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Luo entrustment: foreign finance and the soil of the spirits in Kenya

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2011

Parker Shipton
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Extract

This article examines the cultural dimensions of financial credit and debt, placing these against a deeper and broader background of entrustments and obligations. A standard response of the largest international aid agencies to African rural poverty has been to set up programmes to lend money and other resources to rural people without understanding what the borrowers already owe to other creditors and claimants, or how strong these competing claims are. The history of credit programmes has been a history of dismal failures and of disappointments for borrowers and lender alike, particularly where land mortgages have been involved. Intensive field research reveals that Luo farmers in Kenya, like other East Africans, already have a broad assortment of borrowings and lendings of their own, some far more meaningful to them than loans from banks, co-operatives, or marketing boards will ever be. Some are only partly economic in nature; some involve sacred trusts or important political contacts. Land, labour, animals, money, and humans themselves are all objects of entrustment and obligation among kin, neighbours, or other familiars. Farmers channel resources from socially distant institutions into uses that are often locally more meaningful than those their lenders intend; and they may not be at liberty to convert them back into liquid forms for repayment. Requirements of land title collateral misfit a cultural context where attachments to land, and to ancestral graves on it, symbolise an individual's or family's social identity. More broadly, the credit strategy of development aid needs rethinking. Rather than continuing to enmesh rural Africans in debts and uncertainties, those who purport to help reduce poverty in rural Africa should shift their strategy from lending to encouraging saving and investment, or to promoting other kinds of locally rooted initiatives not financial in nature.

Résumé

Cet article examine les dimensions culturelles du crédit et des dettes financières, plaçant celles-ci dans le contexte plus profond et plus général de la confiance et des obligations. Une des résponses ordinaires à la pauvreté rurale en Afrique de la part de plus large des organismes d'aide internationale a été de mettre en oeuvre des programmes pour prêter de l'argent et d'autres ressources aux populations rurales sans comprendre que les emprunteurs devaient déjà à d'autres créditeurs et claimants, ou sans comprendre le serieux de ces revendications concurrentes. L'histoire des programmes de crédit a été une histoire d'échecs lugubres et de déceptions pour à la fois les emprunteurs et les prêteurs, particulierement quand des emprunts de terre ont été fait.

Une enquête intensive sur le terrain a révélé que les agriculteurs Luo en Kenya, comme les autres africains de Test, ont déjà un large assortiment d'emprunts et de prets entre eux, certains ayant pour eux une signification beaucoup plus importante que les prets des banques, des coopératives et des comités de ‘marketing’. Certains sont seulement partiellement de nature économique; certains impliquent des confiances sacrées ou des contactes politiques importants. La terre, le travail, les animaux, l'argent, et les humains eux-mêmes font tous l'objet d'être chargés de confiance et d'obligation parmi les membres de la meme famille, les voisins, et autres personnes familiéres. Les agriculteurs dirigent les ressources provenant d'institutions sociales distantes vers des usages qui ont souvent plus de signification au niveau local que l'aurait cm les prêteurs; et il se peut qu'ils ne soient pas libre de les reconvertir en liquide comme repaiement.

Les exigences du nantissement des titres de terres sont inadaptées à un contexte culturel où les attachements à la terre, et aux tombes ancestrales qui y sont dessus, symbolisent l'identité sociale individuelle ou familiale. En gros, on a besoin de réflechir encore une fois à la strategic de crédit dans l'aide au développement. Plutôt que de continuer à empêtrer les africains ruraux dans des dettes et des incertitudes, ceux qui ont l'intention d'aider à réduire la pauvreté en Afrique rurale devraient changer leur stratégic, au lieu de prêter ils devraient encourager les populations à faire des économies et des investissements, ou bien promouvoir d'autres sortes d'initiatives d'origine locale qui ne soient pas de nature financière.

Type
Making a living in rural Kenya
Information
Africa , Volume 65 , Issue 2 , April 1995 , pp. 165 - 196
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1995

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