| This qualitative study explores the politics of need underlying foreign assistance in Kenya's education sector. The research begins by investigating the Kenyan government's decision to import Peace Corps volunteers to fill a severe shortage of teachers in Kenyan schools, while concurrently exporting Kenyan teachers to assist schools in neighboring countries. This paradox, at once, portrays Kenya to be a country in need of help within education and a country that is well-positioned to give help within education. This dissertation uses the method of process tracing to explore the post-independence policy reforms that led to this paradox, as well as the consequences of these reforms within the country's education sector. The findings of the study showed that internally- and externally-defined needs are often socially constructed within the processes of borrowing and lending foreign aid, particularly multilateral conditional aid. Furthermore, research revealed that such constructions of need often change conceptions of need. In the case of Kenya, the need or lack of need for teachers was constructed in the processes of borrowing and lending conditional aid. While these constructions of need upheld external conceptions of Kenya as a poor country in need of Northern help, they changed many internal conceptions regarding the country's education sector. Specifically, the importing of Peace Corps volunteers was often conceived as a regression or a relapse in the country's level of educational development, and thus supported the belief for many Kenyans that there was an increased need for external assistance. For others, the exporting of Kenyan teachers to aid other nations represented the attainment of higher levels of educational development, and thus supported the belief that there was a decreased need or no need at all for external assistance from Northern countries. |
