Public debt in developing economies has increased dramatically over the last 20 years, with debt repayment obligations putting the livelihoods of millions of individuals at risk and threatening to stall progress towards lowering poverty rates and achieving long-term development objectives across many countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Debt fragility is a systemic issue that affects many countries spanning different continents, regardless of the idiosyncratic nature of each country’s system of government and drivers of growth. Kenya is one of these fragile economies, currently classified as an economy at high risk of default.

This book gives an historical economic account of public debt in Kenya, dating back to the late 1800s. It describes the key episodes and events that resulted in the accumulation of debt and gives an intuitive understanding of the economic dynamics of debt during the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial periods in Kenya’s history. Existing studies on Kenya’s public debt are either not comprehensive, choosing to focus on a narrow period or are technical empirical analyses, rendering them inaccessible to a large audience. By describing the dynamics of public debt in Kenya, the book increases familiarity with a topic that has important implications for Kenya, and which has occupied a central stage in Kenya’s policy debates in the recent past.

History shows that contagion from economic crises is not unique and isolated to individual nations, thus the book is relevant not only for policy debates in Kenya, but also for other low-income and emerging economies within sub-Saharan Africa.