January 01, 2008	Tuesday	Zilhaj 21, 1428

LONDON: A few years ago, Kenya’s government sponsored a competition to invent a new national dress. Ministers hoped citizens would trade their buttoned-up western suits for the slashed collar and cape of the “Kenyan cloak” and forge a unified national identity in the process. Kenyans, who knew better, rejected the fancy dress en masse, preferring to get on with the more urgent business of putting food on their family’s tables.

The episode was a reminder of why Kenya is an African exception. In a region awash with trouble, it is an island of stability – its people renowned for pragmatism, cohesiveness and their ability to ignore their rulers’ whims.

By contrast, neighbouring Sudan recently ended a civil war in the south only to confront a new crisis in Darfur, Uganda has suffered years of conflict at the hands of the Lord’s Resistance Army and Somalia remains a basket case.

Since independence in 1963, Kenya has not been troubled by bloodshed on a comparable scale. Instead, it has acted as an honest broker in peace talks – Sudan’s southern peace deal was signed in the lakeside town of Naivasha. It is a base station for aid agencies and a haven for refugees. Kakuma in northern Kenya is one of Africa’s biggest refugee camps, home to some 90,000 people.

Unlike Zimbabwe, its postcolonial rulers did not turn on the whites. Unlike Uganda, they did not kick out the Asians. Kenya’s ethnic diversity has been an unexpected strength. Although the Kikuyu, President Mwai Kibaki’s tribe, accounts for a fifth of the population and has traditionally had the loudest voice, no single ethnic group has been strong enough to tyrannise the others. There is plenty of tribal friction, as well as tensions between Christians and the Muslim minority, but this has never brewed the havoc seen elsewhere.

In recent years, Kenya has been a political role model. One of former president Daniel arap Moi’s few decent deeds was to leave office gracefully after losing the 2002 election. Government sleaze continues, but corruption no longer paralyses the economy as it did under Moi. Public life has opened up. The basement of Nyayo House, in the centre of the capital, Nairobi, no longer houses torture chambers.

Unlike many Africans, Kenyans can laugh at their leaders. When the first lady, Lucy Kibaki, stormed into a newspaper office to complain at its coverage, she became a laughing stock as comedians donned drag and a towering frizzy wig to parody her.

Kenya’s economy is one of Africa’s best. Its highlands are blessed with the ideal blend of sunshine and cool altitude for growing tea, coffee and flowers – it’s the world’s biggest exporter of tea and supplies Britain with many of its Valentine’s Day roses. It has a hardworking, educated workforce, many of whom speak good English, thanks in part to its colonial heritage. Mombasa is one of Africa’s finest harbours, and Nairobi is an air transport hub for the continent. Transport is crucial here; the country was forged around the British-built railway line snaking from Mombasa to Lake Victoria and Nairobi began as a railway supply depot.

The economy is emerging from the paralysis induced by corruption and the lethargic quangos that stifled business under Moi. Privatisation has gathered pace under Kibaki and the country has been touted as an African tiger. But economic growth remains painfully slow and the number living below the poverty line keeps rising. Progress is critical. Nairobi is still one of the world’s most unequal cities, home to lavish gated compounds with servants and swimming pools as well as Kibera, Africa’s biggest slum.

The country has one of the highest profiles of any in Africa. Its flourishing wildlife make it a massive tourist destination, and a substantial chunk of Africa’s foreign press corps make their base there. That focus may explain why it has twice been attacked by Al Qaeda – in 1998, when the US embassy in Nairobi was bombed, and in 2002, when Israeli tourists were targeted in Mombasa. The country is a key western ally in the fight against Al Qaeda in Africa.

If Kenya descends into anarchy, one of the continent’s brightest lights will have flickered out, but the most immediate wider effect will be felt by other countries in the region, who stand to lose their most reliable neighbour. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service