2. Literature Review
2.2. Love Binti Volunteered Country Portfolio: Kenya
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2.2 Love. Binti Volunteered Country Portfolio: Kenya Cradle of mankind
The Republic of Kenya locates in Eastern Africa: Ethiopia to the north, Somalia to the northeast, Tanzania to the south, Uganda to the west, and Sudan to the northwest, with the Indian Ocean traversing its southeast border. Kenya’s official languages are Kiswahili and English, while other unofficial indigenous languages are still being spoken. With an estimated population of 44.03 million, Kenya consists of 42 ethnic communities and is the forty-seventh largest country in the world. In term of religion beliefs, a large majority of Kenyans are Christian (82.5%), but it is estimated that around 11.1 percent of the population adheres to Islam, while the rest still practice indigenous beliefs widely. Kenya is also rich in pre-historical heritage that holds evidence of man’s earliest settlement, preserve most fossil human remains, and sites scattered along the Rift Valley (north to south) and western Kenya.
Political and economic profile
Ruled by British from 1890 to 1963, Kenya had regained its full independence on December 12th, 1963 when the Kenya African National Union (KANU) won the election in May same year, and has enjoyed a stable governance since then. Although there are some riots occurred against the one-party dominant situation, overall, the power is transferred peacefully from the single party to a new coalition party.
According to Freitag, A. R., & Stokes, A. Q. (2009), the more stable the government, the greater opportunities for the dialogic communication that characterizes contemporary practice.
Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, is a regional commercial hub for trade, communication, and finance in East Africa. The economy of Kenya is the largest by its annual gross domestic product (GDP) in East and Central Africa. Agriculture is a major employer;
the country traditionally exports tea and coffee. The service industry is also a major
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economic driver. In addition, Kenya is a member of the East African Community trading bloc. Although the country reaps the benefits of rapid economic growth credited to the remarkable political stability since independency; however, Kajwang (2002) criticizes that the country’s economic growth is limited owing to the weak commodity prices, endemic corruption, low investor confidence, meager donor support, and political infighting. More than half of Kenyans still live below the poverty line, with a high unemployment rate of 40 percent and a huge public debt of 51 percent of the GDP. The quality of life in Kenya is low, with a life expectancy at birth of 47.5 years and a GDP per capita (PPP) of USD 1,140 (Mbeke, 2009).
Socio-cultural profile
According to Greet Hofstede (2001), who coins “the theory of cultural dimensions” to understand society differences in power distance (the extent of less powerful organization and institution members accept and expect power is equally distributed), uncertainty avoidance (the degree of a society tolerating uncertainty and ambiguity), and individualism/ collectivism (how well individuals are integrated into groups and the sense of belongings), African societies are high in power distance, high in uncertainty avoidance, and belong to collectivist cultures. Edward Hall (1959), a prestigious cultural anthropologist, also introduces the high and low context cultures where African countries are shown to incline to the former. This means that many African societies rely much on nonverbal and implicit messages that need a profound understanding of the society to understand better. Kenya is well known for the decent tourist infrastructure and a lot of beach resorts along its coastline. Despite being under the official Travel Warning list in several countries including Taiwan, R.O.C. for its
continuing and recently heightened threats from terrorism and the high rate of violent crime in some areas; mostly near the boarders or coasts side, Kenya remains a testament to its many natural attractions that tourists continue to visit.
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Urban-rural Disparity
Upon being the most favorable country performing flying colors on several development indexes among the East African countries, poverty alleviation remains an agenda since more than three-quarters of the Kenyans are living in the rural areas.
Under such premises, most UN agencies and international NGOs and multilateral monetary organizations are not only making presences in those areas delivering monetary aids but also establishing programs related to capacity building of making the rural Kenyans running smallholder household business, which takes accounts of its majority agricultural output.
Sex and Gender
Women are central to the entire development process. Kenya's women have been subjugated to consistent rights abuses while shouldering overwhelming amount of responsibilities than men throughout the country’s history.Kenyan women provide 80 percent of the country’s farm labor and manage 40 percent of the country’s smallholder farms, yet they own only roughly 1 percent of agricultural land and receive just 10 percent of available credit (USAID Support for Gender Equality in Kenya Fact Sheet, 2015). Women and young people have great potentials for contributing to economic development and social progress if they are able to fulfill their potential. They are the de facto in improving Kenya’s rural-urban poverty, yet received limited rights and often underrepresented in decision-making positions. What’s worse, women living in rural Kenya spend long hours collecting water and firewood; interfering with school attendance keeping them to be educated at a mediocre rate to their counterparts, which results in women’s increasing reliance on men. No matter which social class, religion, or ethnic group the women belong to, throughout Kenya, they are still restricted from owning, acquiring, and controlling property. If attempting to assert property rights over men or in-laws, women are often
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ostracized by their families and communities. Rural women are especially vulnerable to the disease because they do not have equal access to social and economic resources as men, which leads to lower knowledge level and less freedom of making their own sexuality-related decisions.
Although the number of AIDS-related deaths in Kenya has dropped drastically by 32% to 58,000 in 2013, compared to 2009 (AVERT, 2014), rural areas remain a concern, with potential for a further rise (Guwatudde et al., 2009; Tumushabe, 2006).
The challenges for uncircumcised men living in the Africa’s AIDS belt increase greater risks for women suffer from infectious diseases, raise the impacts of HIV/
acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). AIDS belt indicates areas with highest percentages of HIV cases: Botswana, Burundi, Central African Republic, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Southern Sudan, Uganda, and Zambia. The UN Human Development Report (2014) indicated women make up more than half of the nearly 37 million people worldwide living with HIV, most of them in hard-hit Africa.