Africa: A Tough Business Spot for the African

Africa: A Tough Business Spot for the African
September 17, 1967
September 1967
Nairobi, Kenya
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The government of Kenya belongs to its 9.7 million Africans, but the country's shops, factories and banks, its wholesaling, distributing, and importing, its whole private economy, belong, in the main, to the 235,000 Asians and whites who live here. Walk down this city's frenzied, color-splashed side streets where most people do their shopping. For block after block, the signs of the dukas, as the shops are called, evoke the sounds of India and Pakistan: Ganijee Glass Mart, Indian Emporium, Patel & Co., Shah & Sons, Ghela Manek, Hindustan Boot Co., Bombay Sweet Mart. On Kenyatta Ave., Nairobi's main street, named after the country's African president, Jomo Kenyatta, there are 31 businesses and shops run by Asians, 13 by whites, and only one by an African. No independent country, let alone a new, sensitive country, would tolerate an alien monopoly over its economy for long. In a developing country, the monopoly is even more intolerable because it closes off one of the means of developing initiative and incentive in the people...
The government of Kenya belongs to its 9.7 million Africans, but the country's shops, factories and banks, its wholesaling, distributing, and importing, its whole private economy, belong, in the main, to the 235,000 Asians and whites who live here. Walk down this city's frenzied, color-splashed side streets where most people do their shopping. For block after block, the signs of the dukas, as the shops are called, evoke the sounds of India and Pakistan: Ganijee Glass Mart, Indian Emporium, Patel & Co., Shah & Sons, Ghela Manek, Hindustan Boot Co., Bombay Sweet Mart. On Kenyatta Ave., Nairobi's main street, named after the country's African president, Jomo Kenyatta, there are 31 businesses and shops run by Asians, 13 by whites, and only one by an African. No independent country, let alone a new, sensitive country, would tolerate an alien monopoly over its economy for long. In a developing country, the monopoly is even more intolerable because it closes off one of the means of developing initiative and incentive in the people...
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