Questions abound as to whether or not Kenyans in the diaspora are contributing to the country’s economic, social and political development.
A World Bank study placed this group’s total remittances in 2010 at $1.9 billion. This is equivalent to 20 per cent of Kenya’s annual budget, making it a big contributor to development.
Among African countries, Kenya has the third highest level of remittances after Nigeria and Sudan.
Observers say the reason Kenyans’ remittance rate is high is because of the low naturalisation rates in the countries they reside in, particularly North America.
At the peak of Kenya’s independence struggle in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Mr Tom Mboya and an American businessman, Mr William Scheinman, launched a programme that recruited African students to pursue higher education in America. The idea morphed into what came to be known ‘‘airlifts’’.
These airlifts were a product of a cultural programme organised under the auspices of the African-American Students Foundation, with the aim of sponsoring African students to study in the US between 1959 and 1963.
The Foundation hoped to establish a group of accomplished young Africans who would staff government and the education system upon attainment of independence.
Mr Mboya’s airlift initiatives took 81 Kenyans to study at various American institutions. The programme enabled many more hundreds of Kenyans to acquire higher education in US institutions in the subsequent years.
Jaramogi Oginga Odinga organised his own group of airlifts in which students joined universities in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in an effort to Africanise the public service in Kenya.
The two airlift programmes took students to Western and Eastern countries, effectively constituting the initial significant crop of Kenyan diaspora ‘‘ambassadors’’ overseas.
At independence, there were only a few hundred Kenyans living abroad, mainly as students. However, the number has grown tremendously over the decades to more than 2.5 million.
They live mainly in North America, Europe, Asia, southern Africa and the neighbouring EAC states.
The largest Kenyan community abroad is found in the USA and Canada, occupying almost every profession and jobs as engineers, businesspeople, professors, doctors, nurses, technicians, factory workers, baby-sitters, and watchmen.
It is estimated that about one million Kenyans live in North America alone.
Kenyan students and professionals have also increasingly sought greener pastures in Australia due to its liberalised immigration policy, and diminishing opportunities at home.
About 50 per cent of those emigrants possess at least undergraduate degrees, making their career placement promising. The earnings of Kenyans abroad go chiefly to supporting family members to meet their basic needs.
On a different level, Kenyans abroad have been readily involved in the socio-political and economic discourse at home.
For instance, during the 2007 general elections, Kenyans raised funds to support presidential and parliamentary candidates they presumed were predisposed to creating an enabling political culture that would guarantee good governance and economic advancement.
And with the development in information and communication technology, some Kenyans have followed keenly what is going on at home, and contributed substantively to discourse via blogs and in newspapers.
The diaspora also successfully fought for dual-citizenship to be included in the new Constitution.
In 2008, the Kenya Scholars and Studies Association (KESSA) was founded with the aim of promoting scientific research and scholarship, cooperation and facilitating the dissemination of information, and publication of scholarly works on Kenya.
Since then, KESSA has endeavoured to fulfil its mandate through a website, http://kessa.org/home, in conferences, in the online peer-reviewed academic journal Kenya Studies Review, and through books.
Kenya’s community abroad is an important constituency which cannot, and should not, be ignored by anyone high political office next year.
Prof Ochwada teaches History at Missouri State University, USA (HanningtonOchwada@missouristate.edu)
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