What Ails Kenya?
Ethnic Conflict Analysis

1st August 2008
By Nicholas Kariuki Githuku
University of Nairobi
For Rotary Center for Peace and Conflict Studies, Chulalongkorn University-Bangkok, Thailand
June 24th –September 17th Session

The post-election violence that broke out after the hotly contested 27th December elections and the subsequently disputed results is, arguably, what most people know about Kenya in terms of conflict. Indeed, for a long time, the country has been thought of as an island of peace in a sea of political turmoil. Beyond this recent flare-up of violence relayed to major world capitals around the world by the electronic and print media, little else is known about the root causes and nature of ethnic conflict in Kenya, which are structural and embedded in Kenya’s history.