At first sight, Kenya seems to have had more scope than other African countries to emulate the development trajectory described in the World Bank study, The East Asian Miracle. These assets did not, however, result in sustained growth – an outcome this article aims to explain using a negative turning point in the early 1990s. The most striking difference between the East Asian and Kenyan experiences was the acceptance – and even exacerbation – of socio‐economic inequality as an immutable reality of development, plus the weak belief in the integrity of Kenyan institutions. A constitutional review process is one possible political solution for this.
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