LEARNING FROM THE WOODS: TOWARDS REPAIRING SOCIAL PUNCTURES RESULTING FROM THE GLOBAL CRISIS IN KENYA.

Abstract After a deep dive into the global crisis, only now are Africa’s governments beginning to detect possible impact of the crisis on national economies. For Kenya, this realization comes a bit too late as ‘bottom quintile citizens’ agonize under increasing pressure of high food costs and fuel –or a kind of twin crisis. These crises, packaged with mega corruption scandals are tipping over the fragile social relations (often tribally defined) hence introducing greater possibilities for sustained social unrest. These issues are wide cracks in what has always remained a structural form of exclusions and adverse inclusions of citizens into mainstream economies. More over, the reliance on conventional policy mechanisms such as vision 2030, which do not account for crises such as the current, forces more pessimism on the bottom quintiles as they sustain their suspicion on the deficits or even incompetence of national policies to address their plight.

This paper attempts to investigate the ‘Kenyan middle and bottom quintile’ responses to pressures exerted by the global crisis. On this platform the study seeks to understand (i) if these quintiles are responding creatively in some problem solving way [both short term and long term], or the responses are on fault finding nature; and (ii) if government is re-thinking its social policy efforts both for short term and long term mopping up of this crisis effect. Part of this journey will consider the possibilities or otherwise of ‘nationalizing’ innovations, as part of the national Vision 2030 project. Ultimately the study hopes to re-align ‘crisis based’ social realities with national priorities.