ABSTRACT
The Special Rural Development Programme (SRDP) in Kenya marked a critical juncture in Robert Chambers’ intellectual development, although some of the effects were not to become evident for several years. SRDP marks as well a juncture in general donor practice, although it probably did not cause it. Robert’s career until the mid-1970s had been focused exclusively on East Africa – and that career had been heavily managerial in orientation. SRDP was mandated as a set of development experiments that, when successful, were to be replicated over the country as a whole. Robert and the other British officers working on SRDP sought to keep SRDP within the bounds of the old conceptions of ‘replicability’.
