Abstract: | This article focuses on the external linkage of Kenya's sugar industry. It examines the development and construction of sugar factories and the nature of partnership between transnational and local capital in the sugar industry, especially in the face of economic liberalization. From a position informed by the theory of multilateral imperialism, it posits that the key beneficiaries from the sugar industry in Kenya have been the transnational corporations and their local partners. The peasant sugarcane outgrower-farmers, whose lives were supposed to have been transformed by the industry, remain largely marginalized and their grievances remain largely unaddressed, even in the face of liberalization. The article concludes that wholesale economic liberalization as crusaded for by the West amounts to an 'illusion of the epoch', working to the advantage of transnational corporations, and to the detriment of Kenyan state and society. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract] |