Kenya has urbanized dramatically since independence. In 1960, perhaps 5-10 percent of Kenyans were urban. Today, nearly 40 percent are urban. Millions have moved from rural areas to cities in search of jobs and opportunity.
Urbanization created a new kind of Kenyan identity. In rural areas, people were defined by their ethnic group, by their family, by their location. In cities, people encountered people from different ethnic groups, from different regions, from different religious backgrounds.
Urbanization required new forms of identification. Ethnic identity persisted but became less all-encompassing. Class identity became more important. Someone might be defined as a member of the informal sector, as a street trader, as someone living in a slum, as much as by their ethnic identity.
Urbanization created spaces of cultural mixing. Cities became sites where different languages, religions, and cultural practices coexisted. Sheng, urban music, urban fashion, all emerged from this mixing. Cities created new forms of Kenyan identity that transcended ethnic boundaries.
But urbanization also created stratification and inequality. Some urbanites became wealthy in business or professions. Others remained poor, living in slums, doing informal work. The promise of urbanization, that people could move to the city and escape rural poverty, was realized for some but not for others.
Urbanization also created alienation. People who left rural communities lost connection to land, to family networks, to traditional structures. They gained access to jobs and education but lost other things. The psychological experience of urbanization was mixed. Opportunity and alienation coexisted.
The urbanization legacy is that Kenya has become more urban, more culturally mixed, more stratified. Urbanization has enabled cultural innovation and economic opportunity for some. It has also created poverty, slums, and social disconnection. The urban Kenya that emerged from postcolonial urbanization is more complex and more unequal than rural Kenya was.
See Also
- Sheng as Cultural Legacy
- The Ethnicity Question
- Colorism
- The Matatu Culture Legacy
- The Nairobi Skyline as Legacy