Divergent History, Sources of and Genesis of Kenya's Foreign Policy

In this chapter, we consider the genesis of Kenya’s foreign policy, which cannot be considered to have only begun at independence. Indeed, there were regional and global factors that influenced Kenya’s foreign policy prior to independence, and some of these essentially set the path that Kenya would follow after independence. Some of the decisions taken also ensured that the country would experience ongoing internal conflict over geography, borders and resources, among other issues. These included the progressive East African colonial-era integration including through the EACSO which later became the East African Community (EAC). There was also the occasional overt influence of the Pan-African Congresses and its members and even the preferences expressed by independence leaders, such as Nyerere’s offer to delay Tanganyika’s independence in order to create an East African federation. Further, since young, independent nations without an established tradition of foreign policy or leadership often rely to a greater extent on centralized foreign policy making approaches, in addition to the broader reality that foreign policy is often in the hands of elites, it is useful to track back to the first elites that were instrumental in Kenya’s foreign policymaking, and to highlight the influences of these other external actors and factors in forming Kenya’s earliest independence-era foreign policy preferences. The chapter also examines the interactions between the historical, elite, and contemporary factors and foreign policy preferences, and how together, they imbued the young republican with a western-oriented, capitalist-grounded, African communitarian and Ubuntu-infused, pro-African liberation foreign policy in its infancy.