ABSTRACT
This chapter is based on a field study in Kenya in the early 1980s. 1 was employed by an imaginative Director of Development at UNESCO (Dr N. Bodart) to work in a small team with Kenyans to shed light on development planning in relation to poverty in that country. Although 1 interviewed formally and at length officials in a large number of ministries, including several who were the permanent secretaries of key departments, gained access to statistical data not hitherto published and made visits of observation to locations in rural and urban areas, including the worst of the slum areas of Nairobi, the visits did not lead subsequently to community studies of income distribution and living standards in three different areas, as we had hoped. The reasons are twofold. Even at that time the Government did not allow social scientists true independence, especially in investigating sensitive topics such as poverty. And even UNESCO baulked at the proposal to pay African research workers with long experience the same rates as visiting British 'experts' - despite an offer to keep the total cost within the size of the original grant. The research programme was aborted and subsequent efforts to reinstate it through the British Government's ODA and charitable foundations in Africa as well as Britain and the United States were unsuccessful.
