Reaping the Whirlwind Report
IN JANUARY 2008, KENYA WAS ROCKED BY THE WORST POLITICAL VIOLENCE SINCE independence. By the time it ceased, and around 1,000 lives had been lost, over 600,000 displaced from their homes and property whose value is yet to be ascertained destroyed. The immediate economic consequences of the violence reverberated throughout East Africa. The hinterland countries of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Eastern DRC were severely disrupted.
Almost three years on, normalcy has returned to the affected areas. Much of the debate on the Post Election Violence (PEV) is focused on the political dimensions of the crisis, notably the issue of holding the perpetrators to account. The question of long-term consequences of the violence has not attracted much attention. Yet, there is sufficient reason as well as anecdotal evidence, that these consequences may be even more significant in the future than the historical factors that precipitated the violence. These include implications for food security and the risk of long term capital flight, brain drain and the discouragement of investment, particularly from parts of the Rift Valley where interethnic
political violence has become endemic. The purpose of this study is to investigate the
magnitude of these consequences, and to assess their potential long term ramifications.
The report is organised in five chapters as follows. This overview chapter covers the objective, the scope and methodology, and an overview of the findings. The second chapter provides the broad economic context. This is followed by a discussion of the economic and political situation of the Rift Valley in Chapter Three. Chapter Four presents the findings of the field research, and Chapter Five concludes.
