In the run-up to the recent national elections, Kenya was hailed as a model of stability. With a booming economy and a parliamentary democracy, Kenya was regarded as a relative beacon of hope in a highly troubled region. But in the week following the election, mayhem broke out after it appeared that Kenya’s ruling party had rigged the results. Hundreds were killed in the violence and concerns mounted that Kenya could descend into chaos.
In the past few days, the violence appears to have ebbed and hopes grow that new elections or a political settlement can dampen the unrest, but what went so terribly wrong? Was it just election fraud? Or are there other factors?
Earlier this year Foreign Policy magazine and the Fund for Peace ranked Kenya at 31 on their Failed States Index, much more stable than Kenya’s neighbors: Sudan (1), Somalia (3), Uganda (15), Ethiopia (18). Kenya has a somewhat functioning democracy and its institutions are much stronger than those of its neighbors, but like its neighbors, Kenya suffers from extreme demographic pressures. On a scale of 1 to 10, the Failed States Index ranked Kenya at 8.4 for demographic pressures--less than its neighbors, but still quite high by global standards.
Kenya, for one thing, is still one of the fastest growing nations in the world. Its total fertility rate (TFR)—the average number of children born to a woman during her lifetime—is 4.9. That’s nearly twice the world average (2.7) and just below the average for Africa (5.0). The TFR for Kenya poorest fifth is 6.5. Kenya’s population, currently 36.9 million, is expected to jump to 51.3 million in just 17 years, and to 65 million by 2050.
Kenya’s leadership is quite old by world standards. President Mwai Kibaki, the country’s current leader, is 77, but the median age in Kenya is just 18 years. There are 12.2 million young people between the ages of 10 and 24, and many of them, despite recent economic growth are unemployed.
And Kenya, like its neighbors, is a country still fractured by ethnic divisions. Kenya has six main ethnic groups that comprise 84 percent of the population, and none of them come close to constituting a majority. The largest and ruling ethnic block, the Kikuyu, comprises only 22 percent of the population.
Kenya, of course, is not alone in suffering population pressures, a prominent ‘youth bulge,’ and sharp ethnic divisions. Kenya, in fact, is part of an arc of demographic instability that extends from Central and East Africa, through the Middle East, and down into South Asia. The “arc” includes such noted trouble spots as the Congo, Rwanda, the Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, but virtually all the countries that fall within that geographic “arc” are potential trouble spots. And, given their projected population growth rates, these countries comprise an ever growing percentage of the world’s population. The “arc” is getting steadily larger.
One of the reasons that fertility rates and population growth rates remain so high in these areas is that contraceptive services are still not universally available and in some areas virtually non-existent. The unmet need for family planning in Kenya is estimated at 23.9 percent. In Pakistan, it’s 31.8 percent. In war-torn Somalia, where the TFR is 6.8, only one percent of women use modern methods of contraception.
The recent mayhem in Kenya is disturbing, and hopefully it will soon be quelled, but it’s not really surprising. More than half of the country is still living below the poverty line, and with millions of unemployed youth the potential for renewed violence will always be present in Kenya…as it will in more than a dozen other countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Demographic pressures are not the only cause of unrest in countries like Kenya, but we ignore those pressures at our peril…and their’s.
