A Political Economy Analysis of the Public Education System in Nairobi, 1902-1963.

Abstract

This article examines the political economy of colonial education in Nairobi between 1902 and 1963, focusing on how the colonial state employed the public education system to institutionalize racial hierarchies and facilitate the economic exploitation of Africans and Asians. It uses Nairobi as a case study of colonial governance; it interrogates the spatial distribution of schools, inequitable resource allocation, and racially segregated curricula that supported a labour regime that privileged European and Asian communities while marginalizing Africans. The article uses archival records, government reports, and interviews from oral respondents to demonstrate how the public education system functioned as a tool of socioeconomic control, regulating access to skills, employment, and mobility in Nairobi. By placing colonial education within the political economy framework, the study contributes to the historiographical debates on the intersection between governance, race, and economic power in the making of Nairobi’s public education system.