As the Cold War came to a close in the late 1980s, global forces from the North fashioned a new global order, in the economic and political realms, in which non-state actors such as Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO) became dominant. In Kenya, NGOs assumed new strength and power. Because of this newfound clout, NGOs were at the receiving end in Kenya in 1986. In that year, the government of Kenya challenged the rising influence of the NGOs especially in promoting civic education and people-centered, participatory development. By then, the dictatorial government of the octogenarian dictator Daniel Moi was well aware of the evolving donor preference for NGOs in Kenya as agents of development, especially in disbursement of aid. Recognizing that NGOs would set their own priorities that might collectively prove divergent and wayward from its own development plans, the Kenyan government sought to direct them towards a state-coordinated development. In September 1986, President Moi announced that future NGO funding would have to be channeled through the government.1 In December 1986, Moi’s underlying discomfort with NGOs came to the surface when he claimed that some NGOs were involved in “subversive” activities, his way of saying that NGOs were undermining his government.2