NAIROBI, Kenya July 23 –When former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua repeatedly proclaims that the Kikuyu are inherently more enterprising than communities like the Luo, he is not just expressing opinion — he is perpetuating a dangerous myth.
It is a myth crafted over decades to justify and conceal the systematic economic and infrastructural marginalisation of entire communities, especially the Luo, by successive governments dominated by the Mt. Kenya elite.
To believe and repeat such claims without context is to erase history, insult the legacy of African ingenuity, and deepen ethnic chauvinism.
The Luo Pioneers of African Enterprise
Long before independence, the Luo community demonstrated remarkable enterprise. One of the most groundbreaking efforts was the Luo Thrift and Trading Corporation (LTTC) — a cooperative movement launched in the 1940s by Luo elders including Jaramogi Oginga Odinga.
The LTTC united small Luo farmers, traders, and workers under one vision: to pool resources, invest in business, and uplift their people from colonial economic exclusion.
It opened stores in Maseno, Kisumu, and beyond including Mwanza and Jinja — functioning as an indigenous economic engine in a settler-dominated capitalist system.
In fact, it was during a visit to an LTTC shop in Maseno that Jomo Kenyatta witnessed firsthand the power of African cooperation in business. Inspired by what he saw, Kenyatta and his allies went on to form GEMA (Gikuyu, Embu, Meru Association) — a platform that would later evolve into a state-backed economic machine.
But whereas GEMA received support, protection, and investment from the post-independence government, LTTC and similar Luo initiatives were starved, demonised, and dismantled — especially after the Luo walked out of government in 1966.
This is not accidental history. It is policy-driven sabotage. It is the State choosing whose enterprise to elevate, and whose to crush.
The Inequity of State Support: Agriculture, Infrastructure & Opportunity
Successive Kenyan regimes — from Kenyatta I, through Moi, Kibaki, and Kenyatta II — implemented policies that favoured Mt Kenya crops like coffee, tea, and pyrethrum, while neglecting Lake Region staples like sugarcane, cotton, millet, and fishery products.
These favoured crops received marketing boards, research institutions, price subsidies, bonuses, cooperative systems, and export infrastructure.
By contrast, sugarcane and cotton farmers in Luo Nyanza watched their factories die and co-operatives collapse without rescue.
Cotton ginneries shut down, the fishing sector decayed for lack of cold chains, and no meaningful investment was made in blue economy infrastructure, despite Nyanza bordering the largest freshwater lake in Africa.
The Luo, Suba, and other Lake Region communities were economically orphaned by a state that had decided who deserved prosperity.
This pattern was institutionalised in government planning documents, where the region was branded “low potential.”
As the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) Report Vol 2B later confirmed, these designations became the basis for withholding state investment in roads, electricity, health care, and education in politically marginalised regions.
Unequal Capital Formation and Skewed Development
It is no coincidence that Mt. Kenya counties like Kiambu and Nyeri now rank among the wealthiest in Kenya, while Siaya, Homa Bay, and Kisumu lag behind.
According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, poverty percentage rates in 2022 were: Siaya( 31.1), Kisumu (28.9), and Homa Bay (33.2).
Meanwhile, Kiambu, Nyeri and Nairobi accounted for (13.3), (19.6), and (2.3) respectively.
These disparities mirror the distribution of public investment, access to credit, electricity, tarmac roads, water, and even qualified teachers, going back to the 1960s.
In fact, a study published by Centre for Economic Policy and Research (CEPR) in 2015, on Kenya’s road-building history, found that during Kenyatta’s rule, districts co-ethnic to the President received up to 200% more investment in roads than their population share warranted (CEPR, 2015).
Even today, according to UNDP Kenya County Human Development Indices (HDI) 2023, show the gap: Kiambu (0.677), Nyeri (0.663), versus Kisumu (0.576), Homa Bay (0.538), and Siaya (0.565).
What we are witnessing is not an “enterprising culture” versus a “lazy one,” as Mr Gachagua would have Kenyans believe.
We are living through the aftermath of 34 years of Kikuyu presidency (1963–1978 and 2002–2013) and their continued dominance in government and access to state-sponsored capital and patronage networks.
Even in the Diaspora: Inequality in Opportunity
Rigathi Gachagua has repeatedly claimed during his ongoing ethnic mobilisation of the Kikuyu in the USA that “his people” dominate business and diaspora jobs because they work harder.
Yet access to foreign scholarships, air travel, embassies, and diaspora placements has always been a preserve of those who could afford it and those who access government information and migration support systems — and that affordability and access have been shaped by decades of unequal development and elite ethnic patronage.
According to data from ACCORD, public sector jobs in Kenya are still dominated by Kikuyu and Mt Kenya elites: Kikuyu 21% of civil service, and Meru/Embu combined at 9%.
Yet the Luo, despite their numbers and qualifications, remain underrepresented — especially in state corporations, embassies, and elite administrative positions.
A National Call: Dismantle the Myth, Not the Nation
Kenya must grow out of ethnic chauvinism disguised as economic wisdom. The myth that Kikuyus are naturally more enterprising is not only false — it is rooted in state-engineered structural inequality.
No community has a monopoly on intelligence, creativity, or ambition. What we’ve witnessed is how policy, power, and privilege shape outcomes, not DNA.
It’s time we celebrate and support all communities equally. Let us restore institutions like the Luo Thrift and Trading Corporation in modern multiethnic form.
Let us reinvest in cotton, sugar, fisheries, and the blue economy in Lake Victoria. Let us reject the rhetoric that weaponises success and pathologises poverty.
Rigathi Gachagua owes Kenyans not just an apology, but a correction. We are not less enterprising — we are less enabled. And that is the tragedy of post-independence Kenya.
Joshua Odhiambo Nyamori is a practicing Advocate of the High Court of Kenya.
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