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Title: | The 'Asian question' in East Africa: the continuing controversy on the role of Indian capitalists in accumulation and development in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania |
Author: | Himbara, David |
Year: | 1997 |
Periodical: | African Studies |
Volume: | 56 |
Issue: | 1 |
Pages: | 1-18 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | East Africa Kenya Uganda Tanzania |
Subjects: | Indians bourgeoisie economic development Ethnic and Race Relations Economics and Trade Development and Technology |
External link: | https://doi.org/10.1080/00020189708707857 |
Abstract: | This paper examines the interplay between private enterprise and the State in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, focusing on the role of Indian capitalists in accumulation and development. It starts with a discussion of the concept of the 'Asian question' in East African thinking, and an outline of the realities of 'Asian capital' in colonial East Africa, emphasizing the official recognition of the importance of the East African Indian bourgeoisie in the period 1940-1963. In the postindependence period, Africanization of the public and private sectors in East Africa targeted these very critical economic forces, resulting in the seizure of Indian properties and, in Uganda, the mass expulsion of resident Indians. But the expropriation of the Indian bourgeoisie and the accompanying Africanization failed to lay the basis for accumulation in the East African countries. By the 1990s, East Africa found itself in a dismal economic position, after decades of, among other things, hindrance to domestic accumulation, arbitrary policy regimes, and a spectacular decline of national infrastructures. Solutions imposed by the World Bank and IMF in the 1990s specifically mentioned the Asian question. A donor-imposed 'market friendly' environment has meant that Indian economic activity is once again flourishing. Ref. |