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Introduction:

Kenya is a very important country within Africa: at least in the eyes of Western 
countries and others who are interested in African resources. 
 
What is important about Kenya is that it is an African technology centre, especially 
in the telecommunications area. Furthermore, Kenya provides Uganda, Ruanda and 
the Eastern Congo, where the raw materials that are so essential to wealthy countries 
are found and traded, with access to the sea. 
 
Tourism also constitutes a large part of Kenya&rsquo;s GDP. So it is easy to understand 
why the government was extremely unhappy when the Fundamentalist Islamic 
regime Al-Shabab (which controls a large portion of Southern Somalia) started to 
cause problems and even murdered some European tourists in Kenya. Because of 
this, Kenya has become involved in the war in Somalia. 
 
Besides tourism, the country&rsquo;s essential income comes from agriculture, industry 
and trade. The country has seen steady economic growth, even during the current 
economic crisis. But, as you have probably found out about other African countries: 
Economic growth may be good for those who have money, but it does nothing to 
help those who do not have any. 
 
Why? In the case of Kenya we see that more and more land designated for grazing is 
being passed over for commercial agriculture, including for the production of bio 
fuels. As such, the herdsman, who represent 25% of the population, have less land, 
and suffer greatly during prolonged dry spells. So, many of them prefer to settle in 
Nairobi&rsquo;s shanty towns in poor living conditions and little to no basic rights. They 
believe that the bulldozers could show up the next day and destroy everything that 
have and they would be left with nothing. The bulldozers represent the power of 
those with money who need more industry, more trade and more houses to live in. 
The political climate suffers from elitism that has its origin in ethnicity. As such, 
ethnic conflicts are not uncommon. The famous US president, Obama, who was 
born in Kenya, has a role in these conflicts. How? 
 
Before he was elected, he and some other American senators created a fund to help 
the opposition party in Kenya, because they didn&rsquo;t like the government at that time 
because it had achieved huge economic growth through trade with China. The 
opposition won the elections (the elections that were followed by a breakout of 
bloody ethnic violence) and the new president soon slowed down business with 
China. You can read in the files how this is also related to the Nobel Prize for Peace 
that Obama was given (without having done anything for peace yet). 
The country is very much of interest to the Americans. An indication of this is how 
Kenya has been made the Africom headquarters, the American project to militarize 
Africa. 
 
What more can we say about Kenya? It holds many archaeological treasures (see 
task 3), it has unique coral reefs that are now being threatened by pollution, it has 
fertile soils (a great portion of which were appropriated by the British at the start of 
the 20 th century), from 1952 to 1956 there was the Mau-Mau uprising (see task 2) 
which paved the way for independence in 1960 for Kenya and other British colonies 
in Africa because the British did not want to face similar uprisings, Jomo Kenyatta 
was the first charismatic president, and after him came Daniel ArapMoi with his 
dictatorial tendencies and bloody repression of his opponents. In principle 
parliamentary democracy is working, but there are always outbreaks of violence at 
election times. 
 
You can confirm all of this information in the files provided and you will also have 
the chance to learn more. 
 
Happy reading and good luck in carrying out this task!

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