patient and never too busy for the child's needs. <#/>The values of the society were passed to the child by family members and they also socialized the child along the lines accepted by the society. <#/>As a result, the child grew trusting the world around him, becoming industrious and gaining confidence in herself or himself as he matured and approached independence from parents. 
<#/>With the rapid socio-economic changes pushing the majority of women into the work-force, the traditional child-rearing practices and the warm relationship between the child, the mother and the other members of the extended family are disappearing rather too fast. <#/>While it would be easier to argue that women would be better parents if they remain at home and take care of their children, it is important to understand why in today's society an increasing number of women have to work outside their homes.
<#/><h> Woman as a Worker and a Parent </h>
<#/>The option of working outside the home or not is a luxury that many Kenyan women cannot afford. <#/>Very few of them have the pleasure of deciding to work or not to work. <#/>Cochran and Bronfenbrenner (1979) outline three reasons why women work: (1) To provide through earned income some degree of independence for themselves and their families. <#/>(2) Working outside the home often brings with it regular and frequent social contact with workmates who may become friends and source of information. <#/>(3) Some people receive a great deal of intrinsic satisfaction from their jobs.
<#/>Together with the above reasons, an increasing number of women in Kenya are being educated and trained for various jobs. <#/>As a results, more women are interested in <-/persuing> a career. <#/>However, Morris and Miller (1980) <-/refering to> a recent study indicated that income remains the primary and overriding factor leading women to enter the job market. <#/>With consumer price index riding high and the real earnings adjusted for inflation going down, most women in Kenya have to work to supplement their husbands' earnings, and to improve the family purchasing power. <#/>Single mothers who are very many in this country have to work to provide sole financial support for their families.
<#/>Most of the working women are of child-bearing age and they have pre-school and school children. <#/>Considering the economic realities of raising the children which cannot easily be met by a single salary, women feel they should work to bring some income home. <#/>At the midst of the family responsibilities, many women have to struggle to keep a job no matter how intolerable in order to remain financially independent. <#/>Because of the pressing needs for more family income, some women entering the job market are forced to take more than one job to keep up with the family bills. <#/>For example, a woman might be employed in a certain firm and at the time run a private business at her spare time . <#/>This impairs their efforts in child-rearing because after the hard working day she becomes too exhausted to spend enough and quality time with her children - who need her so much. <#/>The woman is also left to handle a feeling of guilt that arise when she fears she has not given enough time to her family, her job and herself because of all these demands on her .
<#/>The number of working mothers is going to increase rather than decrease. <#/>Faced with a possibility of having to support themselves and their children some day, may be because of divorce, separation or the death of their partners, more and more women are preparing themselves for employable skills and work experience before they venture into parenthood, or even while already in it .
<#/>Lack of enough financial support has been known to have a negative effect on both children as well as the parents. <#/>Children suffer from basic deprivation which inhibits their development and endanger their survival. <#/>When parents can't provide for their children, we shall continue to witness child abuse, spouse battering , suicide or even general family violence. <#/>Poverty affects the children more than anybody else in our society.
<#/>Among other factors, inflation poses special problems for working mothers of pre-school children. <#/>Regardless of why women work, Morris and Miller (1980) observed that, the shift of their role has brought many changes in how children are reared, how marriages work and how women see themselves in the society. <#/>While they have to work, it is also becoming very difficult for women to find appropriate substitute to take care of their children when they are at work. <#/>Due to inflationary pressure, relatives and friends who would be available for babysitting have also taken jobs outside the home to meet their financial commitments. <#/>Furthermore many families with working mothers have moved to urban areas where most jobs are available and where life is more conducive for modern living. <#/>This means that grandmothers are also not available for babysitting. <#/>As a result, some children are left by themselves, others are taken to day-care <AmE/>centers but majority of them are left under the care of a housemaid who is employed to take care of family's responsibilities while the mother is at work.
<#/><h> Role of a Housemaid as a Mother Substitute </h>
<#/>Most of the employed housemaids are young <-/illitrate> girls or school <-/droupouts> who could not continue with their education for various reasons. <#/>Majority of them are under stress either because they could not continue with their education or because they are under financial difficulties and they had to take a maid's job which is not very reputable. <#/>It is unfortunate that in most cases, mothers do not know the background of the maids to whom they <-/handover> their responsibilities leave alone knowing where they come from. <#/>Sometimes mothers get house-maids through friends or relatives and before they learn enough about them, they have to <-/handover> their duties because they are also needed at work the following day. <#/>This is not fair not only to the children who will be left under the care of a total stranger but also to the housemaid who will be left juggling the work in strange environment. <#/>Due to the pressure of work and lack of enough experience, the house maid does the obvious work to please her master or in order to retain her job. <#/>Under such circumstances, it is the children's unseen needs that suffer. <#/>For example, the house might be kept clean, children might be washed and dressed in clothes while they are poorly fed. <#/>They might also be abused if they make the house and their clothes dirty as they play. <#/>Children need to be well fed and given enough time and assistance when playing if they are to grow properly. <#/>They don't need to be restricted too much as the housemaids tend to do to keep them and their environment clean. <#/>Discrediting the work of child-rearing by housemaids, Durojaiye (1976) <-/refering> to <orth>professor Lambo wrote: <quote_><quote/><#/>Though this child-rearing practice seems to be inevitable in our society, the effects it may have on the child himself, the family and the society at large has not been questioned in our society. <#/>The effect of this pattern of upbringing were expressed by Erik Erikson in his description of stages of psychological and cognitive development of a child . <#/>The stages are used in the paper as a yardstick to explain the situation relevant to child-rearing in Kenya today.
<#/>The first stage of development is from birth to one year. <#/>At this stage Erikson says the child learns to trust or mistrust the world around him. <#/>"Trust is fostered by consistency, continuity, and sameness of experience". <#/>The three elements mentioned above are lacking in today's pattern of child-rearing in Kenya. <#/>The mother usually goes back to work after about two months of maternity leave, leaving the baby under the care of the house-maid. <#/>Besides taking care of the baby, the house-maid is also responsible for other household chores including washing, cooking and general cleaning to mention a few. <#/>The maid has no experience in child-rearing whatsoever. <#/>Given the amount of work in the house, the maid's inexperience, and her age, attending the baby's needs may not be a priority except when inevitable and in many cases the maid may mishandle the baby. <#/>In the process the mother may notice the negligence and replace the housemaid, or the housemaid may run away in frustration . <#/>Before the end of this first stage, the mother may employ more than one housemaid, each one of them coming with different approach in child-rearing depending on her background and personality. <#/>The frequent changes of the housemaids means rapid changes in the way children are handled. <#/>The mother is also away from the baby most of the times and when she is home, the way she handles the baby is also different from the way the maid does. <#/>As a result of this inconsistency, the child learns to mistrust his environment.
<#/>The second stage is between 2—3 years. <#/>After the child learns either to trust or mistrust his environment, Erikson suggested that the child should be encouraged to do what he is able to do for himself at his own pace but with supervision. <#/>By so doing, he will develop a sense of autonomy. <#/>If people are impatient with him and tend to do most of the things for him, he learns to doubt his ability to deal with his environment and hence develop a sense of shame and doubt. <#/>Contrary to Erikson's view and that of the African tradition that a child should be patiently guided in learning to do some tasks for himself, today's society is in a hurry to finish one task and move to the next and they cannot stand children on their way. <#/>Neither the mother nor the mother substitute is patient enough even to let a child feed himself in case he messes up his clothes. <#/>Besides, the maid has to do so much and wants to finish the tasks before her master comes home. <#/>In some cases, the mother sets a day's routine for the baby and the maid is expected to adhere to it. <#/>This gives the child no time to learn and do things for himself. <#/>This approach makes a child develop a sense of shame and doubt that he can hardly do even the simple things for himself. <#/>That is why most of them have to be fed, dressed and washed even when they are of school age. <#/>This is very common in most of the urban homes where there are housemaids.
<#/>The third stage is between 4-5 years of age. <#/>According to Erikson, a child at this age needs to explore and experiment with his environment. <#/>If this is allowed and if all his questions are answered as he explores and experiments with their environment, there is a tendency for the child to become initiative. <#/>But if he restricted and made to feel his questions and activities are a nuisance, he develops a sense of guilt and become afraid of doing things by himself.
<#/>Due to lack of enough space-especially in urban areas and with the fact that the mother wants her house to remain <-/sportless> clean, some children are inhibited from exploring and experimenting with their surroundings. <#/>Some children are even beaten if they are found handling things they are not supposed to. <#/><#/></I>
W2A013K
<#/><I> <h> Law and Population Growth in Kenya </h>
<#/><h> I. <#/>INTRODUCTION </h>
<#/>While Kenya's population growth is said to be unprecedented in history, it is true that there are no explicit effective and operational laws which at present could be relied on to put a check on this trend. <#/>There are laws on paper which could be said to be <-/spill overs> of colonial legacy but which lack the institutional and administrative infrastructure to operate in the most efficient way to curb the run away population growth. <#/>What could be said to be more effectively operational are the so called traditional laws which are still observed and respected in many societies in the country. <#/>However these tradition laws are less respected by the present majority of the population, especially the youth under 20 years, who due to changing socio‑economic conditionals consider such laws outdated and only applicable to the generation of their parents. <#/>This could be one of the reasons why adolescent fertility now contributes 30% to the overall fertility of the country. <#/>There are no efficient established infrastructure to effectively apply these laws on the youth.
<#/>Thus, this gap between the traditional and the modern law is thoroughly exploited by the individuals and society in general to increase population growth in the country. <#/>For example there is no law stating the number of children one should have, there is no law which says who should use contraception and there is no law as to the number of wives one should have. <#/>These decisions are left to the individuals and the degree of execution and obedience rests entirely with the couple. <#/>Even in case of abortion which is generally considered illegal unless mother's life is in danger, evidence has it that apart from the medical personnel who do it privately, the traditional healers are doing even a more enterprising business due to low cost.
<#/>This paper first gives a general overview of Kenya's demographic situation pointing out the major determinants of the population increase over the years. <#/>These include fertility, mortality and migration. <#/>Secondly, the paper looks at how these factors operate to sustain the rapid population growth within the existing laws in the country. <#/>In so doing the gaps in such laws are pointed out and emphasis put on how they tend to promote population growth. <#/>The last part of the paper attempts to outline some of the possible solution that could be accommodated within the existing system in an effort to slow down the present tempo of rapid population growth.
<#/><h> II. KENYA DEMOGRAPHIC SITUATION </h>
<#/>With an annual growth rate of approximately 3.6, Kenya is said to have one of the fastest growing populations in the world. <#/>This rapid population growth has been attributed to both demographic socio-cultural as well as economic factors.
<#/>As already pointed out the demographic factors include fertility mortality and migration. <#/>These are actually influenced by the socio-cultural factors in determining the population size and structure.
<#/>The increase in population over the years based on the various censuses is given on table I, along with the estimated growth rates,
<#/>There is no doubt that there has been tremendous growth of population based on these figures. <#/>From an estimated 8 million people in 1962, the population has tripled by 1989. <#/>Although the growth rate for 1989 is lower, it should be remembered that this is an estimate which could be affected by biases in the data.
<#/>The substantiation of this growth of population over the years is also demonstrated by the figures in table 2 which shows the fertility and mortality indicators underlying the said population increase. 
<#/>Fertility in the table is measured by the total fertility rate - which is the average number of children a woman would have at the end of her reproduction period taken to be 50 years. <#/>This is shown to have increased to 8 by 1979. <#/>Mortality has also shown tremendous decline as indicated by  infant mortality rate (the number of infants who die before their first days. <#/>It is shown to have declined from 184 deaths per 1000 births to an estimated 72 deaths as of 1989. <#/>The implication of this decline is that many more children are saved and added to the already booming population there by contributing to the observed growth.
<#/>Migration can be said to have played a minor role in contributing to the observed population growth since it is mainly internal. <#/>However its major effect has been redistributing population from the densely populated to the <-/law> populated areas. <#/>This however, has taken place within the existing law which at times has put restrictions to such movements resulting in population pressures in some areas in the country.
<#/><h> III. POPULATION DETERMINANTS AND THE LAW </h>
<#/>The above population dynamics have not taken place in vacuum. <#/>They have promoted by societal forces ‑ beliefs, norms and practices that hold the society together. <#/><-/Inorder> for any law to affect any of the three processes of population change, it must not only have the backing of the people but must also reach the majority if not all the people it was meant. <#/>The government can make very good laws yet lack the machinery to implement them due to economic, administrative or <-/may be> cultural factors. <#/>Economically there might not be enough resources to implement the laws in terms of personnel training, or there might not be enough administrative structures in place to effectively reach every one. <#/>Even more important a good laws will take years to penetrate the existing norms and practices imbedded in the culture of a given ethnic group. <#/>Harsh enforcement of the law may result in social conflict and therefore have the negative impact then was intended.
<#/>The question here is why for example has fertility been on the increase yet there are laws and acts existing on paper expected to slow it down? <#/>What is happening to the institution of marriage and the family that is promoting fertility which is prompting the government <-/out cry> of people must have small families. <#/>We shall briefly examine some of these issues in relation to the existing laws.
<#/><h> A. FERTILITY </h>
<#/>Fertility process which involves reproduction takes place between two individuals. <#/>The decision to have or not have a child is made between the two individuals. <#/>There are no laws in the country which <-_says><+_say> couples should have such number of children. <#/>The decision to have one more child in Kenya has for <-/along> time and continues to be influenced by what we called traditional rules, norms or beliefs. <#/>The society dictates that one must have a child otherwise one is looked to as an outcast, not fit to be part of that society. <#/>There are beliefs among many ethnic groups that one should have not only one two or three children but more because the children are needed to help in the provision of labour. <#/>One needs to have many children because when some die, one will still have enough to go on with. <#/>Many children are needed as a symbol of power in the society. <#/>Whoever, has many children is looked upon with respect. <#/>One must have at least a male child who will help in the perpetuation of the family name.
<#/>These and many others are deep rooted beliefs and practices of the people. <#/>They are protected by what is called traditional laws and rules. <#/>The majority of Kenya's population still live in the rural areas where they curve out their daily life within this
<#/>traditional fabric of practices and beliefs. <#/>They still <-/belief> in the continuity of their cultural practices despite the existence of the government laws and rules.
<#/>The majority of the laws and rules inherited from the colonial government have least penetrated these traditional networks which are said to hold various ethnic groups together in their own way of life. <#/>In these traditional networks, there exists rules which provide guidance in terms of marriage, reproduction, etc. <#/>These practices are bound to continue for <-/along> time to come. <#/>A number of examples are provided below.
<#/><h> A. (i) AGE AT MARRIAGE </h>
<#/>From demographic point of view, it has been shown that the age at marriage and age at birth are major determinants of fertility in any given population. <#/>This is because young age at marriage implies longer exposure to reproductive period which in turn means higher number of children born compared to one who starts at 25 and has shorter period of reproduction.
<#/>In Kenya there are many regulations and rules which tend to operate among various ethnic groups to the <-/extend> that there is no one generally agreed national age at marriage. <#/>Various ethnic groups and <-/religions> affiliations tend to recognise different ages at marriages as early as 10 years such that once identified, the young girl is gradually <-/natured> into a wife. <#/>Among the many ethnic groups, young girls are encouraged to get married as soon as they have gone through certain traditional rituals. <#/>In many others, young girls are forced to marry <-/inorder> for the parents to get bride wealth. <#/>In general, the average age at marriage is an open issue and the majority of women in the country marry at very early ages. <#/>These early marriages are a major contributor to the rapid population increase in the country.
<#/><h> (ii) POLYGAMY </h>
<#/>The concept and practice of polygamy is widely accepted by the majority of the ethnic groups in the country. <#/>It is also widely practised by various religions especially the Muslims. <#/>The practice of polygamy is carried out among the various ethnic <-_group><+_groups> under the traditional rules and beliefs such that a national law to regulate polygamy families becomes invalid. <#/>For example it is accepted among the Luhya and Luo one can marry as many wives as the wealth can allow him. <#/>But the behaviour of the wives after entering the polygamous union is regulated by the traditional rules within the particular ethnic group. <#/>For example the first wife must be treated differently from the younger ones. <#/>Polygamy is said to be a major contributor to observed high fertility and therefore population increase among certain ethnic groups.
<#/><h> (iii) CONTRACEPTION </h>
<#/>From all the available evidence, there is no law in the country which prohibits the use of any kind of contraception be it traditional (natural or artificial. <#/>The natural methods along with the traditional ones have been used from time. Immemorial and operate within the fabrics of the traditional laws and rules. <#/>For example it was against traditional rule for a man to have sex with the wife after giving birth until the child was three years. <#/>It was also against the rules for the wife to have sex with the husband when there was funeral or during harvest time. <#/>Some of these practices still operate among certain ethnic groups and help in the regulation of fertility.
<#/>As far as modern or artificial contraception is concerned, there are even less rules and controls then before. <#/>It was possible for <-/contraceptors> to get services from approved hospitals or centres during the colonial period. <#/>But with the transfer of the provision of contraceptive services to the ministry of health since 1967, there has been a breakdown in the control of supplies. <#/>The contraceptives are supplied free of charge in hospitals and can also be bought across the counter with no many questions being asked. <#/>There are no legal <-_limitation><+_limitations> on the use of contraceptives, who buys them and for what purpose. <#/>While there is a legal feeling on the side of the state that youth should not be given contraceptives, there is no way this can be affected. <#/>Many young people have multi-sources of getting the condom or the <-_pills><+_pill> for example. <#/>The majority of them use the condom not for <-/contracepting> but for safe sex from sexually transmitted diseases. <#/>Although it is against law to give contraceptives to the youth, it is the feeling in many circles that since there is increased sexual activities among the youth resulting into unwanted pregnancies, the government should come up with an official standing on the issue thus making it legal for these youth to have access to these important services. <#/>
W2A014K
<#/><I> <h> LAW IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: LEGAL ISSUES IN THE PRIVATISATION OF PARASTATALS IN KENYA </h>
<#/><h> Introduction </h>
<#/>Kenya, like many other third world countries has been under the grip of an economic crisis for almost two decades. <#/>The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other donors have been of the strong view that these economic <-_crisis><+_crises> are a result of structural distortions in their economies. <#/>These financial and aid giving agencies have increasingly urged third world countries to adapt the structural adjustment programmes (SAPS). <#/>These programmes are aimed at making their economies more efficient by reducing budget deficits. <#/>This is either by raising taxes or by cutting down government expenditure.
<#/>Parastatals in Kenya are well known for their adverse effects and burden on the economy. <#/>They have been the cause of the worsening budgetary deficits. <#/>Many of them have never made profits since inception, they do not pay taxes, they frequently rely on the government to bail them out of financial difficulties and do not pay their debts which are often guaranteed by the government.
<#/>In the 1990/91 financial year alone, the government had to pay KL57 million to service debts owned by parastatals while at the same time the parastatals owned the Treasury KL25 million in the form of unpaid taxes. <#/>Parastatals have also been accused of gross inefficiency, corruption and general mismanagement of resources.
<#/>In light of the foregoing, privatisation of some of these parastatals has been prescribed as a panacea for improving their operating efficiency and <-/proftiability>. <#/>The financial and aid giving agencies have encouraged privatisation which is one of the programmes under the structural adjustment programmes.
<#/>Kenya has already embarked on a privatisation exercise of some of the ailing parastatals. <#/>The government has designated some parastatals as strategic and others as non-strategic with the latter being scheduled for <-/diverstiture> and the former for restructuring. <#/>However, the privatisation programme is eliciting reactions which suggest that adequate preparations have not been done to ensure effective implementation of the programme. <#/>It appears that due to the wave of privatisation currently sweeping the globe, Kenya like many other third world countries, is privatising <-/hurrdiedly> <-/with> considering that this might not necessarily work. <#/>Strategies concerning privatisation have to be worked out if the programme is to work.
<#/>In this paper, we examine the role of parastatals in the economy. <#/>The case for privatisation is then outlined after which we examine some of the legal issues that have arisen and those that are bound to arise in the process of privatising parastatals.
<#/><h> The Role of Parastatals in the Economy </h>
<#/>The term 'parastatal' is generally used to refer to those governmental organizations which fall outside the main lines of the departmental and Ministerial <-/heirarchies> and which have in consequence, some measure of quasi-autonomy in their day to day activities.
<#/>A better and clearer definition describes a parastatal as follows:
<#/>"An institution, organization or agency which is wholly or mainly <-/finnanced> or owned and controlled by the Government. <#/>The criterion of such public enterprises would be ownership by the government of 50% or more of the capital shares, or other forms of governmental participation and effective influence in all the main aspects of management of the enterprise".
<#/>Parastatals are therefore business organizations established and owned by the government, but which fall outside the direct control of the government except for matters of general policy. <#/>They have a measure of autonomy in their day to day operation.
<#/>In Kenya, parastatals vary quite considerably in their rationale and function. <#/>They vary in their methods of incorporation, in their relationship to the central administrative structure, their source of capital funds and the degree of management independence. <#/>For instance, a parastatal may be established by an order made by the president by virtue of the powers <-/confered> upon him by Section 3(1) of the state Corporations Act which states: <quote_><quote/>.
<#/>In exercise of this power, for example, the President proclaimed the Nyayo Tea Zones Development Corporation order.
<#/>A parastatal may also be established by or under an Act of parliament or other written law. <#/>Examples, of such parastatals include the Kenya Railways Corporation the Industrial and Commercial Development Corporation and the Kenya Tourist Development Corporation.
<#/>Parastatals in Kenya are engaged in a wide spectrum of economic activities which include agriculture, manufacturing, commerce, financial, mining and other services. <#/>They are the government's tools for direct participation in commercial <-/activiies> in the economy. <#/>A look at government policy guidelines reveals that parastatals are expected to fulfil a number of objectives and roles in the economy. <#/>As earlier stated, being the government's tools for direct participation in the economy, the government uses parastatals to control the economy. <#/>By establishing parastatals, the government is able to control strategic sectors of the economy. <#/>This ensures a certain amount of planning and management of the economy, so that the <-/scarse> resources available are utilized in a rational manner. <#/>Secondly, the government is able to supervise the private sector so that private enterprises are constrained from using their economic power to endanger the economic lives of citizens of this country. <#/>Therefore, in participating in the economy, the government ensures that the economic programmes and policies which it formulates are <-/effectwvely> implemented.
<#/>Perhaps, the most popular role parastatals are expected to fulfil in the Kenya economy is the Africanisation programme. <#/>At independence, the government sought ways and means of <-/correctly> the economic <-/imblances> which had been created by the colonial government. <#/>This government aimed at making the Africans take over the ownership and management of commerce and industry <#/>several parastatals were assigned the role of implementing this policy. <#/>These include the Industrial and Commercial Development Corporation (ICDC), the Agricultural Finance Corporation Corporation (KTDC).
<#/>Parastatals are also expected to generate capital. <#/>One of the obstacles the government faces <-_is><+_in> its efforts to initiate economic development is lack of capital. <#/>Parastatals are therefore expected to assist in generating capital to <-/>to be used in the development efforts.
<#/><-/Parastals> have also been used to provide a form which is conducive for the joint business ventures between the government and foreign investors. <#/>Multinational Corporations prefer to do business with parastatals. <#/>This is because such an arrangement gives the multinational corporation access to political connections and makes financial assistance, tax concessions and other governmental assistance possible. <#/>The Industrial and Commercial Development Corporation has entered into a number of joint venture agreements, most of them with multinational <-_corporation><+_corporations>.
<#/>Parastatals also do provide infrastructure and other basic utilities which are crucial in development activities. <#/>They are also used to create employment opportunities. <#/>This is indeed a crucial role especially in a country like Kenya where unemployment rates are very high.
<#/>Parastatals have also been used to development sectors of the economy in which the private sector would be unwilling or unable to enter due to large capital outlays. <#/>Such projects may also not be profitable. <#/>The government however, establishes parastatals to develop such projects because they may provide vital products and services.
<#/>Therefore a general, parastatals are supposed to play a major role in the economy. <#/>However, it has been argued that they have been unable to play this role. <#/>They have incurred large financial losses and have been inefficient. <#/>This has been the reason for the call for privatisation.
<#/><h> The case for Privatisation </h>
<#/>Simply defined, privatisation is the transfer of an enterprise from the government to the private sector. <#/>It is therefore the transfer from state ownership to private ownership. <#/>Advocates of privatisation have put forward several reasons for the same. <#/>Indeed the most forceful and persuasive case for privatisation of parastatals was spelt out by the working party on government expenditure. <#/>In the report, it was argued that the government had intervened excessively in the economy. <#/>The report stated: 
<quote_><quote/>.<#/>It has been further argued that this intervention inhibits competition as parastatals are accorded a lot of protection. <#/><quote_><quote/>. <#/>The advocates of privatisation are therefore telling the government that it has no business doing business.
<#/>All it should do is to provide infrastructure that will ensure an environment conducive to private investment.
<#/>The working party report also stated that some parastatals had exceeded their original mandates and made investments in commercial and industrial activities that should have been left entirely to the private sectors. <#/>The government should leave such activities to the private sector which can handle them effectively.
<#/>Another reason that makes privatisation of parastatals imperative is the fact that most of them have operated inefficiently and unprofitably. <#/>This is because the government has imposed public functions and excessive employment obligations on them. <#/>Secondly, the management of these parastatals is not qualified in most cases. <#/>Appointments to top positions have been used as acts of political patronage. <#/>It has been asserted that "all governments (in East Africa), but more so Kenya, regard the membership of the board of directors of public corporations as an opportunity to exercise political patronage". <#/>This has contributed immensely to the mismanagement of parastatals.
<#/>It has also been argued that private investors and other co-owners of parastatals have abused the government's participation. <#/>They have diverted funds to inappropriate technologies and lofty capital-intensive projects which have served to burden the government with huge debts. <#/>These private investors have also committed the government to biased management agreements. <#/>This has ended up costing the government a lot of money and yet the private investors have made large sums of money through transfer pricing in the procurement of machinery and capital from abroad. <#/>These private investors are mainly multinational corporations.
<#/>Underlying the privatisation thesis therefore, is the belief that private enterprises tend to be more efficient than public enterprises. <#/>It is therefore assumed that once privatised, the loss-making parastatals will be turned around to show profit.
<#/><h> Legal issues in the Privatisation exercise </h>
<#/>Despite the fact that the Kenya government has already embarked on the privatisation exercise, several legal <-/isses> concerning the exercise have not been addressed. <#/>It appears that the government is in a hurry to carry out the exercise. <#/>It is therefore certain that unless these issues are addressed, the exercise will not be successful.
<#/>The privatisation exercise has already been described as illegal. <#/>It is clear that this is the position. <#/>This is because parastatals are established and governed by Acts of Parliament. <#/>It is therefore imperative that their disposal be subject to law. <#/>There is therefore need for a privatisation law to be enacted by parliament to give the exercise legal authority.
<#/>The privatisation law will also address other issues. <#/>The law should moot the objectives of privatisation and methods and procedures to be followed in the exercise. <#/>It should also chart out the format of selling shares, either by public or private offers. <#/>Privatisation involves the transfer of national assets to private individuals and institutions. <#/>Unless clear guidelines are given specifying how and to whom the shares are transferable, the whole exercise could <-_became><+_become> a fiasco. <#/>The basis upon which some parastatals have been designated strategic and others non-strategic is not known. <#/>The law should address this issue.
<#/>Formulation of a privatisation law will also be crucial in spelling out procedures of dealing with limited liability companies which are subject to <-/theprovisions> of the Companies Act and the rights of private shareholders of joint venture companies some of whom are foreigners. <#/>The selling of State's shareholding in such companies will require protracted negotiations with the other shareholders. <#/>The list of parastatals to be privatised which was released by the government contains companies whose shares are not freely transferable. <#/>The existing shareholders have pre-emptive rights over the sale of shares and can oppose privatisation. <#/>It is crucial that a law be enacted to address these issues.
<#/>Another issue that has not been addressed is that of employees who will be declared <-/redudant> as a result of privatisation. <#/>Most of the parastatals had over-employed people. <#/>Loss of jobs will therefore be an inevitable consequence of privatisation. <#/>There is therefore need for a law to be enacted to enable the government handle employees who will be declared redundant.
</I>
W2A015K
<#/><I> <h> Women and environmental law in Kenya </h>
<#/><h> Development of environmental law </h>
<#/>The last two decades have witnessed growing concern over environmental degradation and the need to undertake measures which will ensure that development is not achieved at the cost of the environment. <#/>International concern for environmental consideration began, however, at the turn of the century. <#/>Most of the bodies or agencies were mainly concerned with water pollution. <#/>In 1947 the United Nations Economic and Social Council adopted solution 32(V) which <foreign/>inter <foreign/>alia recognized the importance of the world's natural resources and techniques of conservation. <#/>This concern was enhanced by the disastrous consequences of the Second World War and the rapid industrial growth after it.
<#/>Global concern for environmental protection gained momentum after the 1972 U.N. <#/>Conference on the Human Environment which passed a declaration to the effect that <quote_><quote/> (Principle 1). <#/>The declaration further called for the recognition by states of their responsibility to ensure the protection of the environment for the present and future generations. <#/>The conference also established the United Nations Environmental Programme, which has since its establishment produced a number of guidelines on human health, ocean pollution control and environmental impact assessment. <#/>This led to a number of states undertaking measures to protect the environment through law and policy.
<#/>The World Commission on Environment and Development equally recognized the need for environmental protection and man's right to a healthy environment. <#/>The report of the commission points out that <quote_><quote/>.
<#/>In most countries, development in whatever form has been largely achieved at the cost of the environment. <#/>The need for sound environmental management has been viewed as a constraint in attempts to achieve rapid economic growth. <#/>This has resulted in irreplaceable environmental damage. <#/>Today, most developing countries are faced with the threat of desertification, deforestation and pollution, as a result of immense environmental degradation. <#/>The eventual result is the loss of animal and plant species, change in rain patterns and disappearance of rain forests.
<#/>Thus, in seeking rapid economic development, countries have indirectly contributed towards their eventual underdevelopment, as the quality of life and that of the entire environment is ignored. <#/>These concerns have led to the call for sustainable development which will ensure that the needs of the present generation are met without compromising the needs of future generations. <#/>Sustainable development does not occur in one day; it is a gradual process of change. <#/>It calls for a change in economic and environmental policies and <-_legislations><+_legislation> as well as changes in institutions concerned with exploitation and management of natural resources, economic investments and population size and growth. <#/>It also calls for the full participation of every man, woman and child. <#/>It is especially important to involve those directly concerned with the environment in their daily activities.
<#/>The process of determining public policy issues, such as the degree and scope of environmental protection, is a combination of both policy and law. <#/>Law can facilitate national decision making and as well be used as a tool for transforming policy formulations into practice. <#/>In the scope of environmental protection, law should not be seen in the passive light of a facilitator of policy implementation since it must play the role of requiring policy where the same is wanting.
<#/>Law assumes a three-dimensional role in environmental management. <#/>Firstly, law provides for the allocation of natural resources and the regulation of their exploitation and management. <#/>Secondly, law provides the set standards which have to be met, failing which, sanctions are provided. <#/>This is effectively carried out through a licence system, whereby the licence-holder is required to comply with the terms of the licence. <#/>Lastly, law establishes the mechanism for controlling the impact of human activities on the environment. <#/>This is carried out through the establishment of institutions which are empowered to undertake adequate measures to ensure environmental protection.
<#/>In any country, policy makers have the difficult task of making decisions which promote development but do not influence the environment. <#/>Thus, environmental legislation should seek to harmonize environmental conservation objectives and national developmental goals and aspirations.
<#/>Environmental legislation should seek to deal with existing, future and recurring environmental problems, if sustainability is to be ensured.
<#/>Kenya has to grapple with the question of environmental protection and socio-economic development to avoid the same environmental consequences suffered by the developed and industrialized countries in their bid to achieve economic growth. <#/>Apart from this, the challenge of sustainable development coupled with the debt crisis and environmental degradation are issues of great concern.
<#/>In the early post-independence years, Kenya adopted African socialism as the official policy. <#/>This recognized the need to preserve and conserve natural resources for future generations and that quality of the environment must be up on equal footing with the need for its exploitation. <#/>Concern by the government has, since the early 1970s, been increasing and this is reflected in past development plans, which call for programmes to carry out environmental monitoring and assessment, arresting desertification, pollution control, human settlements and environmental education. <#/>Despite this concern, Kenya's environmental policy cannot be found in one sound document but rather in various ministerial statements, development plans, sessional papers and legislation.
<#/>Environmental law, on the other hand, is sectoral and administrative in nature. <#/>It is mainly concerned with the regulation of the use of water, land, minerals and forests as well as wildlife and marine life protection. <#/>Most of the statutes are inherited from the late colonial era, a time when the administration's concern was centred on the full exploitation of existing natural resources. <#/>Thus, protection and conservation of the environment was of minimal concern. <#/>Existing statutory laws address a problem once it has risen and not before. <#/>Other than statutory environmental laws, the English common law applies in situations where there are no statutory provisions on environmental protection. <#/>The common law is applicable 'so far as the circumstances of Kenya and its inhabitants permit and subject to such qualifications as those circumstances may make necessary'. <#/>Currently, there are 66 statutes in force which touch and affect the environment. <#/>There is therefore no comprehensive statute on the environment. <#/>This section considers those laws on land, water and forestry as the areas where women are largely active in their day to day activities.
<#/>Kenya's land-use policy is found in scattered legislation, sessional papers, ministerial statements and development plans. <#/>The 1989-93 development plan provides that <quote_><quote/>.
<#/>Land issues are very sensitive as well as complex due to the important attachment that everyone has on land. <#/>This has led to numerous enacted laws, which make provision for registration, land tenure and permitted uses of land.
<#/>In an economy which lays emphasis on agriculture, competing interests are bound to arise between the users and the environmental managers of land. <#/>These conflicts are further enhanced by land ownership laws which confer absolute proprietorship, giving the owner the right to do whatever he or she wishes with the land. <#/>The emphasis on intensified agriculture may also defeat the goals of sound environmental management. <#/>Sessional Paper No. I of 1986 on economic management for renewed growth emphasizes the need for intensified agriculture by pointing out that <quote_><quote/>. <#/>The paper on national food policy also acknowledges the importance of conserving natural resources.
<#/>The use of one's land is tied up with the laws that allow an individual to exercise rights of user and disposition of land. <#/>Kenya's land ownership laws are tied up with colonial history. <#/>The colonial administration introduced into Kenya the concept of individual land ownership which was alien to the traditional communal ownership systems. <#/>Thus, the enactment of the Registered Land Act (Cap. 300) saw the introduction of absolute proprietorship conferring the owner with absolute rights over property. <#/>The Act was introduced because of falling standards of agriculture in the African reserves; these were attributed to 'defective tenure arrangements in African society’.
<#/>One marked feature of the adjudication, consolidation and registration process of the 1950s was that women were not registered as owners of land. <#/>This could be tied up to a number of reasons, one being that the adjudicators found it difficult to determine ownership of land held communally and as a result opted to register that land under the name of the head of the house. <#/>This is traditionally a man. <#/>The other reason given is that under customary laws and practice, women do not own land and as a result there was no need to register women as land owners.
<#/>The idea behind registration of land in names of individuals under the Registered Land Act was to enable that owner to develop the agricultural output of the land. <#/>This could be done by seeking a loan for that purpose from a financial institution. <#/>In order to ensure the productive use and so the conservation of that land, other laws were enacted which imposed duties on land owners.
<#/><h> Agriculture </h>
<#/>The Agriculture Act (Cap. 318) is the principle legislation on agricultural use of land. <#/>It is also the only legislation which makes provision for conservation of the soil and its fertility. <#/>The Act has three main objectives, namely to promote and maintain agriculture, to provide for the conservation of the soil and its fertility and to stimulate the development of agricultural land in accordance with the accepted practices of good land management and good husbandry.
<#/>The Agriculture Act empowers the Minister of Agriculture to make rules and regulations regarding the general development of agricultural land. <#/>Thus, under Section 48, the Minister may make land preservation rules for the regulation, control and prohibition of clearing land for cultivation and grazing or watering of livestock. <#/>This protects the land against floods, landslides, formation of gullies or destruction of roads. <#/>The minister may also make rules to regulate, prohibit or control afforestation or reafforestation.
<#/>In order to boost agriculture, fertilizers have for a long time been applied the land by farmers. <#/>The lack of knowledge of how to use these fertilizers has resulted in disastrous environmental consequences such as water and air pollution. <#/>Pesticides and herbicides, which have been helpful in eradicating pests and weeds, have been harmful to the health of both human beings and animals. <#/>There are various legislations which provide for pesticide control as well as manufacture of fertilizers.
<#/>The Food, Drugs and Chemical Substances Act (Cap. 254) provides that the manufacture and sale of pesticides and insecticides should satisfy set standards regarding their quality, safety and composition. <#/>The Act also makes provision for prevention of water contamination through the use of chemical substances which could cause water to be injurious to health. <#/>The Cattle Cleansing Act (Cap. 358) sets standards for the purposes of regulating the type and composition of chemical substances used in cattle cleansing. <#/>If one does not abide by these standards, a penalty is given of a fine not exceeding Kshs.2,000 or one year imprisonment in default. <#/>Cattle cleansing chemicals are mainly composed of organic <-_chlorines><chlorine> which can be very harmful if they come into contact with water for consumption. <#/>The Fertilizers and Animal Foodstuffs Act (Cap. 345) regulates the importation, manufacture and sale of fertilizers and animal foodstuffs. <#/>The Pest Control Products Act (No. 20, 1982) empowers the Pest Control Board to refuse to register a product if there are reasonable grounds to believe that such product poses a risk to public health, animals, plants or the environment in general.
<#/>Livestock keeping is one use of land which has had some devastating effects on the environment especially in cases of overgrazing and overstocking. <#/>This has resulted in soil erosion in areas which are overgrazed. <#/>The Crop Production and Livestock Act (Cap. 321) empowers local authorities to make by-laws for purposes of prohibiting the grazing of cattle in agricultural land, regulating the number of livestock to be kept and the compulsory reduction of livestock. <#/>Rules may also be made under this Act for the purpose of improving the quality of agricultural produce.
<#/><h> Forestry </h>
<#/>From time immemorial forests have provided people with fuelwood for energy purposes in the domestic setting as well as wood for building houses. <#/><foreign/><-/</I>
W2A016K
<#/><I> </h>1 The Context of the Study </h>
<#/><h> The impact of the Women's Decade </h>
<#/>The most important event of the 1980s for girls' education in Kenya was the hosting of the United Nations End of the Decade for Women Conference Nairobi. <#/>Torild Skard (the UNESCO delegate to the UN Conference) put the significance of the decade into perspective:
<#/><quote_><quote/><#/>She said that the decade had brought new understanding of the persistent and complex social structures and interests that perpetuate the subordinate status of women. <#/>It was noted that ten years' efforts had not fundamentally altered this status, and that no one felt any longer that there were any quick and easy solutions to the dilemma.
<#/>The present study on Kenyan primary textbooks (as an index of women's future participation in national development) is designed to examine the role of education in the shaping of a modern nation.
<#/>Taking stock in 1991, as we enter the last decade of the Twentieth Century, it is important to point out that concepts of development are more explicitly described, development processes and supposed change agents of development are being more closely examined, while the tool of analysis termed the gender perspective is throwing new light on to both concepts and processes of development. <#/>It is no coincidence that the topic of education for girls and women figures more prominently in the current global development debate; nor that Kenyan society has grown so acutely interested and well informed about education. <#/>It is also no coincidence that some elements of stagnation in education systems, areas of neglect, are causing increasing tension, particularly as overall school populations rise dramatically, as is the case in Kenya. <#/>It is generally recognised, notably since the 1990 Jomtien UNESCO Conference on Education For All, that education plays a crucial (and costly) role in national development and that schooling systems must be made more responsive to national, to individual and to diverse social group needs, including the needs of various social groups of girl learners.
<#/>To return to 1985, in Kenya the preparations for the UN Conference were accompanied by a noticeable increase of information-sharing among women. <#/>New energy was devoted to research on the subject of women's participation in development. <#/>From the beginning of the year the national press began printing articles on women, development and the environment that concentrated on the hitherto unrecognised role of women as the major agricultural producers and food processors, as the backbone of agricultural production in Africa. <#/>Statistics indicated that 80 percent of agricultural labour in the region is performed by women a higher percentage than in other regions of the world, for example, Asia. <#/>At the same time, the Ethiopian famine gained worldwide attention; the links between famine, poverty, development, retrogressive modes of agriculture, access to technology and the status of women, became apparent. <#/>It is not new today to state that development policies which neglect or marginalise the role of women in agriculture are policies which lead inexorably to decreased agricultural output, degradation of the environment, deterioration of nutritional levels, hunger, poverty and eventually to economic crises on the national, regional and, in the case of Africa, on the continental scale.
<#/>It has become more widely recognised that
<#/><quote_><quote/><#/>The year 1985 marked the coming-of-age, as it were, of Women's Studies. <#/>Since then we have learned to plan more efficiently the exploration of openly-acknowledged unknown territory and to design research priorities of the future, for we now understand the depth of our ignorance as regards the modes of participation of women in society. <#/>The Nairobi Conference concluded significantly that lack of information concerning women is more acutely felt now than ten years ago, after a decade of expanded activities in research on women and that increased research was urgently needed.
<#/><h> Development re-examined </h>
<#/>The present study is an attempt to fill in an information gap on girls' education. <#/>Formal education is overly expensive in developing countries, consuming 30 percent or more of most national budgets in Africa. <#/>Yet enrolment figures for girls are relatively low and their school performance is inferior to that of boys. <#/>In conclusion girls are not full participators in school education. <#/>The following questions arise. <#/>Is the inadequate participation of girls in education due solely to their relative absence from school? <#/>Or are there additional in-school factors which reduce girls' participation?
<#/>In the former case (failure to attend school), the drop-out syndrome and the low enrolment figures have been well documented. <#/>The second question (in-school factors) is still largely unexplored in Africa. <#/>Girls continue to sit in classrooms, at enormous cost to the nation and to their parents, and to underachieve both in school and in the world of work . <#/>The next question is: What are the factors leading to girls' apparent withdrawal from learning while at school and to their minimal participation in education?
<#/>The education setting is one of pupils, teachers, textbooks, classroom materials, teaching methodology, administrative practices and the 'school culture'. <#/>The present study aims at examining just one of these factors, the textbook, to gain insight into the type of education experienced in Kenyan schools.
<#/>At the same time the researchers are aware of the wider social context, the outside school context of learning, and of the general trends in society. <#/>There is evidence, for instance, that the living conditions and life chances of women are deteriorating . <#/>On an international scale the literacy gap between men and women is widening. <#/>Increased educational provision in both developed and developing countries has not automatically opened the doors of educational opportunity to women, nor has it equalised educational outcomes in terms of careers. <#/>There is a call, insistent and growing, for a new concept of development which involves all sectors of society and which centres on people and which emphasises people as the rightful beneficiaries of development rather than states, national budgets or industrialisation. <#/>A Latin American delegate to the World Conference of the Society for International Development in Rome in 1985 put it this way:
<#/><quote_>)<quote/><#/>It is not merely the equity aspect of women's status that concerns us, it is the fact that 'the underutilization of women in society is wasteful and tantamount to encouraging a parasitic system' since women comprise 50.4 percent of the Kenyan population.
<#/>The same Conference noted that:
<#/><quote_><quote/>
<#/>To reduce the marginalisation of women both women and men will have to develop positive images of females. <#/>The attitudes of both men and women towards females are at stake here, for it is women as well as men who make decisions on the nature of women's participation in society. <#/>For example, in drought-stricken areas of the world it is often the women themselves who make a social decision about who eats and thus about who lives. <#/>They give men, then boys priority, with women next and girls last' . <#/>This type of evidence demonstrates that such decisions lead to more malnourishment among women and girls in developing countries where women work as hard or harder than men at growing food'. <#/>According to nutritionists at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, surveys on people suffering famine in Burkina Faso and Ethiopia found a 'marked disparity between the sexes in malnutrition assessed by weight for height'. <#/>In Nepal 'women are 50 percent more likely than men to develop the form of blindness linked to chronic malnutrition in a country where women do two-thirds of the rice planting, three-quarters of the weeding and all the work involved in rice cleaning and storage' .
<#/>These facts, together with evidence on the increasing scarcity of firewood which has forced the Nepalese and Kenyan women to walk further each day in search of fuelwood, build up a picture of increasing labour in a section of the population which is less and less able to bear it in physical terms. <#/>It points to a further decrease in work efficiency as regards food production. <#/>It is for this reason that a new task force has been set up. <#/>Advocates for African Food Security includes several UN organisations among the founding members and focuses on the link between food security issues in Africa and the nature of women's work. <#/>'Unceasing tasks such as fetching water, pounding grain, collecting firewood and caring for their families now sap women's time and energy, limiting their food production capacity' .
<#/>However, women should not be regarded solely in their capacity as food-producers. <#/>Their rights and needs as full human beings are the points at issue. <#/>If women were to be regarded merely as food-producers, then it would be in the interests of society to improve women's work output; if they are to be regarded as full human beings, then it would be only natural and right for women to participate in decision-making across the range of decisions to be made, and to reap the benefits of half of the labouring society.
<#/>Thus women are demonstrably at the centre of the debate on development, and it is pertinent to examine the events leading to their present unsatisfactory situation.
<#/><h> Education at the core of development </h>
<#/>Since it is the environmental historico-cultural argument rather than the biological one that is currently favoured as the explanation of the present status of women, child-rearing practices and education are seen to be particularly significant forces in the interplay of factors which create and maintain the present conditions of life for women. <#/>Education, that is, state-funded formal education, is one of the prime social institutions designed to benefit the whole society. <#/>It is paid for by the entire tax-paying community and is, in Africa, an extremely costly governmental operation (currently consuming 40 percent of the Kenyan national budget). <#/>In addition, heavy opportunity costs have to be accounted for at the individual family level. <#/>Since Independence the express purpose of the education system has been to forge national and social unity, reduce social inequities and imbalances and compensate for individual or sectoral historical disadvantages. <#/>Schooling therefore becomes of particular interest to women, who are visibly a low-achieving group in Kenyan society today. <#/>The formal education system, unlike the informal non-institutionalised education practices of the home, can modify itself, if modification should be necessary, since it is a deliberately planned national activity with in-built mechanisms for self-review and mutation. <#/>The education system is eminently accessible to investigation since its activities are public, often recorded in writing and carried out in easily definable situations, that is, in the school.
<#/>Kenya is an interesting case in point in this discussion for three reasons: first, the new education reform of 1985 (known as the 8-4-4 system) is designed to bring technical education down to the primary level thereby reaching the majority of school-going children; second, since primary school enrolments in the first year of schooling are approximately equal for girls and boys in this country, girls would appear to have new and significant access to technical education for the first time; third, the vocationally oriented curriculum includes agriculture, and agricultural production is linked with length of schooling, although the relationship between the two is not yet fully understood.
<#/>It is the aim of the present study to examine the messages on the role of girls and women in society passed to girls and boys through school textbooks in Kenya. <#/>It concerns the content of the messages, the medium through which they are passed and the mechanisms at work in the passing of such messages. <#/>It suggests ways to counteract any discriminatory messages which may be identified. <#/>Analyses of school textbooks have been carried out in several countries. <#/>The only one we know of from Africa relating to sex stereotyping is a Zambian study where the textbooks examined originated from outside that country (from Britain). <#/>Given the different educational patterns evolving in African countries, it is important to look at Kenyan textbooks, which have all been written and published within the country since about 1970, in order to fully understand the national context and to plan for change that would be appropriate for Kenyan society and for strategies of social transformation that would be commensurate with Kenya's way of doing things.
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<#/><I> <h> CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION </h>
<#/><h> Demographics </h>
<#/>There is need to package family planning and birth control methods information according to each target groups' needs, the reason being that each group interprets similar information differently. <#/>Cultural and religious background of the individuals come in. <#/>For example the research findings have shown that most of the people in the Nyakoe location belong to the Roman Catholic church which is against the use of any artificial family planning method and recommends the use of natural methods. <#/>With such revelations; there is need to prepare the messages in such a way that they do not violate the peoples' beliefs and values or in such a way that the people are first convinced to change their attitudes so that they can listen and adopt the new innovation brought to them.
<#/>Most of the respondents (48%) were found to be solely peasant farmers and even those who were in other occupations like teaching, still carried out some farming activities. <#/>So we get that most of the people in the area are farmers who are bound to produce enough food for consumption since the area's climate - of highland equatorial zones with moderate temperatures and relief rainfall which is well spread all the year round encourage good production of both cash and food crops.
<#/>The production of enough food can be one of the factors which encourage people to have more children for to most of them, the only problem is feeding <-/childrn> so that when they can produce enough to feed their families; they continue to give birth to more children.
<#/>Most of the respondents (68%) were found to have married between the age of 14-22 years and out of these, 46% were females. <#/>This has an effect on the population growth for when people marry at an early age; they have many years of giving birth. <#/>This applies mostly to women for when one gets married at the age of 15 years, they have around 35 active child bearing years. <#/>In such a case, if on does not use any family planning or birth control method, they are capable of giving birth up to 20 children all the other factors constant.
<#/>The early marriage age of most respondents coupled with the fact that 96 per cent of them were still living with their partners shows that those who married early had all the chances of having more than 10 children each. <#/>The other factor which can contribute to high population growth rates is that most female respondents lived together with their husbands hence few chances that the absence of one partner in the house all the year round can act as a means of population growth control. <#/>Even those women whose husbands were employed as for example, teachers, they still operated either from their rural homes or those who had moved to live next to the school, moved with their wives and families.
<#/>On the respondents' level of schooling, we get that 98 per cent had been to school. <#/>When we looked at the relationship between the level of schooling of the respondents and the number of children they had, the findings show that the higher the level of a respondent's education; the fewer the number of children one had. <#/>Hence with this, one gets that those respondents with primary 1-4 level of education had an average number of 6.1 children while those with secondary form 5-6 level of education had an average of 3.4 children.
<#/>From the difference in the number of children and the level of education, one can say that those who had a higher level of education were more enlightened about the problems which come up with large and unplanned families. <#/>Since awareness of the existence of a problem makes people to have an interest in ways of solving it, the educated respondents must have gone out of their cultural and religious beliefs to embrace new values which can help them.
<#/>While on the other hand, those who have a lower level of education, it could be that they have been confined to the rural areas where most adhere to their traditional and religious values since they have not been exposed to outside ideas, hence they end up getting many children.
<#/>All the male respondents had at least an education level of class five and above while there were those with no education at all among the female respondents. <#/>The variation in educational levels could be due to the fact that most of the rural parents are yet to be convinced that education is as good for girls as it is for boys. <#/>In the olden days, taking girls to school was seen as a waste of resources and time hence few females have gone for higher education.
<#/><h> Children's education </h>
<#/>Most of the respondents had school going children. <#/>Those who said that only some and not all their children go to school either said that the children were not yet of school going age, or for the school going age ones, they were out because the parents could not raise their school fees or uniforms for them to be allowed to stay in school while others were past the school-going age.
<#/>The lack of means to cater for the children's needs could be because most of the needs are provided for by the parents (74%) and yet most of them are not salary earners. <#/>Most of the parents depend on farming which is letting them down now that population has increased, land has been sub-divided and there are more structures on the land hence leaving less land for farming - which means less cultivation and less income and yet 44 per cent of the respondents said that to solve school related problems; they had to sell farm produce. <#/>There is need for the people to reduce the population growth so that there can be enough land left for them to carry out farming since it is their source of income.
<#/>Most of the respondents (96 %) said they deliver their children at a hospital and all of them attend clinics when expectant. <#/>Such a revelation is very encouraging considering the fact that presently most of the information on family planning and the use of birth control methods is passed to the mothers when they <-/gofor> anti and post natal clinics. <#/>This is done when the mothers attend clinics. <#/>The clinical officers or doctor in charge first addresses them about the care of the children spacing and stopping. <#/>With this; they tell the mothers where to get when they need them.
<#/>The other encouraging factor is that 66 per cent of the respondents said they had no intention of having more children than they had. <#/>About what they thought was the ideal number of children which make a happy family; most of them cited four children. <#/>Some of those who gave four as the ideal number had less or more than four children and they cited various reasons as to why they want that. <#/>From this, one can say that the people are for the idea of small families but the problem could be that they have no idea as to what steps they should take to have only the desired number and sex of children. <#/><-/Infact> most of the respondents were willing to stop having more children but for those who had either only boys or girls, they were for the idea that they can stop only after they have children of both sexes.
<#/>The sex of children becomes important and more so male children because as in most African societies, the Gusii community valued male children most for the females were only temporary residents hence the males were left in the home as inheritors, to take care of the parents in their old age and to continue the family's name. <#/>The same trend has persisted up to today so that any couple without a male child still feel that they have not fulfilled the demands of a marriage.
<#/><h> Media Ownership and Use </h>
<#/>On media ownership and use, the research findings showed that most (84%) of the respondents own a radio and depend on it as their source of news and information about them and the outside world. <#/>This supports earlier research findings that most of the people in rural areas in Kenya depend on radio to know what goes on in and outside their society. <#/>The results showed that most of the respondents (36%) who own a radio set were peasant farmers. <#/>This shows that however hard it is to get money even for basic needs, the rural people value information and news very much. <#/>This came out clearly during the research session, for even those who complained of their children being out of school now and then due to lack of either school fees of uniforms, were found to have had batteries for their radios. <#/>When asked as to how long it took them to buy new batteries when the old ones run out; the longest time named was five days while other respondents said they were always on air because they budgeted for batteries, hence were always able to buy new ones in time.
<#/>The revelations on batteries and how they are catered for contradicted the answers given by the respondents when they were asked as to how they solved child related problems. <#/>Only one respondent said that they had a bank account exclusively for the children's school needs. <#/>The reasons given by the other respondents showed that there was no early budgeting for school needs till the problems came up is when the parents looked for ways of solving them.
<#/>On the programmes listened to, the highest cited was greetings. <#/>This is a programme where by people send greeting cards to others and they are read over radio as a programme and some music is played in between. <#/>Family planning programmes were the second highest mentioned programmes in both the national station (38%) and the local station which broadcasts in the local language (30%) - Kikisii.
<#/>The greetings programme being the most listened to could be because a majority of the respondents are peasant farmers so that they can afford to listen to radio as they work, and its a known fact that most manual workers work better when there is some form of entertainment going on around them. <#/>The music from the radio has replaced the traditional style where people used to sing as they worked. <#/>Entertainment in the form of music detracts people from thinking about the amount of work they have before them and the passage of time.
<#/>When it comes - to the articles read both in the national dailies and in the District newspaper (Sauti Ya Gusii), the highest cited articles read in the national dailies were news articles - 38 per cent, while in Sauti ya Gusii, farming articles were the most mentioned- 28 per cent. <#/>Asked as to why they <-/dont><+_don't> read family planning articles in the papers; some respondents said they never saw the articles, while others said that whatever they saw on family planning were just news articles about prominent people who making a call to the people to adopt family planning methods and control the size of their families. <#/>The respondents said that the messages were not worth reading because they never went further on to tell them as to what they should do to achieve smaller and manageable families.
<#/>To the local people, since the family planning and birth control methods messages are usually attached to a prominent personality and take a news angle; they think the message is not aimed at them but just part of a way of getting the personalities to talk.
<#/><h> Interpersonal and Group communication </h>
<#/>Although most of the female respondents (76%) <-/dont> belong to their local Maendeleo Ya Wanawake Organization, it was encouraging to learn that more (68%) respondents attend the local public <ea/>barazas. <#/>This question is crucial as these local gatherings are very effective ways through which messages can be passed to the local people. 
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<#/><I> <h> POLITICS AND WOMEN'S GROUPS </h>
<#/>We use the word "politics" in this chapter because different parties such as Government, politicians and international donors have expressed different views on what the women's groups should be, do and achieve. <#/>Why so much interest by politicians on women's groups? <#/>Why so much money by the donors? <#/>Why so much concern? <#/>In order to answer these questions, it is important to understand the politics of women's groups within a broader development perspective.
<#/><h> Background to the Integration of Women in Development </h>
<#/>The major pre-occupation of most African countries between the 1950s and 1970s was to achieve political, psychological and economic independence. <#/>It is during this period that the South came to realize that the "aid" package from the North had done little to alleviate their poverty and if anything, the situation was getting worse. <#/>The South called for a restructuring of global economy, pointing out that they had also contributed to it in terms of labour and raw materials. <#/>This led to the First United Nations (UN) Development Decade from 1960 to 1970. <#/>The second UN Development Decade (1970-1980) called for the redistribution of power and resources between the South and the North. <#/>In both the First and Second Development Decades, women's issues had not yet featured. <#/>Regarding this period, (Maquire, 1988: p. 9) writes: <quote_><quote/><#/>Up till recent times, even social studies largely ignored the contribution of women to change and shape society alongside their male counterparts. <#/>Information that existed on women was based on questions asked of men about their wives, daughters, and sisters - not from the women themselves. <#/>The information on women was from a male perspective.
<#/>In 1970, Boserup made a pioneer analysis of women's economic activities in the developing world. <#/>Her conclusions indicated that despite the fact that women contributed greatly towards economic development, particularly in agriculture, this contribution was not reflected in national statistics, planning and implementation of development projects. <#/>She suggested that it was modernization that was displacing women from traditional productive functions and thereby diminishing their income and status for her colonialism and neo-colonialism contributed to the decline of the status of women (Boserup, 1970) was emphatic that unless those who make decisions on development strategies recognize and account for women's roles, the process of development would be less effective. <#/>The recognition that women's economic contribution is essential to the development process began to emerge thereafter. <#/>New approaches of Development Plans of "integrating women into development" were implemented. <#/>These approaches were developed by governments and donor agencies.
<#/>Women's groups were affected by the new approach. <#/>Since the women's groups had for a long time been mobilized to deal with their own problems, they became easy victims for the new development approach. <#/>Both the state, and the donor agencies developed their own agenda for the women's groups. <#/>We will continue with this discussion later in this chapter. <#/>In the meantime it is important to look at two theories - the industrial and critical approaches - that were developed either to support or criticize the idea and practice of integrating women into development. <#/>It is important to interpret the politics of women's groups within the two schools of thought.
<#/>The industrial theory. <#/>The focal point of the industrial approach is efficiency. <#/>The need to integrate women into development is based on the following arguments:
•	<#/>Since women constitute half of human resources, if left out, they could slow down and have a negative impact on development. <#/>In order for economic development to succeed, women must be purposefully integrated in all areas and at all levels of development.
•	<#/>If the questions of justice and fairness were left aside, women's disproportionate lack of education - with its consequences in low productivity, nutrition and health of their families - has adverse effects on the economy at large.
	<#/>The industrial view further recognizes the obstacles that hinder women's participation in development. <#/>The obstacles are as follows:
•	Cultural attitudes and prejudices against women's participation.
•	Limited access to formal education and high female illiteracy.
•	Time-consuming nature of women's chores.
•	Lack of access to productive resources - land, credit, modern agricultural tools, technology and information.
•	Health burdens of frequent pregnancies and malnutrition.
•	Undermining of women's traditional position.
•	Inadequate research and information for development planners to implement projects relevant to women.
	<#/>The issues that underlie the industrial approach of integrating women into development are ultimately economic in nature. <#/>The emphasis on income-generating activities of women's groups by donors and governmental bodies is evidence of this goal. <#/>However, the whole approach was based on the assumption that women were not yet making a full economic contribution to development. <#/>This led to the mushrooming of the income-generating activities reviewed in Chapter 3, and later to the condemnation of women's group for failing to generate income.
	<#/>The critical theory. <#/>Many assumptions made by the industrial theory and used by government and donors in projects within women's groups in Kenya have been criticized by various workers. <#/>Some of the critics including Boserup (1975) and Okeyo (1975) argued that the approach ignored the contribution of women in agriculture, food processing, livestock production, collecting firewood, drawing water, handicraft production, child bearing, and care for the sick and elderly. <#/>The work done by women is undervalued, underpaid and is considered secondary to the role assumed by the male bread winner. <#/>Proponents of the critical approach argue that in any developmental analysis, there is need to focus on the dynamic relationship between women and men. <#/>Furthermore, there is need to address the differences of power and privileges between them, as well as create a more just society rather than lack of efficiency. <#/>There is need to address cultural constraints, sexism, discrimination and gender inequalities.
	<#/>These theories provide a framework for understanding the Government's responses to women's groups (and women's organizations), and the effectiveness of the responses to the situation of women in Kenya today.
	<#/><h> THE STATE AND WOMEN'S GROUPS </h>
	<#/>In principle, the Kenya Government has accepted the idea of integrating women into development. <#/>The Women's Bureau was formed in 1976 under the Ministry of Culture and Social Services as an initial step by the government to establish an infrastructure for planning, programming and <-/implemention> of important aspects of women's issues. <#/>Women's groups came under a specific women's project designed to help women "catch up" in development. <#/>This step gave the women's groups political legitimacy and support from the state. <#/>Women were encouraged to register with the Bureau for better planning and management of their activities. <#/>The Bureau has been cited as a catalyst inspiring women's groups to undertake entrepreneurial activities such as agricultural projects, small scale businesses, making of handicrafts, and community improvement. <#/>Since the establishment of the bureau, there has been an increase in formation and resurgence of women's groups. <#/>Some of the groups registered with Women's Bureau have been provided with financial, material and technical assistance. <#/>The assistance includes: group and project management, project planning and evaluation, financial management, and leadership training.
	<#/>Most of the initiatives aimed towards women's groups are usually external to the groups. <#/>Often the requirements of the donors, like those of the politicians, are defined without consultation with these groups. <#/>Although these efforts are meant to bring women into the mainstream of economic development, there has been very little impact on the situation of women. <#/>A review of state bureaucracies created to deal with issues of women's groups reveals existence of many obstacles for any meaningful change.
	<#/>The women's Bureau is located in the Ministry of Culture and Social Services; anything welfare-oriented is usually placed in this ministry. <#/>This is a ministry where you have women, children, sports, culture, issues of handicapped and other needy groups. <#/>It appears unrealistic to assume that the needs of 52% of the population namely-women can be discussed and implemented in a department of Culture and Social Services. <#/>The move to put Women's Bureau in the Ministry of Culture and Social Services reflects on the Government's <-/steretype> attitude towards women. <#/>We suggest that it should be the business of every ministry!
	<#/>The Department of Culture and Social Services itself faces constraints in both human and financial resources and cannot be effective in integrating women into development. <#/>Women-specific programmes managed by the Women's Bureau are designed to provide basic needs to poor women in both rural and urban areas. <#/>The Bureau, however, is not in a position to address the multi-dimensional and multi-sectoral structures that marginalize women.
	<#/><h> Donors and Women's Groups </h>
	<#/>Since 1975 Western donor agencies have supported women's protects aimed at expanding the income opportunities for women. <#/>Particular attention has been given to the following projects:
•	<#/>Women - specific projects designed to help women "catch up" and close the gap between women and men in specific areas.
•	<#/>Women's component: A larger project deliberately designed to address women's needs.
•	<#/>Integrated projects: Large scale projects with complex interrelated activities that take into account all women's roles.
•	<#/>Women's impact projects.
<#/>Once again, we want to state that donors' assistance is based on wrong assumptions of what the aims of the groups are. <#/>That may be why donors efforts run parallel to women's goals and objectives. <#/>Donors reports rarely indicate what the women themselves have to say about their objectives. <#/>Most donor agencies and Governments primarily perceive women as mothers and wives. <#/>This is why most of the projects they fund are in the areas of health, nutrition, family planning and education; rarely in management, marketing or agricultural skills. <#/>Unless the donors structure their funding by addressing issues of social justice, power, distribution of resources and equity, their funds will continue to support projects that fall far short of the actual needs of women.
<#/><h> Politicians and Women's Groups </h>
<#/>Many politicians cannot deny the fact that women's groups are already a political force. <#/>Some politicians have actually gone out of their way to start women's groups through their wives (or relatives) in order to control votes of the groups during elections. <#/>Some politicians have even called women's groups in their constituencies "my groups".
<#/>Women's groups provide votes to politicians and entertainment on state occasions. <#/>Women's participation during state functions reinforces political links between men (i.e. the chief and MP) to gain favours from higher authorities for displaying the women, particularly when there is an outside visitor. <#/>Kenyan politicians view women's groups as a vehicle for their own <-/aggrandizement>.
<#/>Politicians can relate to women's groups as long as they depend on them for achieving the power, status and wealth which go with politics. <#/>When women attempt to struggle to achieve power, male politicians are quick to <-/advice> them to keep out of politics. <#/>Politicians see politics as a domain for men. <#/>Women have no business being involved! Any direct attempt by women's groups to get involved in politics is looked upon as getting out of control. <#/>The need to control women as we saw in Chapter 1 has always been there. <#/>This has been necessary for the success of men and the perpetuation of patriarchal structures.
<#/>The relationship between politicians and women's groups will remain comfortable as long as the groups continue to participate in subordinate roles to the men - dancing, cooking, voting, and praising them. <#/>But the world is changing and sooner or later groups will want to support their own members, dance, cook and vote for fellow women. <#/>This might well be the beginning of the end of the apparently uneasy relationship between the women's groups and the male politicians. <#/>The history of the Maendeleo ya Wanawake organisation is itself indicative of the calculated attempts to control women's organisations and groups. <#/>The marriage of Maendeleo to KANU (Kenya African National Union) the ruling party since independence - only to be divorced later, is a case in point.
<#/>"Let all women be involved in decision making and nation building." said Mrs Wilkista Onsado, the Chairperson of Maendeleo ya Wanawake (Daily Nation, Tuesday, August 28, 1990). <#/>She did not explain how this forced marriage contributed to national development
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<#/><I> <h> Enemies of the Press</h>
<#/>Every year the International Press Institute (IPI) and the like-minded Amnesty International, both based in the West, produce disturbing reports describing the increasingly parlous conditions in which journalists - especially in the Third World - are working. <#/>Such a grim report was used, for instance, at a 1983 meeting of representatives of the print and electronic media as the basis of another call - the umpteenth - on the governments of our world to leave the Press alone. <#/>Sponsored by the US-based World Press Freedom Committee (WPFC), the conference of editors and publishers from the Western and Third Worlds, which took place in the French Alpine town of Talloires, shed many tears over the fact, as Flora Lewis later put it in The New York Times, that <quote_><quote/>
<#/>Since then "government controls and harassment" have increased even more rapidly every year. <#/>This concern by Amnesty, the IPI and the WPFC is based on a stark and glaring fact, a fact I know from direct personal experience, having in my professional life as a journalist, been detained in police cells many times, both in Kenya and in Uganda, as a result of legitimate activities which, to me, appeared quite innocuous. <#/>The worrisome reality today, especially in Africa, Asia and Latin America, is that the journalist works through an extremely narrow straitjacket. <#/>Arrests and incarcerations take place day in and day out. <#/>Deaths are not infrequent. <#/>Self-censorship by editors, managers and owners of newspapers is, as a result, a normal recourse. <#/>Many intellectually honest journalists are banned altogether from writing. <#/>Where they remain on the staff of a newspaper, they are often sidelined or kept far away from all decision-making committees.
<#/>The continual pressure on governments to loosen their grip on the means of public information can justifiably be seen as a positive development; for, where press voices are muzzled, the myriads of problems which the Third World governments claim they are trying to solve cannot be reflected very clearly in a mirror for full identification and effective solutions.
<#/>Yet the newspaper editor appears incurably addicted to lifting himself way above society, from where he gives it the bird's-eye view and makes the avian motions of criticizing it, but only from the editor's own extremely narrow subjective armchair. <#/>He seems to say that his own right - nay, privilege - as an intellectual magistrate should have no limiting conditions whatever. <#/>His position should be protected at all costs, even to the detriment of other, often vastly more important, interests of the society in which he is writing. <#/>The editor is the absolute judge, inevitably pointing an accusing finger at everybody, every institution, everything. <#/>Like Jehovah Elohim, he is no respecter of persons. <#/>Like him, he is a god of wrath.
<#/>This tendency by editors and other intellectuals to rise high above society in order to be able to make what is only a most superficial critique of that society, is basically a self-serving one. <#/>It is what enables a journalist to pursue purely existential interests with an easy conscience. <#/>Once the editor is seen to be taking society to task - but doing it in such a harmless manner that it is unlikely to upset society's basic foundations which, alone, ensure the editor's existential privileges - nobody is likely to accuse the editor of being a social cover-up agent. <#/>That is why editors can continue to enjoy gross privileges and profligate life with quiet consciences. <#/>After all, don't we live in the wake of such highly revered publicists of Western fame as Colin Wilson, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Gunther Blöker, Albert Camus and other imposing intellectual self-gratification divinities?
<#/>Whatever its real cause, this total abstraction from the rest of society of the problems which attend the Press has always had the effect of obscuring a fact which is increasingly forcing its way to the fore. <#/>It is that the frequent government clampdowns on or takeovers of all the instruments of propaganda are really the effect, not the cause, of the absence of other, profoundly more important social freedoms. <#/>The clampdowns and takeovers are but a symptom, an outer expression, a form of manifestation of other vastly more significant deficiencies in the fundament of society.
<#/>Yet it is the seemingly phenomenal aspects of society which interest those who report Third World events. <#/>They are simply mesmerized by the spectacular appearance of our <foreign/>coups <foreign/>d'etat, political assassinations, corruption, palace intrigues and <foreign/>cherchez-la-femme - not to mention our crop failures and frequent natural calamities. <#/>The dastardly activities of Idi Amin, Augusto Pinochet, Ferdinand Marcos and other "village tyrants" - as Denis Hills depicts them in The White Pumpkin -just enrapture David Lamb, John Gunther, Robert Ruark and other "special correspondents" from the other world.
<#/>With exquisite turns of phrase, they describe the "exoticism" of these tragedies with great minuteness and colour. <#/>But what runs through all their reports like a thread is that the Third World is and can be attractive only as an oddity, a curio, a <foreign/>rara <foreign/>avis <foreign/>in <foreign/>terra. <#/>As Anthony Smith remarks with a sneer in The Geopolitics of Information: How Western Culture Dominates the World, the Western man is its forever-enchanted "observer". <#/>The correspondent is his binoculars, through the powerful lenses of which the rare birds behave as they have always behaved for the million years since their species appeared on the face of the earth. <#/>It is invariably the same tragic story, the same childlike helplessness, the same internecine wars, the same dappled war paint, the same tribal song and dance, the same atavistic eroticism, the same superstitious unction! Yet nothing at all can be done to alter the conditions in which these rocs and dodos live because that is the way nature created the species. <#/>Nothing will ever change their generic unconcern for one another and for human progress.
<#/>What emerges, then, from this gloating over Third World adversities is that it is basically racist, at least at the sub-conscious level. <#/>Since the Third World is inhabited, by and large, by peoples of non-Caucasian strains, what the correspondent appears to be trying to convey by his knowing wink, his malicious glee and his cut-of-cloth predictability in phraseology is that only the Caucasian race is capable of peace, orderliness and development. <#/>Never mind the German, French, British, Spanish, Italian and Yankee generals who ride roughshod over the Latin American peoples! Never mind the fact that these very same pale-faced "Men on Horseback" - as Edmund Burke recognized their ilk - organize more coups, imprisonments and <-_genocides><+_genocide> every year than do African, Asian, Caribbean and South Pacific coup-makers put together!
<#/>What we find, then, is that poverty as a result of some five centuries of fleecing by the very same Western societies from which our correspondents come, and on whose behalf they write, is to a large measure the cause of Third World political hurly-burlies. <#/>What transpires is that the correspondents-whether they know it or not - are really serving as cover-up agents of the Western world's own crucial place in this protracted international scandal, this unprecedented crime against humanity.
<#/>If, therefore, the Western journalists' criticisms of the Third World consist of little more than sleazy denigration of what are only secondary aspects of something whose primary nature is far more profound, how can the correspondents even begin to be of any avail to Third World societies? <#/>Typical of this attitude towards the Third World is the annual IPI-WPFC jeremiad used as the launch for this chapter. <#/>It simply deprecates the persecution of journalists by Third World regimes. <#/>This is, of course, a truism, but it is an already well-known truth. <#/>Were the correspondents really interested in helping the Third World to lift itself out of its social, economic and intellectual Slough of Despond, they would ask themselves a tell-tale
<#/>question: Why are human rights violations increasing in the Third World in the same proportion as the volume of Third World criticism by Amnesty and its friends increases?
<#/>The importance of that question should be obvious. <#/>Apart from pointing an accusing finger at the high-handedness characteristic of Third World regimes, Western critics would do us a hundred times more good by giving us a detailed historico-material explanation of that unfortunate phenomenon. <#/>Such an explanation is what is not well-known. <#/>It is useful to draw attention to the fact that certain things happen, but it is a million times more useful to explain why they happen. <#/>Only if we know the causes of our catastrophes can we give them perennial solutions. <#/>It would be distinctly more availing for correspondents to go beyond the Third World's phenomenal appearances and prove something which a growing number of Third World students are beginning emphatically to suggest. <#/>It is that this refusal on journalists' part to examine the real social conditions which beget the muzzling of voices by the politicians - this preference to limit our criticisms to such symptomatic events as arresting and hurling dissidents or journalists into the dungeon can only prevent us from arriving at a correct social diagnosis and writing of a correct social prescription for our illnesses.
<#/>At any rate, if this kind of criticism continues to be couched in its present facile and yet suggestive language, it can only harden the conviction of our despots that a still bigger bludgeon is needed. <#/>This is, indeed, one of the answers to the question posed earlier - namely, why repression is being intensified despite the growing volume of criticism by Westerners.
<#/>The Western publicist's unwillingness - perhaps inability - to explain the world in causal terms, historically as well as internationally, expresses itself through the scribe's incurable predilection for lifting succulent facts out of their real contexts, thus unavoidably distorting or falsifying the whole picture. <#/>Because his penchant for "spot news" - that pet commodity of Ted Turner, Roger Tatarian, Gerald Long and other Western news merchants - is insatiable, he is a most successful <-pedlar> of fragmentation, obscurantism, compartmentalization and ahistoricism of ideas. <#/>As Anthony Smith reports, it is the publicist who long ago created in his readers a sweet tooth for nuggets of information. <#/>Thus the correspondent always feels the duty to keep surfeiting his reader's increasingly demanding palate. <#/>These information <slang/>cuppas from the Third World are tasty beyond compare, despite the fact that the same fare has been served up again and again for many decades and even centuries. <#/>It matters little that they are, at best, nugatory and contain next to no food value; at worst, they secrete a strong dose of addictive poison, that is, unless there is a better name for the slurs, tendentiousness or "vicious insinuationist" tone, as a Ghanaian newspaper used to say, which characterizes their copy.
<#/>The newspaper scribe vigorously defends the myths, bromides, stereotypes, preconceptions, misconceptions, ready-made conclusions and, not infrequently, deliberate falsifications concerning the Third World so as to get a dainty headline for the consumers. <#/>The Western editor never ceases to point out that this supply is what meets the "consumer public" demands. <#/>Since the journalist is the creator and sharpener of this consumer public "taste", the publicist is, by profession, a catastrophe-monger. <#/>He is confessing that he would be a sad man the day political tumult ended in the Third World. <#/>He is admitting to crass existentialism as a philosophy of life. <#/>He is unwittingly owning up to the charge that he is making money by selling mental pollution.
<#/>That being the case, what is the Western journalist's solution to the worsening conditions of political instability and repression in the Third World? <#/>Surely, he cannot be interested in a real solution because such a solution would block his source of livelihood. <#/>A number of Western correspondents based in Nairobi were heard to lament aloud when the tyrant Idi Amin was overthrown in 1979. <#/>Why? <#/>Because - they confessed - there would now be nobody colourful enough to provide them with ready and delicious copy! So, for a "solution," the Western editor gives nothing but an old Heath Robinson contraption! </I>
W2A020K
<#/><I> <h> Introduction </h>
<#/>Understanding of the population situation in a spatio-temporal context is of paramount importance for not only national but also regional development planning processes. <#/>This concern underlines the need for collecting, compiling and publishing demographic data by national governments, particularly using various sources of data. <#/>However, successful realisation of this objective has eluded many governments and the results tend to vary significantly from country to country in Sub-Saharan Africa. <#/>Analysis of the state of population in the two closely linked sub-regions, based on fragmentary data, makes the authors of this article tackle this subject with great trepidation.
<#/>Ideally, the state of population in Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) ought to be examined in the context of situational forces, consequences of demographic processes, realities or myths of population pressure and development planning policies and strategies deployed to redress population issues. <#/>Yet it is not possible to examine adequately this list of issues due to paucity and poor quality of data.
<#/>It should be emphasized that physical environmental factors of risks and utility shape demographic characteristics either directly or indirectly. <#/>Also, the socio-cultural milieu determines the nature of cultural norms and practices that influence demographic processes. <#/>Furthermore, effects of colonial political economy, which have lingered on in the post-independence development philosophy and planning strategies throughout the region, have unleashed measures that have serious repercussion on demographic levels and trend. <#/>All these variables need to be examined for a proper understanding and appreciation of the population situation in the region.
<#/><h> Data Availability and Reliability </h>
<#/>Data utilized to portray the state of population in this region have been assembled from various sources, namely official government publications and publications of United Nations agencies including the Economic Commission for Africa, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and research materials. <#/>Although these sources vary significantly in quality and reliability, they suffice for making broad generalisations regarding the population situation in the two subregions.
<#/>We observe that demographic statistics for Eastern and Southern Africa share common features. <#/>First, historical development of data collection systems reflects racial bias in implementation of the apparatus, especially with regard to census and vital registration systems . <#/>This practice systematically created major data gaps for a spatio-temporal analysis of population size, trends and population dynamics. <#/>Second, ESA countries differ in the range of demographic variables on which data are collected, thereby rendering national as well as sub-regional comparison of demographic indices difficult. <#/>Finally, the countries differ in the completeness of spatial coverage. <#/>For example, countries in Southern Africa have emphasized collection of urban statistics relative to that of remote rural areas. <#/>Most governments in the two sub-regions therefore rely on estimates to derive essential demographic indices for planning purposes. <#/>This article therefore aims at portraying broad generalisations which could camouflage distinct regional variations in the state of population.
<#/>An impressive feature of ESA countries is that most of them have had several censuses which have generated some useful data; even Ethiopia and Somalia, which had never conducted any census for a long time, had censuses in the 1980s, although intensive war in the Horn of Africa has rendered census data <-/unviable>.
<#/><h> Variations in Population Size, Growth Rates and Trends </h>
<#/>According to the estimates by Population Reference Bureau , in 1993, the African continent had a total population of 677 million which represented 12.3% of the total world population. <#/>Both Eastern and Southern Africa sub-regions had approximately 258.4 million people who constituted 38.2% of the total population of the African continent. <#/>Further analysis indicates that Eastern Africa sub-region had a total population of 213.7 million or 82.7% of the entire population in Eastern and Southern Africa sub-regions. <#/>This indicates that Eastern Africa is more populous than Southern Africa.
<#/>Projected population for the year 2010 also indicates that the African continent will have a population aggregate of 1,081 million or 15.4% of the total world population. <#/>This projection implies an increase of 3.1% from 1993. <#/>Table 1 suggests that, in the year 2010, Eastern and Southern Africa is projected to have approximately 420.5 million people or 38.9% of the total population in the African continent. <#/>This means that, by the year 2010, the share of the total continental population by Eastern and Southern Africa will increase by 0.7%. <#/>Further analysis reveals that, in the year 2010, Eastern Africa will have approximately 355.7 million inhabitants or 84.6% of the total projected population for Eastern and Southern Africa. <#/>This proportional share will also indicate an increasing trend of 1.9% between 1993 and 2010. 
<#/>Further scrutiny of Table 1 and Figure 1 permits certain generalisations to be made about regional pattern of population size and absolute growth trend. <#/>First, a majority of countries will experience a very high population increase (more than 50%) between 1993 and 2010, ranging between 54% for Zimbabwe and 80% for Comoros. <#/>Second, some countries will experience relatively low population increase (less than 50%) between 1993 and 2010, ranging between 0% for Seychelles and 47% for Lesotho. <#/>Three countries categorised in this group, Seychelles, Mauritius and Reunion, are islands off the coastal zone of Eastern and Southern Africa.
<#/>These stated generalisations do camouflage distinct inter- and intra-country differentials in absolute population change. <#/>It is further realised that Eastern and Southern Africa's share of the total global population is bound to increase by the year 2010, an upward trend which will be more pronounced by the year 2025.
<#/>Turning to relative population growth as indexed by average annual population growth rate, Table 2 shows that, in the decade 1980 - 1990, annual population growth rate was steadily increasing for all countries except Kenya, Mauritius, Mozambique, Reunion, Seychelles, Somalia, Zimbabwe and South Africa. <#/>But, after 1990, more countries in the region started exhibiting a declining growth trend, with a few exceptions such as Mozambique, Seychelles and Somalia. <#/>Some nations exhibited no change in growth rates: namely Burundi, Kenya, Tanzania, Botswana, Lesotho and South Africa.
<#/>If the 1990 - 1995 average annual population growth rates are regarded as the base reference data, most ESA countries are projected to double their 1993 population sizes in two or three decades. <#/>Exceptions to these expected changes are Mauritius which will double its population size in the next 70 years, Reunion in 44 years and Seychelles in 41 years.
<#/>It should be pointed out that most Indian Ocean islands have completed their demographic transitions and have characteristics similar to those of the developed countries.
<#/>Factors contributing to these population growth levels and trends: will be identified when three parameters of population dynamics, namely fertility, mortality and migration, are individually discussed later. <#/>Note also that, in almost all countries, urban growth rates are nearly doubling the average population growth rates, as portrayed by Table 2. 
<#/><h> Pattern of Population Distribution and Density </h>
<#/>Though population density per squaw kilometre is often regarded as a crude measure of man-land relationship, it is still considered a useful index for gauging population pressure in the absence of more robust indices. <#/>Reference to Figure 2, showing the spatial pattern of population distribution and density in 1980 for Eastern and Southern Africa, indicates that pockets of extremely high population density with over 100 persons per square kilometre were as follows: Ethiopian Highlands; Kenyan Highlands; the shores of Lake Victoria in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania; the North-Eastern shores of Lake Tanganyika; the Southern shores of Lake Malawi; the Zambian copper-belt region; and the Rand region in South Africa. <#/>Further details on arithmetic population density and average cropland per capita in hectares are given in Table 3.
<#/>Available cropland per capita in hectares is a superior index of man-land relationship. <#/>This information reveals that seven countries in the region, namely Kenya, Mauritius, Mozambique, Rwanda, Somalia, Tanzania and Lesotho, were experiencing critical population pressure in 1990. <#/>Five other countries, namely Burundi, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Malawi and Zimbabwe, were also experiencing serious population pressure. <#/>Conclusively, 12 out of 17 countries in the region, for which data are available, are facing an acute man-land ratio, a problem largely confounded by arithmetic population density. <#/>Physiological population density (persons per km2 of arable land) for ESA countries depicts an even grimmer picture (Table 3).
<#/>The observed state of man-land relationship is attributed to rapid natural increase of population and the influence of net immigration. <#/>Both Eastern and Southern Africa sub-regions have experienced phenomenal influx of refugees caused by forces of political insecurity and elements of ecostress.
<#/>Further reference to inter- and intra-country variations in population distribution and density reveals that forces of ecostress, comprising physical environmental hazards such as drought, famine, floods and disease epidemics which are cyclic and rampant in the region, determine largely regional variations in population density. <#/>Large portions of the region consist of arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL) such as seen in Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Botswana, Namibia and parts of South Africa. 
<#/>It is noted that rural-to-rural migration and rural-to-urban migration reinforce current spatial variations in population density. <#/>Migrations for rural settlement including agricultural land colonisation or for wage employment in urban areas as well as in "economic islands of development" such as mining centres and large-scale plantation farms, continue to stimulate population relocation. <#/>Also, government development policies, aiming at restructuring development in the agricultural sector or rectifying rural-urban imbalances in development, contribute to spatial differences in population density. <#/>Such policies include Kenya's District Focus for Rural Development (DFRD) strategy and the agricultural modernisation programmes in Zimbabwe and Zambia. <#/>To recapitulate, the current spatial pattern of population distribution and density in Eastern and Southern Africa still mirrors the legacy of colonial administration which demarcated the entire region into different political spheres of influence and ethnic territories. <#/>Southern Africa sub-region, in particular, has its spatial pattern of population distribution and density engraving the imprints of Apartheid policy which attained its climax of absurdity by the creation of "Tribal Homelands" or "Bantustans", soon expected to disappear in the majority-ruled South Africa. <#/>Current waves of "ethnic cleansing" and resurgence of refugee movement and internal displacements of population are a living testimony of the yoke of colonialism that continue to influence spatial patterns of population density.
<#/>Yet arithmetic population density described above understates the problem of population pressure which engulfs Eastern and Southern Africa. <#/>Table 3 shows that physiological population density depicts a much grimmer picture than arithmetic population density, with countries such as Kenya, Mauritius and Rwanda experiencing very high population pressure on arable land.
<#/><h> Variations in Fertility and Contraceptive Prevalence </h>
<#/>The foregoing analysis of regional variations in absolute and relative population changes (growth) and the consequent spatial patterns of population distribution and density are better understood and appreciated when regional patterns of crude birth rates, total fertility rates, crude death rates and infant mortality indices are examined. 
<#/>Reference to Table 4 and Figure 3 reveals that, between 1978 and 1985, increase in crude birth rate (CBR) occurred in Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Lesotho. <#/>The other countries experienced a decline or no change in CBR. <#/>But, between 1985 and 1993, fewer countries, namely Burundi, Ethiopia, Mauritius, Reunion, Uganda and South Africa, experienced an increase in crude birth rate, as the remaining countries experienced CBR decline or no change. <#/>In 1993, countries with low crude birth rates were Mauritius, Reunion, Seychelles, Botswana, Lesotho and South Africa. <#/>On the other hand, countries with high crude birth rates were Malawi, Somalia and Uganda.
<#/>The scenario portrayed by total fertility rate (TFR) is not very different (Table 4). <#/>Between 1984 and 1993, total fertility rate declined for eleven countries in the region, namely Kenya, Mauritius, Rwanda, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Swaziland. <#/>One country, Madagascar, showed no change in total fertility rate, and other countries experienced an increase in the level of their fertility. <#/>In 1984, the lowest total fertility rate was registered by Reunion and the highest total fertility rate was recorded by Kenya. <#/>The other countries with equally high fertility levels were Malawi, Rwanda and Tanzania. <#/>In 1993, countries with low total fertility rates were the Indian Ocean islands of Mauritius, Reunion and Seychelles. <#/>In 1993, countries experiencing high total fertility rates were Comoros, Ethiopia, Malawi, Somalia and Uganda. 
</I>