Harambee in Kenya
By Ramadhan Rajab
When Kenya achieved the internal self-governance on 1st June 1963, it was to grapple with ignorance, sickness, and poverty. The then Prime Minister, Jomo Kenyatta, took up the challenge by calling Kenyans to fight together three enemies as he referred them.
This are the words he pronounced on Madaraka Day, “ You and I must work together to develop our country, to get education for our children, to have doctors, to build roads, to improve or provide all the day-to -day essentials. This should be our work in the spirit that I am going to ask you to echo and shout aloud, to shatter the foundations of the past with the strength of our new purpose…HARAMBEE”
With those words, Harambee, which literally means to pull together, was implanted in the minds of Kenyans. Although harambee featured prominently after independence, historians acknowledge that the spirit was there in the pre-colonial Kenya.
Tabitha Kanogo and Robert Maxon write that the self-help and cooperative groups like Ngwatia among the Kikuyu, Mwethiya with the Kamba, Kwath and Saga, Kokweti in the Kalenjin community, built houses, broke the land, planted and hunted together. They pooled the resources and shared the proceeds of labour. The self-help initiative produced a spirit of sharing and unity in the community.
Thus with independence there was more need for cooperation to build the new country. ‘Drum’ magazine of December 1966 reported that self-help groups which had become so much part of the rural life in Kenya’s largely agricultural community, had in the spirit of harambee brought near miracles in the country side. Aided by the Government, the groups were to construct schools, health centres, nursery centres, water springs and wells, bridges, youth centers, and community halls throughout the country.
Through Harambee, Kenya portrayed a near perfect example of the sacrifice citizens made in working together to improve the social and economic state. That is where the motto of Harambee came into being.
President Daniel Arap Moi, who succeeded Kenyatta in 1978, also emphasized the same movement. Even with the success stories of Harambee, it is not without citics.
Robert Maxon asserts that the proliferation of the development facilities were often vehicles for political ambitions and this caused some concerns to development planners who argued that Harambee be regulated.
Another concern that Maxon puts is that Harambee movement did little to reduce the inequality in development since the greatest facilities were put up in those provinces and districts that were already the most developed.
Many admit that despite the few irregularities in Harambee movement, it made the development of the then new Kenya possible.
The writer is a journalist in Nairobi and undergraduate at United States International University, Nairobi
