Kenya has a population of some 32 million, 75% of whom live in rural areas. It used to be East Africa’s economic model country, but in recent years has sometimes been described as a “social powder keg”. Since the early 1990s, growing social rifts and economic and political power struggles have led to recurrent violent conflicts. Kenya is the African country that shows the highest poverty growth rate: in 1990, 48% of Kenyans were living below the poverty line, a figure that rose to 54% in 2003. Parliamentary and presidential elections in December 2002 brought about a peaceful change of government. However, progress made since then in social and economic respects has been lagging behind the high-running expectations and hopes.

Key areas of MISEREOR’s development promotion work in Kenya include: rural development, rural drinking water supplies, vocational training and promotion of small enterprises, urban community development, sociopolitical awareness-building, nonviolent conflict management and peace work.

MISEREOR mostly cooperates with development bodies of the Catholic Dioceses and the Justice and Peace Commissions. In addition, our Kenyan partners include a number of Church-related NGOs, especially in the fields of urban community development and conflict management/peace work.

MISEREOR currently promotes c. 40 projects per year with a total volume of support amounting to an average € 3,800,000. Kenya is thus ranking very high on MISEREOR’s records of support provided to countries in Africa. This is why at the moment new additional programme proposals cannot be considered as existing dialogue and consulting capacities as well as funding resources are completely absorbed by ongoing programmes and initiatives.