'Seek ye first the economic kingdom': a history of the Luo Thrift and Trading Corporation (LUTATCO) 1945-1956

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Book chapter

Title:	'Seek ye first the economic kingdom': a history of the Luo Thrift and Trading Corporation (LUTATCO) 1945-1956
Author:	Atieno-Odhiambo, E.S.
Book title:	Hadith 5: Economic and Social History of East Africa
Year:	1979
Pages:	221-260
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Kenya
Subjects:	Luo national liberation movements trading companies
Abstract:	The Luo Thrift and Trading Corporation was one of the few African commercial companies which existed during the colonial period. Founded by Oginga Odinga, the Corporation operated more as a political pressure group than as a public company and his study of its activities, the author raises a number of issues: What is the nature of 'populism' in Africa? What was the nature of Kenya's nationalism? Was the Oginga Odinga of the 1940s and 50s, for example, a nationalist or a tribal leader? What is the nature of elite leadership in Kenya? Are they merely latter-day improvers? Was LUTATCO merely one organisation in the long line of improvement associations rampant in the 1920s and 30s, or was it an attempt to use an economic weapon to fight a nationalist battle? The author discovers that 'people' who came to accept Odinga as a leader through LUTATCO were not 'the masses' but rather a middle class of subelites, and pleads for a recognition of the importance of the middle-cadre communicators in the struggle for uhuru. App., map, notes, tab.