Gem constituency, nestled in the heart of Siaya County, is a place of quiet dignity and deep
roots. With fertile land, abundant talent, and a proud history of political engagement, one
might expect to find prosperity blooming in every corner. But the reality is far more sobering.
In Gem, as across rural Kenya, poverty persists; not as an accident, but as a system. A system
maintained by landlords, protected by the comprador elite, and engineered by imperialist
finance.
Kenya’s countryside, where over 70% of the population resides, remains economically
paralysed and politically neglected. The peasantry tills the land, feeds the nation, and births
the next generation of workers, yet it receives the least in return. It is not simply that
development has failed to arrive; it is that underdevelopment has been organised, managed,
and maintained.
Gem offers a stark case study of this national contradiction. It reveals the anatomy of a rural
crisis constructed not by misfortune, but by policy, ideology, and class rule.
Land, Labour, and the Betrayal of the Peasantry
Land remains the foundational contradiction in rural Kenya. In Gem, most families survive
on highly fragmented plots, often less than half an acre, expected to produce both subsistence
and surplus. These plots once sustained households, but today they struggle under the
pressures of climate change, input costs, and population growth. Youth finish school only to
return to unproductive land or migrate to cities in search of jobs that do not exist. Many turn
to the informal sector; riding motorbikes, vending food, or engaging in casual labour with no
security.
Public services are threadbare. Schools are overcrowded, health centres lack medicine, roads
are impassable, and water remains a luxury. The cooperative societies that once gave power
to cotton, dairy, and sugar farmers have collapsed under liberalisation and deregulation.
Government presence is sporadic and mostly extractive; taxing, registering, and disciplining,
rather than supporting or investing. This is not development delayed. This is development
denied.
The Landlord Class and the Comprador Elite
The roots of rural poverty in Kenya are class-based. At the top sit the landlords; owners of
vast estates, some inherited from colonial times, others accumulated through patronage. In
regions like Siaya, land is hoarded as a symbol of wealth and used as political currency, even
as the majority of peasants remain land-poor.
Alongside them stands the comprador class; the intermediaries of imperialism. These are the
political and business elites who speak the language of reform but act in the interests of
multinational capital. They author budgets, sign deals, and shape rural policy, all while
insulating themselves from the consequences. Their children attend private academies while
public schools decay. Their companies import food while farmers are forced to abandon their
fields. They dominate ministries and sit on NGO boards, managing the countryside not as
citizens, but as clients of global capital.
Together, the landlords and the compradors have no interest in rural transformation. They
benefit from rural stagnation, clientelism, and cheap labour. The countryside becomes a
holding zone; warehousing the poor while elite wealth multiplies in Nairobi and offshore
accounts.
Debt and NGO Rule in the Villages
In Gem and other rural regions, the visible hand of government has been replaced by the soft
glove of NGOs. Where once the state drilled boreholes and built dispensaries, now we find
donor-funded pilot projects, short-term relief packages, and branded billboards marking
“development milestones.” Health care, education, water, and sanitation have all been
outsourced; fragmented into aid portfolios managed by consultants, not communities.
This NGO-isation of rural development has created an illusion of progress while leaving
structures unchanged. It fragments collective power, weakens public institutions, and builds
dependence on projects that vanish when donor cycles end. Instead of guaranteed rights,
people receive conditional favours.
Meanwhile, at the macroeconomic level, Kenya’s ballooning public debt; now over Ksh 11
trillion; drains the budget dry. Every year, more money goes to debt servicing than to
development. To meet these obligations, the government cuts spending, increases VAT on
basic goods, and removes subsidies. Rural people pay twice: first through austerity, and again
through lost services. Yet this debt did not build their schools, irrigate their farms, or revive
their cooperatives; it enriched an elite minority while mortgaging the future.
Debt is not neutral. It is a mechanism of control, enforcing compliance with the dictates of
the IMF, the World Bank, and other external lenders. These institutions may no longer send
colonial governors; but they still determine whether a child in Gem eats or studies.
Usury: The Hidden Blade of Financial Exploitation
Beneath the macro-level debt crisis lies a more intimate form of exploitation:Â usury. In rural
Kenya, families borrow not to invest; but to survive. Loans cover school fees, hospital bills,
funerals, and food. Microfinance institutions, digital lending apps, and SACCOs offer credit;
but at crushing interest rates. Effective annual rates often exceed 100%, especially once
hidden fees and penalties are included.
In Gem, women’s groups and chamas are increasingly indebted to aggressive lenders who
use social pressure and group liability to enforce repayment. What once were tools of
solidarity have been transformed into engines of coercion. In many cases, borrowers are
publicly shamed, blacklisted, or harassed. Some are forced to sell livestock or land just to
repay a short-term loan that brought no long-term gain.
Digital lending apps, marketed as “financial inclusion,” have brought surveillance and social
control. Many are backed by foreign venture capital and operate in regulatory grey zones.
They prey on desperation, manipulate data, and enforce repayment through psychological
warfare.
This is not credit. It is modern-day usury; the extraction of wealth from poverty through
digital chains. It is the new face of rural exploitation.
The False Promise of the Market
Across the policy spectrum, rural development is framed as a question of “market
efficiency.” Peasants are told to become entrepreneurs. Local leaders are told to attract
investment. But how can market forces work in areas without roads, electricity, or reliable
rainfall? How can competition thrive when the field is already tilted toward corporations and
cartels?
The truth is that markets have not empowered rural Kenya. They have dispossessed it.
Liberalisation dismantled support systems, flooded the country with cheap imports, and
opened the door to cartels. Now, farmers are price takers, not price setters. Inputs are
expensive, outputs are undervalued, and the rural economy is stuck in a cycle of extraction.
This is not accidental. It is a design that favours global capital and domestic elites; while
presenting failure as personal fault.
The Way Forward: A National Democratic Alternative
Kenya must reject this model of dependent, exploitative development. The rural question is
not just about infrastructure or welfare; it is about power. It is about who controls land,
labour, markets, and the future.
A genuine transformation requires: Democratic land reform to return land to those who till it;
Public investment in rural industry, irrigation, and cooperatives; Cancellation of illegitimate
debt and regulation of exploitative credit systems; Rebuilding public services as rights, not
donor gifts; Peasant empowerment through participatory planning and self-governance.
These are not radical dreams. They are the foundation of National Democratic Development,
rooted in justice and popular sovereignty.
Let Gem Rise with the Nation
Gem, like many rural areas, is not poor in potential; it is poor by design. Its people are hard-
working, organised, and their political consciousness is on the rise. But they have been
locked out of development by systems that reward dependency and punish resistance.
Meanwhile, in Nairobi and the county headquarters, politicians feed fat on the public teat.
Cabinet Secretaries earn millions in allowances. Members of Parliament award themselves
car grants, sitting allowances, and foreign trips; all while the children of Gem share torn
books and walk kilometres for water. County assemblies purchase luxury vehicles while
dispensaries run dry of paracetamol. The state says there is no money for rural hospitals, but
always finds money for police boots, surveillance drones, and debt repayments.
This is not leadership; it is betrayal. This is not mismanagement; it is organised plunder. The
contradiction is clear: a political elite living in opulence, while the peasantry they claim to
represent lives in deprivation. The same politicians who make empty promises in the planting
season disappear in the harvest. They are loyal not to the people, but to party financiers,
foreign interests, and elite networks.
It is in this vacuum; where the state has failed and NGOs have retreated; that a new force has
emerged. The Communist Party Marxist Kenya (CPMK) stands as the only serious,
disciplined, and revolutionary organisation committed to building dual power in the
countryside. Through its Red Cells, Peasant Committees, Youth Leagues, and the Pio Gama
Pinto Ideological School, CPMK is organising the people to reclaim land, restructure the
economy, and seize political power from below.
This is not about elections. It is about transformation.
Not about personalities. About programme.
Not about begging. About building.
The liberation of Gem is the liberation of Kenya. Rural emancipation is national
emancipation.
Let the land belong to the tiller.
Let credit serve the people, not enslave them.
Let justice, not usury, define development.
And let the people rise; not with borrowed dreams, but with organised power.
Malik Okanda is a rural development researcher and community organiser from Western
Kenya. He writes on land, labour, and political economy from a Pan-African perspective.
