For better or for worse, family relationships play a central role in shaping an individualโs well-being across the course of their life. These relationships can be a source of comfort, guidance, and strength to draw from in times of stress. Developing and nurturing your family can also give you the lift you need to endure lifeโs challenges and meet your goals with confidence and courage.
Creating and maintaining strong healthy family relationships takes time, effort, and patience. With the daily pressures of work, children, and chores, it can be easy to neglect your relationships and take your loved ones for granted. Here are some suggestions to help strengthen your family relationships and ensure there is natural growth and bonding within your family.
Work on good communication skills. Focus on listening and understanding what your family member is trying to say. Carve out time to work on communication skills by putting away phones and other devices at the dinner table so you can interact with each other.
Establish traditions, values, and goals together. If you have already developed some family traditions, do your best to continue what you started. Sit down to discuss and reinforce values, invent new traditions, and plan how you will accomplish goals together.
Try new things together. Play a new board game, discover a new craft, or try different foods. Choose a night each week for movies and games. If you have children, let them help make decisions about new things to try.
Connect with distant family members. Make time to connect with long distance family members by phone, email, or video calls. Staying in touch with people outside of your home will help you feel more connected to them.
Stay active. Physical activity can help reduce stress. Have a family dance party or set family exercise goals, schedule weekly walks together, or create competitions to see how many pushups or jumping jacks each of you can do. These activities can create moments of bonding.
Laugh together. Find things to do that will make you laugh. Choose a funny movie to watch together, read a favorite book, or tell each other jokes.
The economy of Kenya is market-based with a few state enterprises. Kenya has an emerging market and is an averagely industrialised nation ahead of its East African peers. Currently a lower middle income nation, it plans to be a newly industrialised nation by 2030. Major industries include agriculture, forestry, fishing, mining, manufacturing, energy, tourism and financial services. As of 2020, Kenya had the third largest economy in Sub-Saharan Africa, behind Nigeria and South Africa.[18]
The government of Kenya is generally investment-friendly and has enacted several regulatory reforms to simplify foreign and local investment, including the creation of an export processing zone. An increasingly significant portion of Kenya’s foreign financial inflows are remittances by non-resident Kenyans who work in the United States, the Middle East, Europe and Asia.[19]
As of September 2018, economic prospects were positive, with above 6% gross domestic product (GDP) growth expected.[20] This growth was attributed largely to expansions in the telecommunications, transport, and construction sectors; a recovery in agriculture; and the rise of small businesses helping to pull the economy. These improvements are supported by a large pool of highly educated professional workers. There is a high level of IT literacy and innovation, especially among young Kenyans.[21][22]
In 2020, Kenya ranked 56th in the World Bank ease of doing business rating, up from 61st in 2019 (of 190 countries).[23] Compared to its neighbours, Kenya has a well-developed social and physical infrastructure.
Between 70 AD and 1500 AD, trade routes โ spanning Africa, Asia and Europe โ integrated the Kenyan coastal strip into the world economy.[24] Foreign merchants would bring their merchandise to the Kenyan coast and leave with African goods.[25]
In 1499 AD, Vasco da Gama, a Portuguese explorer, returned to Europe after discovering the sea route to India through South Africa.[26] This new route allowed European nations to dominate the trade economy of the East African coast, with the Portuguese entrenching themselves in the 16th and 17th centuries.[27] In the 18th century, the Portuguese were replaced in this East African economic corridor by Omani Arabs.[28] Eventually, the British replaced the Omani Arabs. In 1895 they dominated the coastal strip; by 1920, they had followed the interior trade routes all the way to the Buganda Kingdom.[29] To make this ancient economic trade route more profitable, the British used Indian labourers to build a railway from Mombasa at the coast to Kampala, the capital of Buganda kingdom, following old trade routes.[30] Major towns were founded along the railway line, backed by European settler farming communities. The Indian labourers who did not return to India after railway construction ended were the first to establish shops (dukawallahs) in these towns.[31][32]
During the colonial period, the European settler farming community and the Indian dukawallahs established the foundations of the modern formal Kenyan economy.[33] Prominent examples of Asian-Kenyan business owners whose businesses started as dukawallahs include Manu Chandaria and Madatally Manji.[34] While Europeans and Indians enjoyed strong economic growth between 1920 and 1963, Africans were deprived of their land, dehumanised, and forced to work for minimal pay under extremely poor working conditions through a well-established system of racial segregation.[35]
Kenya gained its independence in 1963. Under President Jomo Kenyatta, the Kenyan government promoted africanisation of the Kenyan economy,[36] generating rapid economic growth through public investment, encouragement of smallholder agricultural production, and incentives for private, often foreign, industrial investments. An influential sessional paper authored by Tom Mboya and Mwai Kibaki in 1965 stressed the need for Kenya to avoid both the capitalistic economy of the West and the communism of the East.[37] The paper argued that Kenya should instead concentrate on African socialism, while avoiding linking Kenya’s economic fortunes to any country or group of countries.[37] From 1963 to 1973, GDP grew at an annual average rate of 6.6%; during the 1970s, it grew at an average rate of 7.2%. Agricultural production grew by 4.7% annually in the same period, stimulated by redistributing estates, distributing new crop strains, and opening new areas to cultivation. However, the rate of GDP growth declined to 4.2% per year in the 1980s, and 2.2% a year in the 1990s.[38]
Kenya’s policy of import substitution, which started in 1946 with European and Asian enterprises, did not achieve the desired result of transforming Kenya’s industrial base. In the late 1970s, rising oil prices began to make Kenya’s manufacturing sector noncompetitive.[39] In response, the government began a massive intervention in the private sector. Lack of export incentives, tight import controls, and foreign exchange controls made the domestic environment for investment even less attractive.[40]
In the 1980s and 1990s, Kenya signed structural adjustment loans with the World Bank and IMF, the loans were to be given on the condition that Kenya adopts government reforms, a liberal trade and interest rate regime, and an outward-oriented industrial policy, among other reforms .[41] The Kenyan economy performed very poorly during this era of World Bank and IMF-driven liberalisation at the height of Daniel Arap Moi administration.[42]
From 1991 to 1993, Kenya had its worst economic performance since independence. Growth in GDP stagnated, and agricultural production shrank at an annual rate of 3.9%. Inflation reached a record of 100% in August 1993, and the government’s budget deficit was over 10% of GDP.[40] As a result of these issues, bilateral and multilateral donors suspended their aid programmes in Kenya in 1991.[43]
In 1993, the Kenyan government began a major programme of economic reform and liberalisation. A new minister of finance and a new governor of the central bank undertook a series of economic measures with the assistance of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The government eliminated price controls and import licensing, removed foreign exchange controls, privatised a number of publicly owned companies, reduced the number of civil servants, and introduced conservative fiscal and monetary policies. From 1994 to 1996, Kenya’s real GDP growth rate averaged just over 4% a year.[44]
Kenya’s economic performance since independence.
In 1997, however, the economy entered a period of slowing growth, due in part to adverse weather conditions and reduced economic activity before the general elections in December 1997. In July 1997, the Government of Kenya refused to meet earlier commitments to the IMF on governance reforms.[45] As a result, the IMF suspended lending for three years, and the World Bank put a $90 million structural adjustment credit on hold.[46]
The Kenyan government subsequently took positive steps on reform, including the establishment of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Authority in 1997. The state also implemented measures to improve the transparency of government procurement and reduce the government payroll. In July 2000, the IMF signed a $150 million Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility, and the World Bank followed shortly after with a $157 million Economic and Public Sector Reform credit. However, both were eventually suspended.[46] Despite setbacks, the process of reform established Kenya as East Africa’s economic powerhouse and the region’s business hub.[41]
Economic growth improved between 2003 and 2008, under the Mwai Kibaki administration.[47] When Kibaki took power in 2003, he immediately established the National Debt Management Department at the treasury, reformed the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) to increase government revenue, reformed financial laws on banking, wrote off the debts of strategic public enterprises, and ensured that 30% of government tax revenue was invested in economic development projects. With these reforms, driven by the National Rainbow Coalition government, the KRA collected more tax revenue in 2004 than was anticipated. The government then initiated investments in infrastructure. By 2005, the Kenyan public debt had reduced from highs of 80% of GDP in 2002 to 27% of GDP in 2005. The financial sector greatly improved, and Equity Bank Kenya became one of the largest banks in East Africa. Economic growth improved from 2% in 2003 to 7% in 2007.[48] In 2008, the growth slumped to 1%[49] due to post-election violence before returning to an average of 5% between 2009 and 2013.[50][51] However, in 2009, due to drought and the global financial crisis, high input costs as well as a fall in demand for some of the country’s exports caused the agriculture sector to contract by 2.7%.
Between 2013 and 2018, under the Jubilee Party government led by Uhuru Kenyatta, GDP growth averaged above 5%.[52][53] Growth in small businesses is credited with some of the improvement.[54] Real GDP growth (annualised) was 5.7% in Q1 of 2018, 6.0% in Q2 2018 and 6.2% in Q3 2018.[55] Despite this robust growth, concerns remained about Kenya’s debt sustainability, current account deficit, fiscal consolidation and revenue growth.[56][57]
The table below shows the GDP of Kenya estimated by the International Monetary Fund, with exchange rates for Kenyan shillings.
Vision 2030 is Kenya’s current blueprint for its exonomic future, with the goal of creating a prosperous, globally-competitive nation with a high quality of life by 2030. The plan aims to transform Kenyan industry and environment in three pillars: economic, social, and political.[58][59]
Vision 2030 seeks economic growth averaging greater than 10% for 23 years, beginning in the year 2007. Economic areas targeted are tourism, agriculture, wholesale and retail trade, manufacturing, IT-enabled services, and financial services.[60]
To improve the quality of life for Kenyans, Vision 2030 aims to improve human and social welfare programmes, specifically education and training, health, environment, housing and urbanisation, children and social development, and youth and sports.[61] In 2018, President Uhuru Kenyatta established the Big Four Agenda, focusing on universal healthcare, manufacturing, affordable housing and food security.
The political pillar envisions a “democratic system that is issue-based, transparent, people-centred, results-oriented, and accountable to the public”. It targets five main areas: the rule of law under the Constitution of Kenya, electoral and political processes, democracy and public service delivery, transparency and accountability, and security, peace building, and conflict management.[62]
Kenya’s currency is printed by mandate of the Central Bank of Kenya.[64] The bank began printing banknotes in 1996. Several versions of Kenya’s banknotes and coinage have been circulated since then. The most recent redesign of Kenya’s currency was in 2019.[64]
The exchange rate of the Kenyan Shilling between 2003 and 2010 averaged about KSh74-78 per US Dollar.[65]
The average inflation between 2005 and July 2015 was 8.5%.[66] In July 2015 Kenya’s inflation rate was estimated to be 6.62%.[67]
In 2006, Kenyan government revenue totalled US$4.448B and its estimated expenditures totalled US$5.377B. The government budget balance as a percentage of the gross domestic product improved to โ2.1% in 2006 from โ5.5% in 2004.[68]
In 2012, Kenya set a budget of US$14.59B with a government revenue of approximately US$12B.[69]
The 2018 budget policy report set a budget of US$30B. The government revenue was approximately US$29.5B, and a deficit of US$5B was borrowed.[70]
In the financial year that ended in June 2020, the Kenya Revenue Authority collected a tax revenue that amounted to approximately US$15B.[71]
From 1982, Kenya key public debt indicators rose above critical levels, both measured as a percentage of GDP and as a percentage of government revenue.[72]
In 2002, the last year of Daniel arap Moi‘s administration, Kenya’ s public debt stood at almost 80% of GDP. In the last 10 years of the Moi regime, the government was spending 94% of all its revenue on salaries and debt servicing to the IMF, World Bank and other western countries.[73]
In 2003, Mwai Kibaki‘s administration instituted a public debt management department within the treasury department to bring Kenya’s debt down to sustainable levels.[74]
In 2006, Kenya had a current account deficit of US$1.5B. This figure was a significant increase over 2005, when the current account had a deficit of US$495 million. In 2006, the current account balance as a percentage of gross domestic product was โ4.2.[68]
In 2006, Kenya’s external debt totalled US$6.7B. With a GDP of US$25.83B in 2006, the public debt level stood at 27% of GDP.[68]
In 2011, the national treasury noted that the debt was rising, growing to 40% of GDP in 2009 and to 54% of GDP by 2012.[75]
In 2019, Kenya’s debt had risen to an absolute amount of US$50B against a GDP of US$98B. The public debt level was 51% of GDP in 2019.[76]
In 2021, Kenya’s debt had risen to an absolute amount of US$65B against a GDP of US$101B.The public debt level was 65% of GDP in 2021.[77][78]
Kenya’s largest bilateral lender since 2011 has been China, and the largest multilateral lender since 1963 has been the World Bank.[79]
The Kenya Economic Stimulus Programme was introduced in the 2010โ2011 budget plan.[80] The initiative aimed to stimulate economic activity in Kenya through investment in long-term solutions to food insecurity, rural unemployment and underdevelopment. Stated improvement objectives included regional development for equity and social stability, infrastructure, education, affordable health-care, environmental conservation, information and communications technology capacity, and access to IT.[81]
Integrated Financial Management Information System[edit]
The Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) was launched in 2003 as a digital platform for Kenya’s financial information and services, and was later re-engineered by the Ministry of Finance to curb fraud and other malpractices.[82] IFMIS enables integrated budget planning, being linked to planning policy objectives and budget allocation.[83]
The Fund for the Inclusion of Informal Sector (FIIS) is a fund that allows businesses in the informal economy to access credit financing and other facilities, including financial and banking services.[84]
The Investor Compensation Fund compensates investors who suffer losses from breaches of duty by a licensed stockbroker or dealer, up to a maximum of Sh.50,000 per investor.[85]
Since independence, Kenya has received substantial foreign investment and significant amounts of development aid. Total aid was $943 million in 2006, 4% of gross national income.[86]
Investments come from China, Japan, Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom, among others. Kenya hosts a large number of foreign multinational companies and international organisations such as the United Nations Environment Programme.[87] China’s investments have been increasing, while those of western countries such as the United Kingdom has fallen significantly. Investments from multilateral agencies, particularly the World Bank and the European Development Fund, have also increased. The most active investors currently are the Chinese.
Kenya’s chief exports are horticultural products and tea. In 2005, the combined value of these commodities was US$1,150 million, about 10 times the value of Kenya’s third most valuable export, coffee. Kenya’s other significant exports are petroleum products, fish, cement, pyrethrum, and sisal. The leading imports are crude petroleum, chemicals, manufactured goods, machinery, and transportation equipment. Africa is Kenya’s largest export market, followed by the European Union.[68]
The major destinations for exports are Uganda, Tanzania, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. Major suppliers are China, India, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa. Kenya’s main exports to the United States are garments traded under the terms of the African Growth and Opportunity Act. Notwithstanding this, Kenya’s apparel industry is struggling to hold its ground against Asian competition and runs a trade deficit with the United States. Many of Kenya’s problems relating to the export of goods are believed by economists to be caused by the fact that Kenya’s exports are inexpensive items that do not bring substantial amounts of money into the country.[68]
Kenya is the dominant trade partner for Uganda (12.3% exports, 15.6% imports) and Rwanda (30.5% exports, 17.3% imports).[88][89]
Kenya typically has a substantial trade deficit. The trade balance fluctuates widely because Kenya’s main exports are primary commodities subject to the effects of both world prices and weather. In 2005 Kenya’s income from exports was about US$3.2 billion. The payment for imports was about US$5.7B, yielding a trade deficit of about US$2.5B.[68]
Kenyan policies on foreign investment generally have been favourable since independence, with occasional tightening of restrictions to promote the africanisation of enterprises. Foreign investors have been guaranteed ownership and the right to remit dividends, royalties, and capital. [68]
Kenya is currently the most important source of foreign direct investments in Uganda and Rwanda. Uganda and its neighbouring regions are the main export destinations for Kenyan products.[90] Kenya has had more success in growing its economy and quality of life levels than many of its neighbours in sub-Saharan Africa.[68]
Agriculture is the second largest contributor to Kenya’s GDP, after the service sector, although only 15% of Kenya’s total land area has sufficient fertility and rainfall to be farmed, and only 7 or 8% can be classified as first-class land. In 2006, almost 75% of working Kenyans made their living on the land, compared with 80% in 1980.[68] About half of total agricultural output is non-marketed subsistence production.
In 2005, agriculture, including forestry and fishing, accounted for about 24% of GDP, as well as for 18% of wage employment and 50% of revenue from exports. That same year, horticulture accounted for 23% and tea for 22% of total export earnings. The principal cash crops in Kenyan agriculture are tea, horticultural produce, and coffee. Coffee has declined in importance with depressed world prices, accounting for just 5% of export receipts in 2005. The production of major food staples such as corn is subject to sharp weather-related fluctuations. Production downturns also periodically necessitate food aid. In 2004, aid was needed for 1.8 million people because of Kenya’s intermittent droughts. However, the expansion of credit to the agricultural sector has enabled farmers to better deal with environmental and pricing risks.[68]
Tea, coffee, sisal, pyrethrum, corn, and wheat are grown in the fertile highlands, one of the most successful agricultural production regions in Africa. Livestock predominates in the semi-arid savanna to the north and east. Coconuts, pineapples, cashew nuts, cotton, sugarcane, sisal, and corn are grown in the lower-lying areas.[68]
Resource degradation has reduced output from forestry. In 2004, roundwood removals came to 22,162,000 cubic meters. Fisheries are of local importance around Lake Victoria and have potential at Lake Turkana. Kenya’s total catch in 2004 was 128,000 metric tons. However, output from fishing has been declining because of ecological disruption. Pollution, overfishing, and the use of unauthorised fishing equipment have led to falling catches and have endangered local fish species.[68]
Kenya has no significant mineral endowment. The mining and quarrying sector makes a negligible contribution to the economy, accounting for less than 1% of GDP. The majority of this is contributed by the soda ash operation at Lake Magadi in south-central Kenya. Thanks largely to rising soda ash output, Kenya’s mineral production in 2005 reached more than 1 million tons. One of Kenya’s largest foreign-investment projects in recent years is the planned expansion of Magadi Soda. Apart from soda ash, the chief minerals produced are limestone, gold, salt, large quantities of niobium, fluorspar, and fossil fuel.[68]
All unextracted minerals are government property, under the Mining Act. The Department of Mines and Geology, under the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, controls exploration and exploitation of minerals.[68]
Although Kenya is the most industrially developed country in East Africa, manufacturing still accounts for only 14% of GDP. This represents only a slight increase since independence. The rapid expansion of the sector immediately after independence stagnated in the 1980s, hampered by shortages in hydroelectric power, high energy costs, dilapidated transport infrastructure, and the dumping of cheap imports. However, due to urbanisation, the industry and manufacturing sectors have become increasingly important to the Kenyan economy, and this has been reflected by an increasing GDP per capita. Industrial activity, concentrated around the three largest urban centres, Nairobi, Mombasa, and Kisumu, is dominated by food-processing industries such as grain milling, beer production, sugarcane crushing, and the fabrication of consumer goods. Kenya also has an oil refinery that processes imported crude petroleum into petroleum products, mainly for the domestic market. In addition, a substantial and expanding informal sector engages in small-scale manufacturing of household goods, motor-vehicle parts, and farm implements.[68]
Kenya’s inclusion among the beneficiaries of the US Government’s African Growth and Opportunity Act gave a boost to manufacturing. Since the Act took effect in 2000, Kenya’s clothing sales to the United States increased from US$44 million to US$270M in 2006. Other initiatives to strengthen manufacturing include favourable tax measures, including the absence of duties for capital equipment and other raw materials.[68]
The largest segment of Kenya’s electricity supply comes from hydroelectric stations at dams along the upper Tana River, as well as the Turkwel Gorge Dam in the west. A petroleum-fired plant on the coast, geothermal facilities at Olkaria, and electricity imported from Uganda make up the balance. Kenya’s installed capacity stood at 1,142 megawatts a year between 2001 and 2003. The state-owned Kenya Electricity Generating Company, established in 1997 under the name Kenya Power Company, handles the generation of electricity, while the Kenya Power and Lighting Company handles transmission and distribution.[92] Shortfalls of electricity occur periodically when drought reduces water flow. In 1997 and 2000, for example, drought prompted severe power rationing, with economically-damaging 12-hour blackouts. Frequent outages and high costs of power remain serious obstacles to economic activity. Tax and other concessions are planned to encourage investment in hydroelectricity and in geothermal energy, which Kenya has been a pioneer in adopting.[68]
Kenya currently imports all crude petroleum requirements, with petroleum accounting for 20% to 25% of the national import bill. Hydrocarbon reserves have been found in Kenya’s semi-arid northern region of Turkana after several decades of intermittent exploration. Offshore prospecting also continues. Kenya Petroleum Refineries, a 50:50 joint venture between the government and several oil majors, operates the country’s sole oil refinery in Mombasa. The refinery’s production is transported via Kenya’s MombasaโNairobi pipeline.[68] However, the refinery is currently non-operational.[when?] In 2004, oil consumption was estimated at 55,000 barrels (8,700 m3) a day.
Kenya’s dependence on tourism has greatly reduced over the years. In 2019, foreign tourist revenues stood at $1.76 billion, accounting for only 1.6% of Kenya’s GDP and approximately 12% of all international tourism receipts in Eastern Africa.[93]
The growing middle class in Kenya has also led to a significant growth in local tourism over the years, diversifying the sources of revenue for the sector. In 2018, domestic touristsโ occupancy accounted for 52.9% of the total bed occupancy in the country.[94]
Kenya offers numerous large national parks in a wide variety of landscapes. Besides the coast, there are large deserts, steppes and mountains. The national parks and nature reserves contain the natural habitats of many animal species.[95]
Kenya is East Africa’s hub for financial services. The Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE) is ranked 4th in Africa in terms of market capitalisation.
The banking sector in Kenya is regulated by The Central Bank Of Kenya. Kenya’s banking sector is mainly dominated by local commercial banks, namely Equity Bank, Kenya Commercial Bank, NCBA Bank, Diamond Trust Bank, Cooperative Bank, and National Bank. The Kenya Commercial Bank is the largest bank in Kenya by asset size and branch network as of 2023.[96]
In 2022, Kenya’s labour force was estimated to include about 24 million workers. In recent years, much of Kenya’s labour force has moved from the countryside to cities such as Nairobi, as Kenya becomes increasingly urbanised.[68]
The labour force participation rate in Kenya has been constant from 1997 to 2010 for both women and men. In 1997, 65% of women were employed in some type of labour and 76% of men were employed. In 2005, 60% of women and 70% of men were in the labour force, increasing slightly to 61% of women and 72% of men in 2010.[98]
In the past 20 years, many Kenyans have moved away from family farming towards wage labour, small business entrepreneurship, and informal work. In 1989, 4.5 million Kenyans out of a total working population of 7.3M worked on family farms. In 2009, only 6.5M Kenyans out of a total working population of 14.3M worked on family farms. Of these, 3.8M were women and 2.7M were men.[99]
According to the World Bank 2012 Kenya Economic Update, modern wage jobs include being an “engineer, telecommunication specialist, cut flower worker, teacher, construction worker, housekeepers, professionals, any industrial and manufacturing job, and port and dock workers.” In 1989, there were only 1.9M Kenyans employed in wage work. In 2009, this number increased to 5.1M, with 3.4M men and 1.3M women were employed in wage jobs.[99]
In Kenya, the “Jua Kali” sector is another name for the informal economy, also described as non-farming self-employment.[99] Jua Kali is Swahili for “hot sun” and refers to the idea that the workers in the informal economy work under the fierce sun.[100] The informal sector consists of legally unrecognised and unregulated self-employment and wage employment. As a result, informal sector employment does not contribute to Kenya’s GDP.[100] Non-farm self-employment has risen from 1989 to 2009.
The World Bank characterises non-farm self-employment to include jobs such as “street vendor, shop owner, dressmaker, assistant, fishmonger, caterer, etc.” Non-farm self-employment has risen from a total of 0.9 million workers in 1989 to a total of 2.7 million in 2009. Men make up 1.4 million workers, and women workers number 1.3 million.[99]
As of 2009, Kenya’s informal economy accounts for about 80% of the total employment for the country. Most informal workers are self-employed, with few entrepreneurs employing others. The informal sector contributes economic activity equal to 35% of the total GDP in Kenya, and has its own informal finance structure in the form of rotating savings and credit associations. This sector provides an income mainly for those in lower socioeconomic groups.[100]
Drawbacks of the informal economy include the promotion of smuggling and tax evasion and the lack of social and legal protection. Most members of the informal sector have low educational attainment. Rising costs of education and uncertainty about future employment have caused many workers to enter the informal economy, due to lower entry fees as well as shorter and practical training and apprenticeships.[101]
Suda, in 2001, estimated that Kenya had 3 million children working in intolerable conditions and who were visible. The number of invisible child workers, claims Suda, were much larger. The visible child labour in Kenya were engaged in agriculture, tourism industry, quarries and mines, pastoral labour, mining, garbage collection, fishing industry, and the transport sector where they move from place to place as “Matatu” touts.[102]
The government of Kenya estimates there are 8.9 million children aged 5โ13 who work, most of whom miss schooling. Agriculture is a major employer; of all labourers employed in coffee plantations, for example, 30% are people younger than age 27.
United Nations, in its country profile report for Kenya in 2009, estimated about one third of all children aged 5โ14 were working. Agriculture and fishing were the largest employers, with former accounting for roughly 79% of child labour.[103]
The United States Department of Labor estimated, in its 2010 report, about 32% of all Kenyan children aged 5โ14 work, or over 2.9 million. Agriculture and fishing are the predominant employers. The informal sectors witnessing the worst form of child labour include sugarcane plantations, pastoral ranches, tea, coffee, miraa (a stimulant plant), rice, sisal, tobacco, tilapia and sardines fishing. Other economic activities of children in Kenya include scavenging dumpsites, collecting and selling scrap materials, glass and metal, street vending, herding and begging. Forced exploitation of children in sex tourism, the report claims, is prevalent in major cities such as Nairobi, Kisumu, Eldoret and coastal cities of Kenya.[104]Poverty and lack of schooling opportunities are major causes of child labour in Kenya. The country faces shortages of teachers and schools, overcrowding in schools, and procedural complications from childrenโs unregistered status. Kenyan law prevents access to schools to a child if he or she is unregistered as a citizen with Kenyan authorities. Currently, 44% of Kenyan children in rural areas remain unregistered. Thus, even when schools may be available, rural children are unable to prove citizenship, and these unregistered children risk losing the opportunity for schooling.
The economy’s heavy dependence on rain for its agriculture and the tourism sectors leaves it vulnerable to cycles of boom and bust. The agricultural sector employs nearly 75% of the country’s 38 million people. Half of the sector’s output remains subsistence production.[68]
Kenya’s economic performance had for a long time been hampered by various factors: heavy dependence on a few agricultural exports vulnerable to global price fluctuations; population growth which has outstripped economic growth; prolonged droughts requiring power rationing; deteriorating infrastructure; and extreme income inequality. Some of these factors have been addressed by policies, with GDP growth increasing, population growth slowing, rapid infrastructural improvements being made and increased electrification rates with more stable power supplies.
Poor governance and corruption also have had a negative impact on growth, making it expensive to do business in Kenya. Increased levels of insecurity brought on from terrorism have become one of the largest impediments to sustainable growth.[105] According to Transparency International, Kenya ranks among the world’s six most corrupt countries. Bribery and fraud cost Kenya as much as US$1 billion a year. The average Kenyan pay some 16 bribes a month, for two in every three encounters with public officials, even though 23% of them live on less than US$1 per day.
Despite these challenges, two thirds of Kenyans expect living conditions to improve in the coming decades.[106]
The British High Commission in Nairobi is the diplomatic mission of the United Kingdom in Nairobi. It is located in the Upper Hill area of Nairobi. The British High Commission in Kenya maintains and develops relations between the UK and Main purpose of job: This is an exciting opportunity to work on the UK’s flagship Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) Programme in Somalia. The Senior Programme Manager (SPM) will oversee the successful management of programmes in the Stabilisation and GESI (Gender Equality and Social Inclusion) team (part of the Somalia Security, Stability and Justice Team (SSJ)). The SPM will manage the delivery of a portfolio of stabilisation and GESI projects within the Somalia CSSF Programme. The SPM will utilise excellent programme and project management (PPM) skills to manage all aspects of the programme cycle, including financial management (monitoring project expenditure and ensuring VFM), reporting, and support effective monitoring, evaluation and learning to measure impact against outputs/outcomes. The SPM’s role has a strong emphasis on delivery and contract management for the programmes. The role will require excellent communication skills to build effective working relationships with project implementing partners and the wider FCDO Somalia network in Nairobi and Mogadishu. The SPM will liaise with a wide range of external stakeholders including international donor community and international partners. The role will require travel to Mogadishu to engage with implementing partners, British Embassy Mogadishu (BEM) colleagues, and the international and donor community. Roles and responsibilities / what will the jobholder be expected to achieve?: Programme Management: Oversee programme delivery of Stabilisation and GESI cluster portfolio (currently Women to Women Security project and the Early Recovery Initiative (ERI). Oversight includes the effective delivery of all programmes, and financial and risk management. Programme manage the Women to Women Security Project (W2WS) – work with implementing partners ensure effective implementation. Develop new strands of programme activity in collaboration with policy colleagues on stabilisation and women, peace and security. Coordinate robust monitoring, evaluation and learning for all projects delivered under the Stabilisation and GESI team working with the CSSF MEL team and commercial MEL partners. Support both the Stabilisation and GESI lead in Nairobi and the Stabilisation Adviser in British Embassy Mogadishu, to ensure programme and project outcomes are aligned with the Somalia Country Plan. Line manage 1 x Programme Manager Present financial and narrative reporting to the Local Strategy Board and CSSF system as needed. Ensure financial oversight and value for money of programmes and support the CSSF Finance Officer and Programme Manager to deliver in their roles. Lead on procurement for the team, in liaison with commercial procurement group (CPG), implementers, subject matter experts (SMEs) and stakeholders to ensure guidelines are adhered to and contracts/MOUs are set up in a timely manner. Ensure a robust schedule of reporting is in place and outputs/outcomes in the results framework are up to date. This includes drafting internal programme progress reports, narratives, board discussion papers and minutes from meetings. Resources managed (staff and expenditure): The job holder will be responsible for overseeing the management of the ERI project (ยฃ3m 2023/24) and the Women to Women project (ยฃ1.5m 2023/24). Requirements Essential qualifications, skills and experience Substantial experience of project and/or programme management, with a strong background on manging risk, monitoring results, gender and conflict sensitivity, as well as financial and budget management skills (minimum 5 years experience) Experience of delivering projects and programmes in fragile and conflict settings in East Africa An undergraduate degree in a relevant field (development studies, gender and human rights and conflict/security studies. Fluent in English Desirable qualifications, skills and experience Policy experience on gender, social, inclusion, conflict and fragility Experience of working with a range of implementing partners (UN, Commercial Implementing Partners, NGOs). Required behaviours Making Effective Decisions, Managing a Quality Service, Communicating and Influencing
Not all forms of love are the same, and psychologists have identified a number of different types of love that people may experience.1
These types of love include:
Friendship: This type of love involves liking someone and sharing a certain degree of intimacy.
Infatuation: This is a form of love that often involves intense feelings of attraction without a sense of commitment; it often takes place early in a relationship and may deepen into a more lasting love.
Passionate love: This type of love is marked by intense feelings of longing and attraction; it often involves an idealization of the other person and a need to maintain constant physical closeness.
Ermias Joseph Asghedom (August 15, 1985 โ March 31, 2019; born Airmiess Joseph Asghedom), known professionally as Nipsey Hussle (often stylized as Nipsey Hu$$le), was an American rapper, entrepreneur, and activist. Emerging from the West Coast hip hop scene in the mid-2000s, Hussle independently released his debut mixtape, Slauson Boy Volume 1, to moderate local success, which led to him being signed to Cinematic Music Group and Epic Records.
Outside of music, Hussle inaugurated the Marathon Clothing store, which he founded along with partners Carless, the head of the agency, Karen Civil, and his brother Samiel Asghedom in 2017, and started a co-working environment which he named “Vector 90”. On March 31, 2019, Hussle was fatally shot outside his store in South Central Los Angeles.[3] Eric Holder, a 29-year-old man who confronted Hussle earlier that day, was arrested and charged with murder two days later.[4] Holder was found guilty of first-degree murder on July 6, 2022.[5] On February 22, 2023, Holder was sentenced to 60 years to life in prison.[6]
At age 14, Asghedom left home and joined the local Rollin 60’s Neighborhood Crips, a sub-group of the larger Crips gang primarily based in his home neighborhood of Crenshaw.[14][15] In 2002, at the age of 17, Hussle would join Buttervision, a creative multimedia Digital Guerrilla movement led by Dexter Browne where he would be part of the BV Boys Sampler, Beats & Babes Vol. 1 DVD, and Shades of Butter Vol. 1 DVD. He would also get his name “Nipsey Hussle” there and complete the recording for his debut mixtape Slauson Boy Volume 1.[16]
His stage name, a play on the name of comedian and game show panelist Nipsey Russell, originated as a nickname given to Asghedom by a childhood acquaintance who respected his work ethic.[17] In 2004, when Asghedom was 19, his father took him and his brother Samiel on a three-month trip to Eritrea.[18] Asghedom credited the trip with inspiring him to become a community activist with an “entrepreneurial spirit”.[9][19][20][14]
Music career
2008โ2010: Bullets Ain’t Got No Name series
In December 2005, Hussle independently released his first mixtape, Slauson Boy Volume 1, to moderate local success.[21] His debut project helped to build a small regional fanbase on the west coast, and eventually led to Hussle being signed to Cinematic Music Group and Epic Records.[22][23][24][25] In 2008, Hussle released the first two installments in his Bullets Ain’t Got No Name series of mixtapes, which helped to bring Hussle’s music to a larger audience.[26]
Nipsey’s profile continued to grow into 2009 when he collaborated with Drake on the song “Killer”,[27] and also appeared, along with Snoop Dogg and Problem,[28] on the song “Upside Down”,[29] from Snoop Dogg’s 2009 album Malice n Wonderland.[30] He released the third installment in Bullets Ain’t Got No Name, as well as his commercial debut single, “Hussle in the House”. Despite the song, which samples Kris Kross‘ 1992 single Jump, being well received by critics, it failed to make any impact on the charts.[31]
After Epic experienced financial issues in 2010, Nipsey opted not to renew his contract and left the label.[25] Not long after going independent, Hussle appeared on the song “We Are the World 25 for Haiti“,[32] and was featured by XXL Magazine as one of its “Annual Freshman Top Ten”, a selection of ten up-and-coming hip-hop artists to watch.[33] XXL labeled him “Most Determined” of his class, and LA Weekly called him the “next big L.A. MC”.[34][35]
Hussle was expected to release his debut album, South Central State of Mind, in October 2010. Prior to release, the album was supported by the single “Feelin’ Myself” featuring Lloyd. While the production was set to be handled from J.R. Rotem, Scott Storch, Mr. Lee, Play-N-Skillz, Terrace Martin, and 1500 or Nothin’, the album was set to be featured with the guest appearances from Trey Songz, Jay Rock, and Sean Kingston. Concurrently, he announced that he planned on releasing a mixtape with fellow rapper Jay Rock, titled Red and Blue Make Green.[36] Following the release of a music video for “Feelin’ Myself”, the album was set for a December 21, 2010 release; however, both of these projects were eventually postponed indefinitely.[37]
2010โ2013: Leaving Epic Records and The Marathon series
Hussle performing in 2013
After leaving Epic, Nipsey founded his own record label, All Money In Records[35][38] On December 21, 2010, he released his first All Money In Records mixtape, titled The Marathon,[39] which featured guest appearances from Kokane and MGMT.[40] On November 1, 2011, Hussle released a sequel titled The Marathon Continues, which featured L.A. rappers YG and Dom Kennedy.[41] On April 17, 2012, Hussle released a collaborative album with fellow rapper Blanco, Raw. The album featured guest appearances from YG, Mistah FAB, Yukmouth, B-Legit, Kokane and Freeway.[42]
In May 2012, Nipsey released a single titled Proud of That, marking his first collaboration with Florida rapper Rick Ross.[43] Nipsey was subsequently featured on Ross’ Maybach Music Group‘s song “Fountain of Youth”, which appears on the label’s second album Self Made Vol. 2.[44] The music video was released on October 1, 2012.[45] Rumours began to circulate that Nipsey would sign with MMG, and in December 2012, Hussle himself hinted at signing, however, he also said that he was still looking for the right label.[46]
Hussle said that he would be releasing his third and final installment of The Marathon mixtape series with TM3: Victory Lap in 2013, after it was pushed back from its initial December 2012 release date.[47] He also announced that he was planning on releasing a joint mixtape with fellow West Coast rapper and frequent collaborator YG.[48] Hussle performed at the 2013 Paid Dues festival on March 30, 2013, in California.[49] After deciding against signing to a major label, due to a lack of creative freedom, he choose to make Victory Lap his debut album.[50]
Beginning in 2013, he released various songs from his upcoming mixtape Crenshaw, including the 9th Wonder produced track “Face the World”, and a Futuristics and 1500 or Nothin’โproduced track “Blessings”.[51] On August 6, 2013, Hussle announced that Victory Lap would be released as an album, rather than a mixtape.[52][53][54] Prior to the release of Victory Lap, Hussle announced on September 16, 2013, that he would be releasing a new mixtape, Crenshaw (hosted by DJ Drama), on October 8, 2013.[55]
On September 24, 2013, he revealed the track list for Crenshaw, which contained guest appearances from Rick Ross, Dom Kennedy, Slim Thug, James Fauntleroy II, Z-Ro, Skeme, and Sade, among others. The production on the mixtape was handled by the Futuristics, 1500 or Nothin’, 9th Wonder, Mike Free, Ralo and Jiggy Hendrix, among others. He also released the Crenshaw documentary that day in promotion of the mixtape.[56] On October 3, 2013, he released another trailer for the mixtape, and attracted attention when he revealed 1,000 hard copies of the mixtape would be sold for $100 each. Jay-Z personally bought 100 copies.[57][58][59] He reportedly sold out all 1,000 copies in less than 24 hours, effectively making $100,000.[60]
Upon the release of Crenshaw, Hussle said that Victory Lap would be released in 2014.[61] On November 20, 2013, Hussle confirmed that Victory Lap would feature production from Ralo, 1500 or Nothin’, the Futuristiks and DJ Mustard.[62] He later confirmed more producers, including Don Cannon and DJ Khalil on the album.[63] After the year went by with no new releases, Hussle released a new mixtape, Mailbox Money on New Year’s Eve 2014, again releasing 1000 hard copies for $100 each.[64]
Hussle made a number of guest appearances throughout 2015 and 2016, working with Jadakiss, Trae Tha Truth, and YG. In 2016, he released another mixtape, titled Famous Lies and Unpopular Truth.[65] He commented on the 2016 US presidential election by releasing the single “FDT” (“Fuck Donald Trump“) with YG; the song was written about Hussle’s positive experiences with Mexican immigrants in the United States, whom Trump had criticized.[66][67]
After numerous delays, Hussle’s debut studio album, Victory Lap, was released on February 16, 2018, debuting at number 4 on the Billboard 200, selling 53,000 album equivalent units in its first week.[68] The album was met with universal acclaim from critics,[69][70][71][72] and numerous songs entered the Billboard Hot 100, including “Double Up“, “Last Time That I Checc’d” and “Dedication“, marking Hussle’s debut on the chart as a lead artist.[73]
Hussle’s nickname came from his entrepreneurial spirit. He shined shoes for $2.50 to pay for school clothes at age 11 with a goal of a hundred shoes a day.[77] Hussle sold his mixtapes out of a car trunk at a neighborhood strip mall at the intersection of Slauson Avenue and Crenshaw Boulevard.[78][79] After leaving Epic Records, he founded his own record label. Hussle experimented with unorthodox sales strategies by selling expensive copies of certain mixtapes even while the songs were distributed for free.[64]
Hussle’s Marathon branding inspired Steve Carless in 2013 when he founded Marathon Agency with business partners Karen Civil and Jorge Peniche. They designed the talent-based brand to attract a diverse set of clients in all stages of their careers. In October 2016, Carless, the head of the agency, told Billboard that Hussle had invested “like over six figures” in the Marathon Agency and described him as “kind of like our silent partner”.[80]
Hussle opened the Marathon Clothing store on June 17, 2017, which he founded along with partners Carless, Civil, and his brother Samiel Asghedom.[81] Opening the store at this intersection in the Crenshaw commercial district was important to him because he wanted to invest and provide opportunities in his neighborhood of Hyde Park.[19] The store is billed as a “smart store”, which bridges the gap between culture and technology by giving customers access to exclusive music and other content created by rappers through an app created by software engineer Iddris Sandu.[82][83] The year before his death, Hussle bought the small shopping center where his store was located, after partnering with the real estate investor David Gross.[84][85][77][86]
All Money In
Hussle created the record label All Money In after leaving Epic Records.[87][88] He released his first major project, The Marathon, through the new label on December 21, 2010.[35] He released subsequent projects under his label, including The Marathon Continues (2011), Crenshaw (2013), and Mailbox Money (2014). He also signed other artists, including J Stone, Pacman Da Gunman, BH, Cobby Supreme, Cuzzy Capone and Killa Twan.[89]Releases
Hussle wanted to focus on “giving solutions and inspiration” to young black men like him.[94] He denounced gun violence through his music, influence, and community work.[95] He spoke openly about his experiences with gang culture.[96] Affiliated with the Rollin’ 60s, he often performed and worked with rival Bloods-affiliated rappers to set an example.[97]
He funded improvements to neighborhood schools and spent time with students, also participating on panels about growing up in the area and the influence of gang culture.[98] Hussle started a co-working environment which he named Vector 90.[78] From his own experience, he believed that the Crenshaw area was being underserved and that young people would benefit from communal workspaces.[99] He wanted youths to be able to take classes in science, technology, and mathematics at the center.[100]
Hussle was also intimately involved in the planning and advisory stages of the Destination Crenshaw project that will showcase the history and culture of blacks in his neighborhood.[101] City Council member Marqueece Harris-Dawson said Hussle was in the earliest conversations on the project and was an integral part of the project’s branding.[102] In March 2019, Hussle had contacted officials from the LAPD to arrange a meeting with him and Roc Nation about what they could do to help prevent gang violence in South Los Angeles.[103] The meeting had been scheduled to take place on April 1.
Hussle was murdered on March 31. According to Los Angeles Police Commissioner Steve Soboroff, department officials will meet with Hussle’s representatives at a future date on these issues to continue the activist’s work in his honor.[100]
Personal life
Hussle and actress Lauren London began dating in 2013. They had a son together in 2016.[104] London has a child from a previous relationship with fellow rapper Lil Wayne, while Hussle had a daughter from a previous relationship.[105][106][107] He remained very involved in South Los Angeles with his businesses, charitable activities, and the homes of family and friends.[108][109] The locations for a magazine shoot were in the neighborhood.[110]
Death
On March 31, 2019, Hussle was shot at least 10 times in the parking lot of his store, Marathon Clothing, in South Central Los Angeles at 3:18 p.m. The perpetrator also kicked Hussle in the head.[111][112][113] Two others were wounded in the shooting.[114][115]
All three victims were transported to a hospital, where Hussle was pronounced dead at 3:55 p.m. He was 33 years old.[116][117] Police identified then-29-year-old Eric Ronald Holder Jr. as the suspect.[118][119][120] Investigators believed Holder was known to the rapper and that the shooting was possibly motivated by a personal matter.[121][122][123][124] On April 2, 2019, Holder was arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department and was being held in solitary confinement.[125]
On May 9, a grand jury indicted Holder on one count of murder, two counts each of attempted murder and assault with a firearm, and one count of possession of a firearm by a felon. After a couple of postponements,[126][127] the trial got underway in mid-June, 2022.[128] Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney John McKinney served as the case’s prosecutor, while Aaron Jansen served as head of the defense.[129][130] Holder’s attorneys argued that he did not intend to kill Hussle but had acted in the heat of the moment. McKinney argued, “He thought about it and he did it. That’s all premeditated means. It doesn’t mean he planned it for weeks”.[129] Testimony at the trial established that, immediately before Holder shot Hussle, the two men argued over a rumor that Holder had cooperated with law enforcement in an unrelated matter.[131] On July 6, 2022, Holder was found guilty of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted voluntary manslaughter relating to injuries he caused to bystanders.[132][133] On February 22, 2023, Superior Court Judge H. Clay Jack announced Holder’s sentence of 60 years.[134]
Hussle’s brother, Samiel Asghedom, was appointed the permanent administrator of Hussle’s estate.[135]
Memorials
Memorial in front of Marathon Clothing, where Hussle was fatally shot
Upon hearing the news of his death, numerous celebrities offered their condolences on social media.[136][137] Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti also offered his condolences to Hussle’s family.[138]
Hussle’s memorial service was held on April 11 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, with tickets provided free of charge.[139]
Former president Barack Obama praised the rapper for his work in the community, writing in a tribute, “While most folks look at the Crenshaw neighborhood where he grew up and see only gangs, bullets, and despair, Nipsey saw potential”.[140]
Former president of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad paid homage to the late rapper on his official Twitter profile. The conservative politician quoted Hussle’s lyrics in a tweet reading “How can one take someone’s life so easily? ‘Baby Don’t Cry Gotta Keep Your Head Up Even when The Road is Hard Never Give Up'”.[141]
The 25.5-mile (41.0 km) funeral procession to Forest Lawn Memorial Park wound through the streets of South Central L.A. including Watts, where he spent some of his formative years.[142][143] The Nation of Islam provided security along the route that was “both respectful to the community and in a way that the community respects” according to Melina Abdullah.[144] Mourners gathered at the Watts Towers along the route.[145] The crowds lining the streets demonstrated the impact he had on this community.[145][95]
Gang leaders saw how Hussle resonated with young gang members and used the opportunity to curtail violence in their own ranks. A cross-section of gangs marched together at a memorial for Hussle and later held summits between L.A. and Compton. Largely confined to black gangs, they agreed to stay away from each other’s territory and stop shooting at people. The peacemaking, which was a cease fire and not a truce, included hundreds of gangs similar to the truces of 1992.[146]
Remembrance and tributes
A petition was started to rename the intersection of Slauson Avenue and Crenshaw Boulevard near Hussle’s store Marathon Clothing to “Nipsey Hussle Square”. On the day of his funeral, the council announced it was set to be renamed Ermias “Nipsey Hussle” Asghedom Square to honor him and his contributions to the neighborhood.[84] There has also been a push from the community to name the nearby Hyde Park station after him, according to Metro. A ceremony dedicating the at-grade light rail station on the K Line to him and the Crenshaw community was held August 6, 2022.[147]
There was a strong artistic response to Nipsey Hussle’s death. Within a few months, over 50 murals dedicated to the rapper were painted in the City of Los Angeles.[148][149] One mural is in an alley near the strip mall where he was killed.[150] Hussle’s store has remained closed since his death.[151]
Hussle was honored with a star in the recording category of the Hollywood Walk of Fame in front of Amoeba Music on August 15, 2022, the 37th anniversary of his birth.[152][153] Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson proclaimed the day Nipsey Hussle Day and handed the framed proclamation to Hussle’s grandmother, Margaret Smith, who stood with Hussle’s sister, Samantha, and his father, Dawit Asghedom.[154]
Inspired by the books that Hussle mentioned in interviews, songs and motivational messages, local chapters of the Marathon Book Club have formed.[155] The list includes self-help bestsellers, cult classics and little-known books by black authors.[156]Michelle Obama included “Hussle and Motivate” on her 2020 workout playlist.[157]
On March 6, 2020, metal band Body Count released their seventh studio album titled Carnivore. The album features a song titled “When I’m Gone”, which was written for Nipsey Hussle[159] by the band’s singer and rapper Ice-T. The song features a spoken introductory part in which Ice-T says of Hussle, “the outcry of love and support after his death was incredible, but it inspired me to write this song.” The song also features guest vocalist Amy Lee from the band Evanescence who is also credited by Ice-T as having co-written the song.[159]
Rapper Snoop Dogg released the tribute song “Nipsey Blue” which is dedicated to Nipsey Hussle in 2020.[160]
Rapper Big Sean announced the song “Deep Reverence” in honor of Nipsey Hussle.[161] The track was released in August 2020 and features Nipsey Hussle. The music video was released in March 2021.[162][163][164]
Puma released the Marathon Clothing collection in September 2019 with 100% of net proceeds to the Neighborhood ‘Nip’ Foundation.[165] The AMB store opened in September 2019 on Crenshaw Boulevard. This is another clothing company founded by Hussle with Cobby Supreme who was one of his best friends and an artist.[166]
The season 2 premiere of The CW series All American included a candlelight vigil at Hyde Park with a eulogy by the character Flip Williams (played by Lahmard Tate). Tattoo artist Keenan Chapman painted a mural just for the episode. The series included “Grinding All My Life” in its pilot, and series star Daniel Ezra was a fan. Characters from the series wore clothes from the Marathon store. Hussle had planned to appear in the season 1 finale but had “scheduling conflicts”.[171] A documentary on Nipsey Hussle is in development at Netflix, and is set to be co-produced and directed by Ava DuVernay.[172]
Rapper Kendrick Lamar paid tribute to Nipsey Hussle on the single “The Heart Part 5“. The music video shows Hussle deepfaked on to Lamar’s face as he rapped about his legacy following his death.
Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta CGH (born 26 October 1961) is a Kenyan politician who served as the fourth president of Kenya from 2013 to 2022.[1]
Daniel Arap Moi had picked Kenyatta as his preferred successor. Uhuru Kenyatta, however, was defeated by the then opposition leader Mwai Kibaki in the 2002 election, and Kibaki was subsequently sworn in as the President. Kenyatta served as the member of parliament (MP) for Gatundu South from 2002 to 2013. He also served as Deputy Prime Minister to Raila Odinga from 2008 to 2013. Currently, he is the member and the party leader of the Jubilee Party of Kenya whose popularity has since dwindled. Kenyatta was previously associated with the Kenya Africa National Union (KANU) before founding The National Alliance (TNA), one of the allied parties that campaigned for his election during the 2013 election and later on went to form a merger with the United Republican Party (URP) led by William Ruto to form the Jubilee Party.
Kenyatta is the son of Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s first president, and his fourth wife Mama Ngina Kenyatta.[2] He has been married to Margaret Gakuo Kenyatta since 1991. They have three children: the two sons, Jomo and Muhoho, and a daughter called Ngina Kenyatta.
Uhuru Kenyatta was born on 26 October 1961, to the first president of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, and his fourth wife, Mama Ngina Kenyatta (nรฉe Muhoho). The second born in the family, he has two sisters, Christine (born 1953), Anna Nyokabi (born 1963) and a brother, Muhoho Kenyatta (born 1965).
His family hails from the Kikuyu, a Bantu ethnic group. His given name “Uhuru” is from the Swahili term for “freedom” and was given to him in anticipation of Kenya’s upcoming independence. Uhuru attended St Mary’s School in Nairobi. Between 1979 and 1980, he also briefly worked as a teller at the Kenya Commercial Bank.[8]
After attending St. Mary’s school, Uhuru went on to study economics, political science and government at Amherst College in the United States.[9][10][2] Upon his graduation, Uhuru returned to Kenya, and started a company, Wilham Kenya Limited, through which he sourced and exported agricultural produce.[11]
Uhuru was nominated to Parliament in 2001, he then became the Minister for Local Government under President Daniel Arap Moi and, despite his political inexperience, was favoured by Moi as his successor.[12] Kenyatta ran as KANU’s candidate in the December 2002 presidential election, but lost to the opposition candidate Mwai Kibaki by a big margin.[13] He subsequently became Leader of the Opposition in Parliament. He backed Hon. Mwai Kibaki for re-election in the December 2007 presidential election and was named Minister of Local Government by Former President Mwai Kibaki in January 2008, before being appointed as the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Trade in April 2008 as part of the new coalition government.[14]
Subsequently, Uhuru Kenyatta was Minister of Finance from 2009 to 2012,while remaining Deputy Prime Minister. Accused by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of committing crimes against humanity in relation to the violent aftermath of the 2007 election, he resigned as Minister of Finance on 26 January 2012.[15] He was elected as President of Kenya in the March 2013 presidential election, defeating Raila Odinga with a slim majority in a single round of voting.
In 1999, Moi appointed Uhuru to chair the Kenya Tourism Board, a government parastatal. In 2001, he was nominated as a Member of Parliament, and he joined the Cabinet as Minister for Local Government.[17] He would also later be elected First Vice Chairman of KANU.[17]
In the nomination process in 2002 in what was widely thought as undemocratic and underhand, Moi influenced Uhuru Kenyatta’s nomination as KANU‘s preferred presidential candidate, sparking an outcry from other interested contenders and a massive exit from the party ensued. This move by the late President Moi was seen as a ploy to install Uhuru as a puppet so that even in retirement, Moi would still rule the country through Uhuru and presumably insulate himself against the numerous charges of abuse of office that plagued his presidency.
In January 2005, Uhuru Kenyatta defeated Nicholas Biwott for chairmanship of KANU, taking 2,980 votes among party delegates against Biwott’s 622 votes.[20]
Uhuru led his party KANU in the referendum campaigns against the draft constitution in 2005, having teamed up with the Liberal Democratic Party, a rebel faction in the Kibaki government, to form the Orange Democratic Movement.[21] The result of this was a vote against the adoption of the draft constitution by a noticeable margin, which was a great political embarrassment to Emilio Mwai Kibaki.[22][23][24]
In November 2006, Kenyatta was displaced as KANU leader by the late Nicholas Biwott.[25][26] On 28 December 2006, the High Court of Kenya reinstated Uhuru Kenyatta as KANU chairman. However, further court proceedings followed.[27] On 28 June 2007, the High Court confirmed Kenyatta as party leader, ruling that there was insufficient evidence for Biwott’s argument that Kenyatta had joined another party.[28]
In the run up to the 2007 general election, he led KANU to join a coalition (called Party of National Unity “PNU”) with President Mwai Kibaki who was running for a second term against Raila Odinga.[29] PNU won the controversial 2007 elections but the dispute over the poll resulted in the 2007โ08 Kenyan crisis.[30][31]
Under an agreement between the two parties to end the chaos, Kibaki remained as president in a power sharing agreement with Raila as Prime Minister, while Uhuru Kenyatta was Kibaki’s choice as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister For Finance in his share of Cabinet slots.[17][32]
On 13 September 2007, Uhuru Kenyatta withdrew from the December 2007 presidential election in favour of Kibaki for re-election.[33] He said that he did not want to run unless he could be sure of winning.[34]
Following the election, amidst the controversy that resulted when Kibaki was declared the victor despite claims of fraud from challenger Raila Odinga and his Orange Democratic Movement, Kibaki appointed Kenyatta as Minister for Local Government on 8 January 2008.[35]
After Kibaki and Odinga reached a power-sharing agreement, Kenyatta was named Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Trade on 13 April 2008, as part of the Grand Coalition Cabinet. He was the Deputy Prime Minister representing the PNU, while another Deputy Prime Minister, Musalia Mudavadi, represented the ODM.[36][37][38]
Kenyatta and the rest of the Cabinet were sworn in on 17 April.[39][40] Uhuru Kenyatta was later moved from Local Government and appointed Minister for Finance on 23 January 2009.[41] During his tenure, he spearheaded a number of reform measures that changed how treasury and government by extension transact business, such as the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) and a fund for the inclusion of the informal sector in the mainstream economy.[citation needed]
Raila Amolo Odinga disputed the election results at the Supreme Court which however held (7โ0) that the election of Uhuru was valid and such irregularities as existed did not make a difference to the final outcome.[1] Uhuru Kenyatta was therefore sworn in as president on 9 April 2013.[44]
Uhuru ran for president in the elections held on 4 March 2013 and garnered 6,173,433 votes (50.03%) out of the 12,338,667 votes cast. As this was above the 50% plus 1 vote threshold, he won the election in the first round thus evading a run-off between the top two candidates.[45] He was, therefore, declared the fourth President of the Republic of Kenya by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC).
According to the IEBC, Raila Odinga garnered 5,340,546 votes (43.4%) and was thus the second in the field of eight candidates. CORD, under the leadership of presidential candidate Raila Odinga, lodged a petition with the Supreme Court of Kenya on 10 March 2013 challenging Uhuru’s election.[46]
On 30 March 2013, Dr Willy Mutunga, the Chief Justice of Kenya, read the unanimous Supreme Court ruling declaring the election of Uhuru Kenyatta and his running-mate, William Ruto, as valid.[47] On 11 August 2017, the Chairman of the IEBC, Wafula Chebukati announced Uhuru’s reelection to a second term in office during the 2017 Kenyan general election, with 54% of the popular vote.[3][4] This was later contested in court and annulled. Innulment, a second election was required in which Uhuru Kenyatta won with 98% of the vote with a 39% voter turnout.[48]
On 9 March 2018 Uhuru Kenyatta agreed on a truce between the opposition leader, Raila Odinga.[49] This action marked the country’s watershed moment that redrew its political architecture.[50] On 27 November 2019, Uhuru Kenyatta launched the Building Bridges Initiatives (BBI) in Bomas of Kenya.[51] This is one of the outcomes as a result of the truce with the opposition leader Raila Odinga as its implementations will foresee some amendments in the Kenyan Constitution.[52]
Prior to him becoming president, Kenyatta was named as a suspect of crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo, for planning and funding violence in Naivasha and Nakuru.[53] This was in relation to the violence that followed the bungled national elections of December 2007. In furtherance of his political support for Kibaki’s PNU at the time, he was accused of organising a Kikuyu politico-religious group, the Mungiki, in the post-election violence. Overall, the post-election violence of 2007 is said to have claimed about 1300 lives. Uhuru maintained his innocence and wanted his name cleared. On 8 March 2011, while serving as minister in Kibaki’s government, he was indicted after being summoned to appear before the ICC pre-trial chamber. He was to appear at The Hague on 8 April 2011 alongside five other suspects.[54] On 29 September 2011, while seeking to exonerate himself, Uhuru Kenyatta put up a spirited fight as he was being cross-examined by ICC Chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo in The Hague, denying any links with the outlawed Mungiki sect. He said Prime Minister Raila Odinga should take political responsibility for the acts of violence and killings that followed the 2007 presidential elections in Kenya. He told the three judges that “by telling his supporters election results were being rigged, fanned tensions and then failed to use his influence to quell the violence that followed the announcement of the 2007 presidential results.”
Though Uhuru had previously dismissed ICC summons,[55] he changed his decision along the way. Together with his two other co-accused suspects, Head of Civil Service, Ambassador Francis Muthaura and former Police Commissioner Hussein Ali, the trio honoured the ICC Summons that sought to determine whether their cases met the set standards for international trials.[56] On 23 January 2012, the ICC confirmed the cases against Kenyatta and Muthaura although the charges against Muthaura were subsequently dropped.[57] Serious concerns about the case have been raised, particularly the nature of the evidence being used against Kenyatta. There are also serious concerns about witness tampering and indeed, a number of witnesses have disappeared or died,[58] which is the reason cited by the ICC for dropping charges against Mathaura.[59] On a 12 October 2013 speech to the African Union in which he set a belligerent tone, Uhuru accused the ICC of being “a toy of declining imperial powers”.[60]
On 31 October 2013, the ICC postponed Kenyatta’s trial for crimes against humanity by three months until 5 February 2014 after the defense had requested more time.[61]
On 8 October 2014, Kenyatta appeared before the ICC in The Hague. He was called to appear at the ICC “status conference” when the prosecution said evidence needed to go ahead with a trial was being withheld. In a speech to the Kenyan parliament Kenyatta said that he was going to The Hague in a personal capacity โ not as president of the country โ so as not to compromise the sovereignty of Kenyans. Kenyatta did not speak in court, but denied the charges in comments to journalists as he left the court to catch a flight back home. “We as Kenyans, we know where we came from, we know where we are going, and nobody will tell us what to do,” he said. The judges adjourned the hearings and charges were dropped on 13 March 2015.[62][63][64]
On 20 May 2012, Uhuru Kenyatta attended the elaborately assembled and much-publicized launch of The National Alliance party in a modern high-tech dome at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre. His presence at the TNA launch was a strong indication that he would contest for the party’s presidential nomination ticket in his quest for the presidency in the 2013 General Elections.
Speeches at the launch revolved around the need for a thriving economy, the need for the rights of people of all classes in society to be championed, the need for peaceful co-existence, the need for visionary and committed leadership, the need for transformative leadership, the need for a youthful crop of committed professionals in leadership, the need for free and fair nomination and election processes in the General Election, the need for an economically empowered youth and a call to bring an end to divisive and sectarian interests in politics to safeguard Kenya from sliding to dictatorship.[65]Machel Waikenda was the director of communications and secretary of arts and entertainment of the National Alliance, from April 2012 to August 2013 and he led the media and communications department of the party during the 2013 elections.[66]
On 17 September 2012, The National Alliance party had its first real test when it contested various civic and parliamentary positions in a by-election that covered 17 seats in total; 3 parliamentary and 14 civic. Overall, 133,054 votes were cast in the by-elections and TNA led the pack after it garnered 38.89% or 51,878 votes, followed by Orange Democratic Movement with 33.7% or 44,837 votes, Party of National Unity with 4.46% or 5,929 votes, Wiper Democratic Movement with 4.44% or 5,912 votes and United Democratic Forum with 4.15% or 5,520 votes.
TNA won civic and parliamentary seats in 7 different counties while its closest challengers, ODM won seats in 4 counties.[67] The National Alliance Party remained a strong contender for the following year’s general elections, having received major defections from other big political parties of Kenya. The successful election of TNA’s main candidates (Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto) continued to enhance TNA’s viability.
Uhuru Kenyatta’s party, The National Alliance (TNA) joined William Ruto‘s United Republican Party (URP), Najib Balala’s Republican Congress Party (RCP) and Charity Ngilu’s National Rainbow Coalition party to form the Jubilee Alliance coalition. Various opinion polls prior to the election placed Uhuru as one of the main contenders, and his Jubilee Alliance as among the most popular. The other formidable coalition was the Coalition For Reform and Democracy (CORD), led by Raila Odinga.
In undercover video footage, released in a BBC news report on 19 March 2018,[68] the managing director of Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy that worked to elect Donald Trump in the 2016 American presidential election, boasted that his firm had run successful presidential election campaigns in Kenya in 2013 and 2017, though he did not name Kenyatta explicitly. “We have re-branded the entire party twice, written the manifesto, done research, analysis, messaging,” Turnbull said, of the campaigns that his company managed in Kenya. “I think we wrote all the speeches, and we staged the whole thingโso just about every element of this candidate.”[69] A Jubilee Party vice president admitted on 20 March 2018, that the party had hired an affiliate of Cambridge Analytica for “branding” in the 2017 election.[70]
Uhuru Kenyatta was officially declared the president elect on Saturday 9 March at 2:44 pm.[71][72][73][74]
As per the IEBC’s official results, Uhuru got 6,173,433 of the 12,221,053 valid votes cast ahead of the second placed Raila Odinga who garnered 5,340,546 (43.7%). Uhuru’s result was 50.51% of the vote and was above the 50% plus 1 vote threshold set out in the 2010 constitution, thus making him the president-elect.[75]
There was some discontent with the official results, as would be expected in such a hotly contested election, especially in Raila Odinga’s strongholds. The inordinate delay[76] in releasing the results and the technical failure of some safeguards and election equipment deployed by the IEBC did not help the perception that the election had been less than free and fair.[77]
Further, an exit poll conducted by UCSD Professor Clark Gibson and James Long, Asst. Prof. and University of Washington suggested that neither Odinga nor Kenyatta had attained the 50% plus one vote threshold.[78] Analysts[who?] have contended that even though elections for five other levels were held in Kenya at the same time, their national turnout levels and total vote tallies were about 16% less than the presidential total; e.g. while 10.6 million voters elected candidates for member of the National Assembly, the Senate and the 47 gubernatorial seats, almost 2 million more voted in the presidential election. This has fueled concern and speculations of vote manipulation in President Kenyatta’s favor.[79]
Two groups disputed these results and filed petitions challenging various aspects of it at the Supreme Court of Kenya to contest the result. The groups were the Coalition For Reform and Democracy, CORD, led by Raila Odinga, and the Africa Centre for Open Governance (AFRICOG). Uhuru Kenyatta and his running mate were respondents in these cases and were represented by Fred Ngatia and Katwa Kigen respectively.[80]
The Supreme court judges unanimously upheld the election of Uhuru Kenyatta as Kenya’s fourth president after rejecting Raila Odinga’s petition in a verdict delivered on Saturday 30 March 2013. Chief Justice Willy Mutunga in his ruling said the elections were indeed conducted in compliance with the Constitution and the law.[81]
Presidential swearing-in at Kasarani Stadium[edit]
After the Supreme Courtdismissed the petitions the swearing in ceremony was held on 9 April 2013 at the Moi International Sports Centre, Kasarani, Nairobi, in accordance to Article 141 (2) (b) of the constitution which stipulates that in case the Supreme Court upholds the victory of the president-elect, the swearing in will take place on “the first Tuesday following the seventh day following the date on which the court renders a decision declaring the election to be valid”.[82]
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During his inaugural speech, Uhuru promised economic transformation through Vision 2030, unity among all Kenyans, free maternal care and that he will serve all Kenyans. He also promised to improve the standards of education in Kenya. During the Madaraka day Celebrations, a national holiday celebrated to the country’s independence on 1 June, President Uhuru Kenyatta announced free maternal care in all public health facilities, a move that was welcomed by many Kenyans.[83][84][85]
On 1 September 2017, the Supreme Court of Kenya nullified the re-election of Uhuru Kenyatta after the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) had announced him the winner on 8 August 2017.[86] As a result of that, there was a need for the election to be held once again. It was scheduled for 26 October 2017. After the reelection, Uhuru Kenyatta emerged the winner once again.
He was sworn in on 28 November 2017 for his second presidential term.[87]
In 2021, drought is again taking its toll. According to the UN, more than 465,000 children under the age of five are malnourished. Food insecurity affects more than 2.5 million people in the country. Uhuru Kenyatta speaks of a “national disaster”. However, he is criticised for the slow humanitarian response and lack of planning.[88]
The Mukuru Kwa Njenga slum in Nairobi is being razed in October 2021 to make way for the widening of a road, leaving 40,000 people homeless overnight, with no offer of alternative accommodation.[89]
The major challenges his administration faced included high cost of living, rising public debt, a high public wage bill and allegations of corruption among people within his government.[90]The 2017 general election and its violence is also a challenge that threatened not only his presidency but also the future of the East African Nation.
The high public wage was a headache to Uhuru’s administration.[91] At the start of his term, the President decried the high wage bill which was at 12% of GDP (as against a recommended 7%).[92] In 2015, the President stated that the wage bill was at 50% of the total annual revenue collection of government.[93] In an attempt to curtail it, the President announced a pay cut for himself and his Cabinet in March 2014, reducing his salary by 20%.[94] It was hoped that the high earners in government would follow suit but this did not materialize.[95] Another measure was the newly created constitutionalSalaries and Remuneration Commission which it was hoped would regularize salaries but it has faced an up hill battle against Members of Parliament, who wish to protect their earnings and labor unions.[96][97] The President thereafter ordered an audit of the government payroll so as to flush out ghost workers.[98] The audit identified 12,000 ghost workers.[99] In the meantime, lower cadre government workers have demanded pay rises, more so by teachers and health workers, who have gone on strikes at various times to demand the increase.[100][101] The strikes in the health sector mainly affect the counties, Kenya’s other level of government, as it is managed by the devolved units.[102]
On 28 June 2018, Kenyatta declared a major crackdown on corruption and stated that no one was immune from corruption charges in Kenya.[103] Kenyatta also stated his own brother Muhoho, a director in a company that had been accused in parliament of importing contraband sugar, should be charged if there is clear evidence against him.[104]
On 11 August 2018, Mohammed Abdalla Swazuri, the chairman of National Land Commission, and Atanas Kariuki Maina, managing director of the Kenya Railways Corporation, were among 18 officials, businesspeople and companies arrested on corruption charges involving land allocation for the $3 billion flagship Nairobi-Mombasa railway.[105] On 7 December 2018, Joe Sang, the CEO of the Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC), was arrested with four other senior officials in connection with the loss of an unspecified amount of money during the construction of an oil jetty in the western city of Kisumu.[106][107] On 22 July 2019, Kenya’s finance minister Henry Rotich became the country’s first sitting minister to be arrested for corruption.[108] 27 other people were arrested with Rotich as well.[108] On 6 December 2019, federal authorities arrested Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko on corruption charges.[109][110][111] On 14 January 2020, Kenyatta replaced Rotich with Labour Secretary Ukur Yatani[112]
On 28 May 2020, a breakthrough in Kenyatta’s pledge to combat corruption in Kenya occurred when 40 civil servants and 14 private sector officials, including National Youth Service (NYS) Director General Richard Ndubai, were arrested on charges related to the National Youth Service scandal.[113][114]
On 9 December 2020, it was confirmed by the Kenya News Agency that the National Anti-Corruption Campaign Steering Committee (NACCSC) was in the process of strengthening its collaboration with other crime fighting agencies, including those in Kenyatta’s government.[115] The group had National Government Administrative Officers (NGAO) in hopes they would support the County Anti-Corruption Civil Oversight Committee (CACCOC).[115] The day before, Winnie Guchu, who serves in Kenyatta’s government as the Chief Administrative Secretary (CAS) in the Office of the Attorney General and the Department of Justice, confirmed in a press conference that she had met with members of CACCOC to strengthen relations.[115] On 11 December 2020, the Kenyan government’s Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) released a statement confirming that Robert Pavel Oimeke, the director general of Kenya’s Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority, was arrested and taken into police custody on charges of demanding 200,000 Kenyan shillings ($1,795) to approve the re-opening of a petrol station that had been shut down over violations.[116] On 21 December 2020, Nairobi County Assembly Speaker Benson Mutura replaced Sonko, who was removed from office four days prior, as Governor of Nairobi.[117]
In October 2021, his name appeared in the Pandora Papers, among more than 330 current and former politicians and senior officials using hidden accounts in tax havens. He and six family members, including his mother, a brother and two sisters, have at least $30 million in several offshore companies. He also owns a secret ‘foundation’ in Panama, holding over $30 million.[118]
U.S. President Donald Trump with President Kenyatta in Washington, D.C., on 27 August 2018
As the President, Kenyatta’a foreign relations were dominated by the ICC question.[119] His relations with the West were expected to be cold, more so after the West warned Kenyans not to elect him as president.[120] The United Kingdom promised to have only essential contacts with him if he were elected.[121] However, his relationship with the West thawed significantly and he participated in the US โ Africa summit[122] as well as a Somalia summit in the United Kingdom.[123] The ICC accused his government of frustrating its investigation efforts into the case,[124] although it absolved the President personally of any involvement in the frustration.[125]
His activities, however, were more robust at the African level where he has pushed more intra-Africa trade and economic independence of African nations.[126] In November 2014, he launched consultations to reform the United Nations Security Council to expand the voice of Africa in the council.[127] He successfully rallied the AU against the ICC culminating in an Extraordinary Summit of the African Heads of State which resolved that sitting African Heads of State should not appear before the ICC.[128] The AU further asked the Security Council to suspend his trial at the ICC; for the first time ever, the Security Council resolution was defeated by abstention with 9 members of the Council abstaining rather than voting against so as not to offend Kenyatta.[129] The Assembly of State Parties of the ICC would two days later amend the ICC statute to allow for one to appear by video link, a proposal President Kenyatta had made when he was Deputy Prime Minister.[130]
Kenyatta led and negotiated peace agreements in South Sudan[131] and in Democratic Republic of Congo.[132] At the East African level, he developed a close relationship with the Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and Rwanda President Paul Kagame, creating the Coalition of the Willing, a caucus within the EAC[133] that has signed on to more joint development and economic agreements than the other EAC partners, including a joint tourist visa.
He attended the funeral of Nelson Mandela and was received warmly by the crowds.[134] He also attended the funeral of President Michael Sata of Zambia in November 2014. However, it had been perceived that his administration’s relations with Botswana were strained due to Botswana’s support of the ICC process. He visited Botswana to remove this perception and Botswana voted in favor of the AU’s ICC Resolution.[135]
As expected, his government had closer ties with China which was funding most of his infrastructure projects.[136]
President of Kenya Uhuru Kenyatta with the British Foreign Secretary William Hague at an international conference in London (May 2013)
In November 2020, it was noted that he was the most traveled Kenyan president compared to his predecessors. One of the leading national newspapers noted that Uhuru Kenyatta had been out of the country 43 times as of November 2015[137] in a period of about three years since he took office in 2013, as compared to 33 times over a span of 10 years by his predecessor Mwai Kibaki.[138] The president’s strategic communications unit[139] came out in defense of these trips stating that these trips had yielded more than what it cost the taxpayers to finance them.[140]
In October 2021, Kenyatta was named in the Pandora Papers leak. BBC reported that “The Kenyattas’ offshore investments, including a company with stocks and bonds worth $30m (ยฃ22m), were discovered among hundreds of thousands of pages of administrative paperwork from the archives of 14 law firms and service providers in Panama and the British Virgin Islands (BVI) and other tax havens.”[141]
His government’s first year in office received low ratings from the general public. This is after a poll by Synovate indicated that more than half of the population was unhappy with how the government had conducted its affairs. The same polls also ranked the presidency as the second most trusted institution after the media. After his appearance at The Hague for his ICC case in October 2014, his poll ratings improved to 71%, according to a poll by Synovate.[142][143] A poll by Gallup in August 2014 put his approval ratings at 78%, giving him the third best job approval ratings among African Presidents after Ian Khama of Botswana and Ibrahim Boubacar Keรฏta of Mali.[144] In 2015, due to allegations of corruption against some members of his government, his poll ratings dropped to his lowest rating yet at 33%, according to an Infotrack poll.[145] By February 2017, his poll numbers had, however, risen to 57%.[146] His poll numbers in 2018 would rise to 74% in light of a renewed effort to battle corruption.[147]
Talk of human nature is a common feature of moral and political discourse among people on the street and among philosophers, political scientists and sociologists. This is largely due to the widespread assumption that true descriptive or explanatory claims making use of the concept of human nature have, or would have, considerable normative significance. Some think that human nature excludes the possibility of certain forms of social organisationโfor example, that it excludes any broadly egalitarian society. Others make the stronger claim that a true normative ethical theory has to be built on prior knowledge of human nature. Still others believe that there are specific moral prohibitions concerning the alteration of, or interference in, the set of properties that make up human nature. Finally, there are those who argue that the normative significance derives from the fact that merely deploying the concept is typically, or even necessarily, pernicious.
Alongside such varying and frequently conflicting normative uses of the expression โhuman natureโ, there are serious disagreements concerning the conceptโs content and explanatory significanceโthe starkest being whether the expression โhuman natureโ refers to anything at all. Some reasons given for saying there is no human nature are anthropological, grounded in views concerning the relationship between natural and cultural features of human life. Other reasons given are biological, deriving from the character of the human species as, like other species, an essentially historical product of evolution. Whether these reasons justify the claim that there is no human nature depends, at least in part, on what it is exactly that the expression is supposed to be picking out. Many contemporary proposals differ significantly in their answers to this question.
Understanding the debates around the philosophical use of the expression โhuman natureโ requires clarity on the reasons both for (1) adopting specific adequacy conditions for the termโs use and for (2) accepting particular substantial claims made within the framework thus adopted. One obstacle to such clarity is historical: we have inherited from the beginnings of Western philosophy, via its Medieval reception, the idea that talk of human nature brings into play a number of different, but related claims. One such set of claims derives from different meanings of the Greek equivalents of the term โnatureโ. This bundle of claims, which can be labelled the traditional package, is a set of adequacy conditions for any substantial claim that uses the expression โhuman natureโ. The beginnings of Western philosophy have also handed down to us a number of such substantial claims. Examples are that humans are โrational animalsโ or โpolitical animalsโ. We can call these claims the traditional slogans. The traditional package is a set of specifications of how claims along the lines of the traditional slogans are to be understood, i.e., what it means to claim that it is โhuman natureโ to be, for example, a rational animal.
Various developments in Western thought have cast doubt both on the coherence of the traditional package and on the possibility that the adequacy conditions for the individual claims can be fulfilled. Foremost among these developments are the Enlightenment rejection of teleological metaphysics, the Historicist emphasis on the significance of culture for understanding human action and the Darwinian introduction of history into biological kinds. This entry aims to help clarify the adequacy conditions for claims about human nature, the satisfiability of such conditions and the reasons why the truth of claims with the relevant conditions might seem important. It proceeds in five steps. Section 1 unpacks the traditional package, paying particular attention to the importance of Aristotelian themes and to the distinction between the scientific and participant perspectives from which human nature claims can be raised. Section 2 explains why evolutionary biology raises serious problems both for the coherence of this package and for the truth of its individual component claims. Sections 3 and 4 then focus on attempts to secure scientific conceptions of human nature in the face of the challenge from evolutionary biology. The entry concludes with a discussion of accounts of human nature developed from a participant perspective, in particular accounts that, in spite of the evolutionary challenge, are taken to have normative consequences.
1. โHumansโ, Slogans and the Traditional Package
1.1 โHumansโ
Before we begin unpacking, it should be noted that the adjective โhumanโ is polysemous, a fact that often goes unnoticed in discussions of human nature, but makes a big difference to both the methodological tractability and truth of claims that employ the expression. The natural assumption may appear to be that we are talking about specimens of the biological species Homo sapiens, that is, organisms belonging to the taxon that split from the rest of the hominin lineage an estimated 150,000 years ago. However, certain claims seem to be best understood as at least potentially referring to organisms belonging to various older species within the subtribe Homo, with whom specimens of Homo sapiens share properties that have often been deemed significant (Sterelny 2018: 114).
On the other hand, the โnatureโ that is of interest often appears to be that of organisms belonging to a more restricted group. There may have been a significant time lag between the speciation of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) and the evolution of behaviourally modern humans, i.e., human populations whose life forms involved symbol use, complex tool making, coordinated hunting and increased geographic range. Behavioural modernityโs development is often believed only to have been completed by 50,000 years ago. If, as is sometimes claimed, behavioural modernity requires psychological capacities for planning, abstract thought, innovativeness and symbolism (McBrearty & Brooks 2000: 492) and if these were not yet widely or sufficiently present for several tens of thousands of years after speciation, then it may well be behaviourally, rather than anatomically modern humans whose โnatureโ is of interest to many theories. Perhaps the restriction might be drawn even tighter to include only contemporary humans, that is, those specimens of the species who, since the introduction of agriculture around 12,000 years ago, evolved the skills and capacities necessary for life in large sedentary, impersonal and hierarchical groups (Kappeler, Fichtel, & van Schaik 2019: 68).
It was, after all, a Greek living less than two and a half millennia ago within such a sedentary, hierarchically organised population structure, who could have had no conception of the prehistory of the beings he called anthrรดpoi, whose thoughts on their โnatureโ have been decisive for the history of philosophical reflection on the subject. It seems highly likely that, without the influence of Aristotle, discussions of โhuman natureโ would not be structured as they are until today.
1.2 Unpacking the Traditional Package
We can usefully distinguish four types of claim that have been traditionally made using the expression โhuman natureโ. As a result of a particular feature of Aristotleโs philosophy, to which we will come in a moment, these four claims are associated with five different uses of the expression. Uses of the first type seem to have their origin in Plato; uses of the second, third and fourth type are Aristotelian; and, although uses of the fifth type have historically been associated with Aristotle, this association seems to derive from a misreading in the context of the religiously motivated Mediaeval reception of his philosophy.
A first, thin, contrastive use of the expression โhuman natureโ is provided by the application of a thin, generic concept of nature to humans. In this minimal variant, nature is understood in purely contrastive or negative terms. Phusis is contrasted in Plato and Aristotle with technฤ, where the latter is the product of intention and a corresponding intervention of agency. If the entire cosmos is taken to be the product of divine agency, then, as Plato argued (Nadaf 2005: 1ff.), conceptualisations of the cosmos as natural in this sense are mistaken. Absent divine agency, the types of agents whose intentions are relevant for the status of anything as natural are human agents. Applied to humans, then, this concept of nature picks out human features that are not the results of human intentional action. Thus understood, human nature is the set of human features or processes that remain after subtraction of those picked out by concepts of the non-natural, concepts such as โcultureโ, โnurtureโ, or โsocialisationโ.
A second component in the package supplies the thin concept with substantial content that confers on it explanatory power. According to Aristotle, natural entities are those that contain in themselves the principle of their own production or development, in the way that acorns contain a blueprint for their own realisation as oak trees (Physics 192b; Metaphysics 1014b). The โnatureโ of natural entities thus conceptualised is a subset of the features that make up their nature in the first sense. The human specification of this explanatory concept of nature aims to pick out human features that similarly function as blueprints for something like a fully realised form. According to Aristotle, for all animals that blueprint is โthe soulโ, that is, the integrated functional capacities that characterise the fully developed entity. The blueprint is realised when matter, i.e., the body, has attained the level of organisation required to instantiate the animalโs living functions (Charles 2000: 320ff.; Lennox 2009: 356).
A terminological complication is introduced here by the fact that the fully developed form of an entity is itself also frequently designated as its โnatureโ (Aristotle, Physics 193b; Politics 1252b). In Aristotleโs teleological metaphysics, this is the entityโs end, โthat for the sake of which a thing isโ (Metaphysics 1050a; Charles 2000: 259). Thus, a humanโs โnatureโ, like that of any other being, may be either the features in virtue of which it is disposed to develop to a certain mature form or, thirdly, the form to which it is disposed to develop.
Importantly, the particularly prominent focus on the idea of a fully developed form in Aristotleโs discussions of humans derives from its dual role. It is not only the form to the realisation of which human neonates are disposed; it is also the form that mature members of the species ought to realise (Politics 1253a). This normative specification is the fourth component of the traditional package. The second, third and fourth uses of โnatureโ are all in the original package firmly anchored in a teleological metaphysics. One question for systematic claims about human nature is whether any of these components remain plausible if we reject a teleology firmly anchored in theology (Sedley 2010: 5ff.).
A fifth and last component of the package that has traditionally been taken to have been handed down from antiquity is classificatory. Here, the property or set of properties named by the expression โhuman natureโ is that property or property set in virtue of the possession of which particular organisms belong to a particular biological taxon: what we now identify as the species taxon Homo sapiens. This is human nature typologically understood.
This, then, is the traditional package:
Component
Variant of human nature
TP1
contrastive
TP2
blueprint explanatory
TP3
explanatorily teleological
TP4
normatively teleological
TP5
classificatory or taxonomic
1.3 Essentialisms
The sort of properties that have traditionally been taken to support the classificatory practices relevant to TP5 are intrinsic to the individual organisms in question. Moreover, they have been taken to be able to fulfil this role in virtue of being necessary and sufficient for the organismโs membership of the species, i.e., โessentialโ in one meaning of the term. This view of species membership, and the associated view of species themselves, has been influentially dubbed โtypological thinkingโ (Mayr 1959 [1976: 27f.]; cf. Mayr 1982: 260) and โessentialismโ (Hull 1965: 314ff.; cf. Mayr 1968 [1976: 428f.]). The former characterisation involves an epistemological focus on the classificatory procedure, the latter a metaphysical focus on the properties thus singled out. Ernst Mayr claimed that the classificatory approach originates in Platoโs theory of forms, and, as a result, involves the further assumption that the properties are unchanging. According to David Hull, its root cause is the attempt to fit the ontology of species taxa to an Aristotelian theory of definition.
The theory of definition developed in Aristotleโs logical works assigns entities to a genus and distinguishes them from other members of the genus, i.e., from other โspeciesโ, by their differentiae (Topics 103b). The procedure is descended from the โmethod of divisionโ of Plato, who provides a crude example as applied to humans, when he has the Eleatic Stranger in the Statesman characterise them as featherless bipeds (266e). Hull and many scholars in his wake (Duprรฉ 2001: 102f.) have claimed that this simple schema for picking out essential conditions for species membership had a seriously deleterious effect on biological taxonomy until Darwin (cf. Winsor 2006).
However, there is now widespread agreement that Aristotle was no taxonomic essentialist (Balme 1980: 5ff.; Mayr 1982: 150ff.; Balme 1987: 72ff.; Ereshefsky 2001: 20f; Richards 2010: 21ff.; Wilkins 2018: 9ff.). First, the distinction between genus and differentiae was for Aristotle relative to the task at hand, so that a โspeciesโ picked out in this manner could then count as the genus for further differentiation. Second, the Latin term โspeciesโ, a translation of the Greek eidos, was a logical category with no privileged relationship to biological entities; a prime example in the Topics is the species justice, distinguished within the genus virtue (143a). Third, in a key methodological passage, Parts of Animals, I.2โ3 (642bโ644b), Aristotle explicitly rejects the method of โdichotomous divisionโ, which assigns entities to a genus and then seeks a single differentia, as inappropriate to the individuation of animal kinds. Instead, he claims, a multiplicity of differentiae should be brought to bear. He emphasises this point in relation to humans (644a).
According to Pierre Pellegrin and David Balme, Aristotle did not seek to establish a taxonomic system in his biological works (Pellegrin 1982 [1986: 113ff.]; Balme 1987, 72). Rather, he simply accepted the everyday common sense partitioning of the animal world (Pellegrin 1982 [1986: 120]; Richards 2010: 24; but cf. Charles 2000: 343ff.). If this is correct, Aristotle didnโt even ask after the conditions for belonging to the species Homo sapiens. So he wasnโt proposing any particular answer, and specifically not the โessentialistโ answer advanced by TP5. In as far as such an answer has been employed in biological taxonomy (cf. Winsor 2003), its roots appear to lie in Neoplatonic, Catholic misinterpretations of Aristotle (Richards 2010: 34ff.; Wilkins 2018: 22ff.). Be that as it may, the fifth use of โhuman natureโ transported by traditionโto pick out essential conditions for an organismโs belonging to the speciesโis of eminent interest. The systematic concern behind Mayr and Hullโs historical claims is that accounts of the form of TP5 are incompatible with evolutionary theory. We shall look at this concern in section 2 of this entry.
Because the term โessentialismโ recurs with different meanings in discussions of human nature and because some of the theoretical claims thus summarised are assumed to be Aristotelian in origin, it is worth spending a moment here to register what claims can be singled out by the expression. The first, purely classificatory conception just discussed should be distinguished from a second view that is also frequently labelled โessentialistโ and which goes back to Lockeโs concept of โreal essenceโ (1689: III, iii, 15). According to essentialism thus understood, an essence is the intrinsic feature or features of an entity that fulfils or fulfil a dual role: firstly, of being that in virtue of which something belongs to a kind and, secondly, of explaining why things of that kind typically have a particular set of observable features. Thus conceived, โessenceโ has both a classificatory and an explanatory function and is the core of a highly influential, โessentialistโ theory of natural kinds, developed in the wake of Kripkeโs and Putnamโs theories of reference.
An account of human nature that is essentialist in this sense would take the nature of the human natural kind to be a set of microstructural properties that have two roles: first, they constitute an organismโs membership of the species Homo sapiens. Second, they are causally responsible for the organism manifesting morphological and behavioural properties typical of species members. Paradigms of entities with such natures or essences are chemical elements. An example is the element with the atomic number 79, the microstructural feature that accounts for surface properties of gold such as yellowness. Applied to organisms, it seems that the relevant explanatory relationship will be developmental, the microstructures providing something like a blueprint for the properties of the mature individual. Kripke assumed that some such blueprint is the โinternal structureโ responsible for the typical development of tigers as striped, carnivorous quadrupeds (Kripke 1972 [1980: 120f.]).
As the first, pseudo-Aristotelian version of essentialism illustrates, the classificatory and explanatory components of what we might call โKripkean essentialismโ can be taken apart. Thus, โhuman natureโ can also be understood in exclusively explanatory terms, viz. as the set of microstructural properties responsible for typical human morphological and behavioural features. In such an account, the ability to pick out the relevant organisms is simply presupposed. As we shall see in section 4 of this entry, accounts of this kind have been popular in the contemporary debate. The subtraction of the classificatory function of the properties in these conceptions has generally seemed to warrant withholding from them the label โessentialistโ. However, because some authors have still seen the term as applicable (Duprรฉ 2001: 162), we might think of such accounts as constituting a third, weak or deflationary variant of essentialism.
Such purely explanatory accounts are descendants of the second use of โhuman natureโ in the traditional package, the difference being that they donโt usually presuppose some notion of the fully developed human form. However, where some such presupposition is made, there are stronger grounds for talking of an โessentialistโ account. Elliott Sober has argued that the key to essentialism is not classification in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, but the postulation of some โprivileged stateโ, to the realisation of which specimens of a species tend, as long as no extrinsic factors โinterfereโ (Sober 1980: 358ff.). Such a dispositional-teleological conception, dissociated from classificatory ambitions, would be a fourth form of essentialism. Sober rightly associates such an account with Aristotle, citing Aristotleโs claims in his zoological writings that interfering forces are responsible for deviations, i.e., morphological differences, both within and between species. A contemporary account of human nature with this structure will be discussed in section 4.
A fifth and final form of essentialism is even more clearly Aristotelian. Here, an explicitly normative status is conferred on the set of properties to the development of which human organisms tend. For normative essentialism, โthe human essenceโ or โhuman natureโ is a normative standard for the evaluation of organisms belonging to the species. Where the first, third and fourth uses of the expression have tended to be made with critical intent (for defensive exceptions, see Charles 2000: 348ff.; Walsh 2006; Devitt 2008; Boulter 2012), this fifth use is more often a self-ascription (e.g., Nussbaum 1992). It is intended to emphasise metaethical claims of a specific type. According to such claims, an organismโs belonging to the human species entails or in some way involves the applicability to the organism of moral norms that ground in the value of the fully developed human form. According to one version of this thought, humans ought be, or ought to be enabled to be, rational because rationality is a key feature of the fully developed human form. Such normative-teleological accounts of human nature will be the focus of section 5.2.
We can summarise the variants of essentialism and their relationship to the components of the traditional package as follows:
Type of essentialism
Relationship to the traditional package
purely classificatory
equivalent to TP5
purely explanatory
unspecific version of TP2
explanatory-classificatory
combines TP5 with an unspecific version of TP2
explanatorily teleological
equivalent to TP3
normatively teleological
equivalent to TP4
Section 2 and section 5 of this entry deal with the purely classificatory and the normative teleological conceptions of human nature respectively, and with the associated types of essentialism. Section 3 discusses attempts to downgrade TP5, moving from essential to merely characteristic properties. Section 4 focuses on accounts of an explanatory human nature, both on attempts to provide a modernized version of the teleological blueprint model (ยง4.1) and on explanatory conceptions with deflationary intent relative to the claims of TP2 and TP3 (ยง4.2 and ยง4.3).
1.4 On the Status of the Traditional Slogan
The traditional package specifies a set of conditions some or all of which substantial claims about โhuman natureโ are supposed to meet. Before we turn to the systematic arguments central to contemporary debates on whether such conditions can be met, it will be helpful to spend a moment considering one highly influential substantial claim. Aristotleโs writings prominently contain two such claims that have been handed down in slogan form. The first is that the human being (more accurately: โmanโ) is an animal that is in some important sense social (โzoon politikonโ, History of Animals 487b; Politics 1253a; Nicomachean Ethics 1169b). According to the second, โheโ is a rational animal (Politics 1523a, where Aristotle doesnโt actually use the traditionally ascribed slogan, โzoon logon echonโ).
Aristotle makes both claims in very different theoretical contexts, on the one hand, in his zoological writings and, on the other, in his ethical and political works. This fact, together with the fact that Aristotleโs philosophy of nature and his practical philosophy are united by a teleological metaphysics, may make it appear obvious that the slogans are biological claims that provide a foundation for normative claims in ethics and politics. The slogans do indeed function as foundations in the Politics and the Nicomachean Ethics respectively (on the latter, see section 5 of this entry). It is, however, unclear whether they are to be understood as biological claims. Let us focus on the slogan that has traditionally dominated discussions of human nature in Western philosophy, that humans are โrational animalsโ.
First, if Pellegrin and Balme are right that Aristotelian zoology is uninterested in classifying species, then ascribing the capacity for โrationalityโ cannot have the function of naming a biological trait that distinguishes humans from other animals. This is supported by two further sets of considerations. To begin with, Aristotleโs explicit assertion that a series of differentiae would be needed to โdefineโ humans (Parts of Animals 644a) is cashed out in the long list of features he takes to be their distinguishing marks, such as speech, having hair on both eyelids, blinking, having hands, upright posture, breasts in front, the largest and moistest brain, fleshy legs and buttocks (Lloyd 1983: 29ff.). Furthermore, there is in Aristotle no capacity for reason that is both exclusive to, and universal among anthropoi. One part or kind of reason, โpractical intelligenceโ (phronesis), is, Aristotle claims, found in both humans and other animals, being merely superior in the former (Parts of Animals, 687a). Now, there are other forms of reasoning of which this is not true, forms whose presence are sufficient for being human: humans are the only animals capable of deliberation (History of Animals 488b) and reasoning (to noein), in as far as this extends to mathematics and first philosophy. Nevertheless, these forms of reasoning are unnecessary: slaves, who Aristotle includes among humans (Politics 1255a), are said to have no deliberative faculty (to bouleutikon) at all (Politics 1260a; cf. Richter 2011: 42ff.). Presumably, they will also be without the capacities necessary for first philosophy.
Second, these Aristotelian claims raise the question as to whether the ascription of rationality is even intended as an ascription to an individual in as far as she or he belongs to a biological kind. The answer might appear to be obviously affirmative. Aristotle uses the claim that a higher level of reason is characteristic of humans to teleologically explain other morphological features, in particular upright gait and the morphology of the hands (Parts of Animals 686a, 687a). However, the kind of reason at issue here is practical intelligence, the kind humans and animals share, not the capacity for mathematics and metaphysics, which among animals is exercised exclusively by humans. In as far as humans are able to exercise this latter capacity in contemplation, Aristotle claims that they โpartake of the divineโ (Parts of Animals 656a), a claim of which he makes extensive use when grounding his ethics in human rationality (Nicomachean Ethics 1177bโ1178b). When, in a passage to which James Lennox has drawn attention (Lennox 1999), Aristotle declares that the rational part of the soul cannot be the object of natural science (Parts of Animals 645a), it seems to be the contemplative part of the soul that is thus excluded from biological investigation, precisely the feature that is named in the influential slogan. If it is the โsomething divine โฆ present inโ humans that is decisively distinctive of their kind, it seems unclear whether the relevant kind is biological.
It is not the aim of this entry to decide questions of Aristotle interpretation. What is important is that the relationship of the question of โhuman natureโ to biology is, from the beginning of the conceptโs career, not as unequivocal as is often assumed (e.g., Hull 1986: 7; Richards 2010: 217f.). This is particularly true of the slogan according to which humans are rational animals. In the history of philosophy, this slogan has frequently been detached from any attempt to provide criteria for biological classification or characterisation. When Aquinas picks up the slogan, he is concerned to emphasise that human nature involves a material, corporeal aspect. This aspect is, however, not thought of in biological terms. Humans are decisively โrational substancesโ, i.e., persons. As such they also belong to a kind whose members also number angels and God (three times) (Eberl 2004). Similarly, Kant is primarily, indeed almost exclusively, interested in human beings as examples of โrational natureโ, โhuman natureโ being only one way in which rational nature can be instantiated (Kant 1785, 64, 76, 85). For this reason, Kant generally talks of โrational beingsโ, rather than of โrational animalsโ (1785, 45, 95).
There is, then, a perspective on humans that is plausibly present in Aristotle, stronger in Aquinas and dominant in Kant and that involves seeing them as instances of a kind other than the โhuman kindโ, i.e., seeing the human animal โas a rational beingโ (Kant 1785 [1996: 45]). According to this view, the โnatureโ of humans that is most worthy of philosophical interest is the one they possess not insofar as they are human, but insofar as they are rational. Where this is the relevant use of the concept of human nature, being a specimen of the biological species is unnecessary for possessing the corresponding property. Specimens of other species, as well as non-biological entities may also belong to the relevant kind. It is also insufficient, as not all humans will have the properties necessary for membership in that kind.
As both a biologist and ethicist, Aristotle is at once a detached scientist and a participant in forms of interpersonal and political interaction only available to contemporary humans living in large, sedentary subpopulations. It seems plausible that a participant perspective may have suggested a different take on what it is to be human, perhaps even a different take on the sense in which humans might be rational animals, to that of biological science. We will return to this difference in section 5 of the entry.
2. The Nature of the Evolutionary Unit Homo sapiens and its Specimens
Detailing the features in virtue of which an organism is a specimen of the species Homo sapiens is a purely biological task. Whether such specification is achievable and, if so how, is controversial. It is controversial for the same reasons for which it is controversial what conditions need to be met for an organism to be a specimen of any species. These reasons derive from the theory of evolution.
A first step to understanding these reasons involves noting a further ambiguity in the use of the expression โhuman natureโ, this time an ambiguity specific to taxonomy. The term can be used to pick out a set of properties as an answer to two different questions. The first concerns the properties of some organism which make it the case that it belongs to the species Homo sapiens. The second concerns the properties in virtue of which a population or metapopulation is the species Homo sapiens. Correspondingly, โhuman natureโ can pick out either the properties of organisms that constitute their partaking in the species Homo sapiens or the properties of some higher-level entity that constitute it as that species. Human nature might then either be the nature of the species or the nature of species specimens as specimens of the species.
It is evolution that confers on this distinction its particular form and importance. The variation among organismic traits, without which there would be no evolution, has its decisive effects at the level of populations. These are groups of organisms that in some way cohere at a time in spite of the variation of traits among the component organisms. It is population-level groupings, taxa, not organisms, that evolve and it is taxa, such as species, that provide the organisms that belong to them with genetic resources (Ghiselin 1987: 141). The species Homo sapiens appears to be a metapopulation that coheres at least in part because of the gene flow between its component organisms brought about by interbreeding (cf. Ereshefsky 1991: 96ff.). Hence, according to evolutionary theory, Homo sapiens is plausibly a higher-level entityโa unit of evolutionโconsisting of the lower-level entities that are individual human beings. The two questions phrased in terms of โhuman natureโ thus concern the conditions for individuation of the population-level entity and the conditions under which organisms are components of that entity.
2.1 The Nature of the Species Taxon
The theory of evolution transforms the way we should understand the relationship between human organisms and the species to which they belong. The taxonomic assumption of TP5 was that species are individuated by means of intrinsic properties that are individually instantiated by certain organisms. Instantiating those properties is taken to be necessary and sufficient for those organisms to belong to the species. Evolutionary theory makes it clear that species, as population-level entities, cannot be individuated by means of the properties of lower-level constituents, in our case, of individual human organisms (Sober 1980: 355).
The exclusion of this possibility grounds a decisive difference from the way natural kinds are standardly construed in the wake of Locke and Kripke. Recall that, in this Kripkean construal, lumps of matter are instances of chemical kinds because of their satisfaction of intrinsic necessary and sufficient conditions, viz. their atoms possessing a certain number of protons. The same conditions also individuate the chemical kinds themselves. Chemical kinds are thus spatiotemporally unrestricted sets. This means that there are no metaphysical barriers to the chance generation of members of the kind, independently of whether the kind is instantiated at any contiguous time or place. Nitrogen could come to exist by metaphysical happenstance, should an element with the atomic number 14 somehow come into being, even in a world in which up to that point no nitrogen has existed (Hull 1978: 349; 1984: 22).
In contrast, a species can only exist at time tn๏ฟฝ๏ฟฝ if either it or a parent species existed at tnโ1๏ฟฝ๏ฟฝโ1 and there was some relationship of spatial contiguity between component individuals of the species at tn๏ฟฝ๏ฟฝ and the individuals belonging to either the same species or the parent species at tnโ1๏ฟฝ๏ฟฝโ1. This is because of the essential role of the causal relationship of heredity. Heredity generates both the coherence across a population requisite for the existence of a species and the variability of predominant traits within the population, without which a species would not evolve.
For this reason, the species Homo sapiens, like every other species taxon, must meet a historical or genealogical condition. (For pluralistic objections to even this condition, see Kitcher 1984: 320ff.; Duprรฉ 1993: 49f.) This condition is best expressed as a segment of a population-level phylogenetic tree, where such trees represent ancestor-descendent series (Hull 1978: 349; de Queiroz 1999: 50ff.; 2005). Species, as the point is often put, are historical entities, rather than kinds or classes (Hull 1978: 338ff.; 1984: 19). The fact that species are not only temporally, but also spatially restricted has also led to the stronger claim that they are individuals (Ghiselin 1974; 1997: 14ff.; Hull 1978: 338). If this is correct, then organisms are not members, but parts of species taxa. Independently of whether this claim is true for all biological species, Homo sapiens is a good candidate for a species that belongs to the category individual. This is because the species is characterised not only by spatiotemporal continuity, but also by causal processes that account for the coherence between its component parts. These processes plausibly include not only interbreeding, but also conspecific recognition and particular forms of communication (Richards 2010: 158ff., 218).
Importantly, the genealogical condition is only a necessary condition, as genealogy unites all the segments of one lineage. The segment of the phylogenetic tree that represents some species taxon begins with a node that represents a lineage-splitting or speciation event. Determining that node requires attention to general speciation theory, which has proposed various competing criteria (Duprรฉ 1993: 48f.; Okasha 2002: 201; Coyne & Orr 2004). In the case of Homo sapiens, it requires attention to the specifics of the human case, which are also controversial (see Crow 2003; Cela-Conde & Ayala 2017: 11ff.). The end point of the segment is marked either by some further speciation event or, as may seem likely in the case of Homo sapiens, by the destruction of the metapopulation. Only when the temporal boundaries of the segment have become determinate would it be possible to adduce sufficient conditions for the existence of such a historical entity. Hence, if โhuman natureโ is understood to pick out the necessary and sufficient conditions that individuate the species taxon Homo sapiens, its content is not only controversial, but epistemically unavailable to us.
2.2 The Nature of Species Specimens as Species Specimens
If we take such a view of the individuating conditions for the species Homo sapiens, what are the consequences for the question of which organisms belong to the species? It might appear that it leaves open the possibility that speciation has resulted in some intrinsic property or set of properties establishing the cohesion specific to the taxon and that such properties count as necessary and sufficient for belonging to it (cf. Devitt 2008: 17ff.). This appearance would be deceptive. To begin with, no intrinsic property can be necessary because of the sheer empirical improbability that all species specimens grouped together by the relevant lineage segment instantiate any such candidate property. For example, there are individuals who are missing legs, inner organs or the capacity for language, but who remain biologically human (Hull 1986: 5). Evolutionary theory clarifies why this is so: variability, secured by mechanisms such as mutation and recombination, is the key to evolution, so that, should some qualitative property happen to be universal among all extant species specimens immediately after the completion of speciation, that is no guarantee that it will continue to be so throughout the lifespan of the taxon (Hull 1984: 35; Ereshefsky 2008: 101). The common thought that there must be at least some genetic property common to all human organisms is also false (R. Wilson 1999a: 190; Sterelny & Griffiths 1999: 7; Okasha 2002: 196f.): phenotypical properties that are shared in a population are frequently co-instantiated as a result of the complex interaction of differing gene-regulatory networks. Conversely, the same network can under different circumstances lead to differing phenotypical consequences (Walsh 2006: 437ff.). Even if it should turn out that every human organism instantiated some property, this would be a contingent, rather than a necessary fact (Sober 1980: 354; Hull 1986: 3).
Moreover, the chances of any such universal property also being sufficient are vanishingly small, as the sharing of properties by specimens of other species can result from various mechanisms, in particular from the inheritance of common genes in related species and from parallel evolution. This doesnโt entail that there may be no intrinsic properties that are sufficient belonging to the species. There are fairly good candidates for such properties, if we compare humans with other terrestrial organisms. Language use and a self-understanding as moral agents come to mind. However, whether non-terrestrial entities might possess such properties is an open question. And decisively, they are obviously hopeless as necessary conditions (cf. Samuels 2012: 9).
This leaves only the possibility that the conditions for belonging to the species are, like the individuating conditions for the species taxon, relational. Lineage-based individuation of a taxon depends on its component organisms being spatially and temporally situated in such a way that the causal processes necessary for the inheritance of traits can take place. In the human case, the key processes are those of sexual reproduction. Therefore, being an organism that belongs to the species Homo sapiens is a matter of being connected reproductively to organisms situated unequivocally on the relevant lineage segment. In other words, the key necessary condition is having been sexually reproduced by specimens of the species (Kronfeldner 2018: 100). Hull suggests that the causal condition may be disjunctive, as it could also be fulfilled by a synthetic entity created by scientists that produces offspring with humans who have been generated in the standard manner (Hull 1978: 349). Provided that the species is not in the throes of speciation, such direct descent or integration into the reproductive community, i.e., participation in the โcomplex network [โฆ] of mating and reproductionโ (Hull 1986: 4), will also be sufficient.
2.3 Responding to the Evolutionary Verdict on Classificatory Essences
The lack of a โhuman essenceโ in the sense of intrinsic necessary and sufficient conditions for belonging to the species taxon Homo sapiens, has led a number of philosophers to deny that there is any such thing as human nature (Hull 1984: 19; 1986; Ghiselin 1997: 1; de Sousa 2000). As this negative claim concerns properties intrinsic both to relevant organisms and to the taxon, it is equally directed at the โnatureโ of the organisms as species specimens and at that of the species taxon itself. An alternative consists in retracting the condition that a classificatory essence must be intrinsic, a move which allows talk of a historical or relational essence and a corresponding relational conception of taxonomic human nature (Okasha 2002: 202).
Which of these ways of responding to the challenge from evolutionary theory appears best is likely to depend on how one takes it that the classificatory issues relate to the other matters at stake in the original human nature package. These concern the explanatory and normative questions raised by TP1โTP4. We turn to these in the following three sections of this article.
An exclusively genealogical conception of human nature is clearly not well placed to fulfil an explanatory role comparable to that envisaged in the traditional package. What might have an explanatory function are the properties of the entities from which the taxon or its specimens are descended. Human nature, genealogically understood, might serve as the conduit for explanations in terms of such properties, but will not itself explain anything. After all, integration in a network of sexual reproduction will be partly definitive of the specimens of all sexual species, whilst what is to be explained will vary enormously across taxa.
This lack of fit between classificatory and explanatory roles confronts us with a number of further theoretical possibilities. For example, one might see this incompatibility as strengthening the worries of eliminativists such as Ghiselin and Hull: even if the subtraction of intrinsicality were not on its own sufficient to justify abandoning talk of human nature, its conjunction with a lack of explanatory power, one might think, certainly is (Duprรฉ 2003: 109f.; Lewens 2012: 473). Or one might argue that it is the classificatory ambitions associated with talk of human nature that should be abandoned. Once this is done, one might hope that certain sets of intrinsic properties can be distinguished that figure decisively in explanations and that can still justifiably be labelled โhuman natureโ (Roughley 2011: 15; Godfrey-Smith 2014: 140).
Taking this second line in turn raises two questions: first, in what sense are the properties thus picked out specifically โhumanโ, if they are neither universal among, nor unique to species specimens? Second, in what sense are the properties โnaturalโ? Naturalness as independence from the effects of human intentional action is a key feature of the original package (TP1). Whether some such conception can be coherently applied to humans is a challenge for any non-classificatory account.
3. Characteristic Human Properties
3.1 Privileging Properties
The answer given by TP2 to the first question was in terms of the fully developed human form, where โformโ does not refer solely to observable physical or behavioural characteristics, but also includes psychological features. This answer entails two claims: first, that there is one single such โformโ, i.e., property or set of properties, that figures in explanations that range across individual human organisms. It also entails that there is a point in human development that counts as โfullโ, that is, as developmentโs goal or โtelosโ. These claims go hand in hand with the assumption that there is a distinction to be drawn between normal and abnormal adult specimens of the species. There is, common sense tells us, a sense in which normal adult humans have two legs, two eyes, one heart and two kidneys at specific locations in the body; they also have various dispositions, for instance, to feel pain and to feel emotions, and a set of capacities, such as for perception and for reasoning. And these, so it seems, may be missing, or under- or overdeveloped in abnormal specimens.
Sober has influentially described accounts that work with such teleological assumptions as adhering to an Aristotelian โNatural State Modelโ (Sober 1980: 353ff.). Such accounts work with a distinction that has no place in evolutionary biology, according to which variation of properties across populations is the key to evolution. Hence, no particular end states of organisms are privileged as โnaturalโ or โnormalโ (Hull 1986: 7ff.). So any account that privileges particular morphological, behavioural or psychological human features has to provide good reasons that are both non-evolutionary and yet compatible with the evolutionary account of species. Because of the way that the notion of the normal is frequently employed to exclude and oppress, those reasons should be particularly good (Silvers 1998; Duprรฉ 2003: 119ff.; Richter 2011: 43ff.; Kronfeldner 2018: 15ff.).
The kinds of reasons that may be advanced could either be internal to, or independent of the biological sciences. If the former, then various theoretical options may seem viable. The first grounds in the claim that, although species are not natural kinds and are thus unsuited to figuring in laws of nature (Hull 1987: 171), they do support descriptions with a significant degree of generality, some of which may be important (Hull 1984: 19). A theory of human nature developed on this basis should explain the kind of importance on the basis of which particular properties are emphasised. The second theoretical option is pluralism about the metaphysics of species: in spite of the fairly broad consensus that species are defined as units of evolution, the pluralist can deny the primacy of evolutionary dynamics, arguing that other epistemic aims allow the ecologist, the systematist or the ethologist to work with an equally legitimate concept of species that is not, or not exclusively genealogical (cf. Hull 1984: 36; Kitcher 1986: 320ff.; Hull 1987: 178โ81; Duprรฉ 1993: 43f.). The third option involves a relaxation of the concept of natural kinds, such that it no longer entails the instantiation of intrinsic, necessary, sufficient and spatiotemporally unrestricted properties, but is nevertheless able to support causal explanations. Such accounts aim to reunite taxonomic and explanatory criteria, thus allowing species taxa to count as natural kinds after all (Boyd 1999a; R. Wilson, Barker, & Brigandt 2007: 196ff.). Where, finally, the reasons advanced for privileging certain properties are independent of biology, these tend to concern features of humansโโโourโโself-understanding as participants in, rather than observers of, a particular form of life. These are likely to be connected to normative considerations. Here again, it seems that a special explanation will be required for why these privileged properties should be grouped under the rubric โhuman natureโ.
The accounts to be described in the next subsection (3.2) of this entry are examples of the first strategy. Section 4 includes discussion of the relaxed natural kinds strategy. Section 5 focuses on accounts of human nature developed from a participant perspective and also notes the support that the pluralist metaphysical strategy might be taken to provide.
3.2 Statistical Normality or Robust Causality
Begin, then, with the idea that to provide an account of โhuman natureโ is to circumscribe a set of generalisations concerning humans. An approach of this sort sees the properties thus itemised as specifically โhumanโ in as far as they are common among species specimens. So the privilege accorded to these properties is purely statistical and โnormalโ means statistically normal. Note that taking the set of statistically normal properties of humans as a non-teleological replacement for the fully developed human form retains from the original package the possibility of labelling as โhuman natureโ either those properties themselves (TP3) or their developmental cause (TP2). Either approach avoids the classificatory worries dealt with in section 2: it presupposes that those organisms whose properties are relevant are already distinguished as such specimens. What is to be explained is, then, the ways humans generally, though not universally, are. And among these ways are ways they may share with most specimens of some other species, in particular those that belong to the same order (primates) and the same class (mammals).
One should be clear what follows from this interpretation of โhumanโ. The organisms among whom statistical frequency is sought range over those generated after speciation around 150,000 years ago to those that will exist immediately prior to the speciesโ extinction. On the one hand, because of the variability intrinsic to species, we are in the dark as to the properties that may or may not characterise those organisms that will turn out to be the last of the taxon. On the other hand, the time lag of around 100,000 years between the first anatomically modern humans and the general onset of behavioural modernity around the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic means that there are likely to be many widespread psychological properties of contemporary humans that were not possessed by the majority of the speciesโ specimens during two thirds of the speciesโ history. This is true even if the practices seen as the signatures of behavioural modernity (see ยง1.1) developed sporadically, disappeared and reappeared at far removed points of time and space over tens of thousands of years before 50,000 ka (McBrearty & Brooks 2000; Sterelny 2011).
According to several authors (Machery 2008; 2018; Samuels 2012; Ramsey 2013), the expression โhuman natureโ should be used to group properties that are the focus of much current behavioural, psychological and social science. However, as the cognitive and psychological sciences are generally interested in present-day humans, there is a mismatch between scientific focus and a grouping criterion that takes in all the properties generally or typically instantiated by specimens of the entire taxon. For this reason, the expression โhuman natureโ is likely to refer to properties of an even more temporally restricted set of organisms belonging to the species. That restriction can be thought of in indexical terms, i.e., as a restriction to contemporary humans. However, some authors claim explicitly that their accounts entail that human nature can change (Ramsey 2013: 992; Machery 2018: 20). Human nature would then be the object of temporally indexed investigations, as is, for example, the weight of individual humans in everyday contexts. (Without temporal specification, there is no determinate answer to a question such as โHow much did David Hume weigh?โ) An example of Macheryโs is dark skin colour. This characteristic, he claims, ceased to be a feature of human nature thus understood 7,000 years ago, if that was when skin pigmentation became polymorphic. The example indicates that the temporal range may be extremely narrow from an evolutionary point of view.
Such accounts are both compatible with evolutionary theory and coherent. However, in as far as they are mere summary or list conceptions, it is unclear what their epistemic value might be. They will tend to accord with everyday common sense, for which โhuman natureโ may in a fairly low-key sense simply be the properties that (contemporary) humans generally tend to manifest (Roughley 2011: 16). They will also conform to one level of the expressionโs use in Humeโs Treatise of Human Nature (1739โ40), which, in an attempt to provide a human โmental geographyโ (1748 [1970: 13]), lists a whole series of features, such as prejudice (1739โ40, I,iii,13), selfishness (III,ii,5), a tendency to temporal discounting (III,ii,7) and an addiction to general rules (III,ii,9).
Accounts of this kind have been seen as similar in content to field guides for other animals (Machery 2008: 323; Godfrey-Smith 2014: 139). As Hull points out, within a restricted ecological context and a short period of evolutionary time, the ascription of readily observable morphological or behavioural characteristics to species specimens is a straightforward and unproblematic enterprise (Hull 1987: 175). However, the analogy is fairly unhelpful, as the primary function of assertions in field guides is to provide a heuristics for amateur classification. In contrast, a list conception of the statistically normal properties of contemporary humans presupposes identification of the organisms in question as humans. Moreover, such accounts certainly do not entail easy epistemic access to the properties in question, which may only be experimentally discovered. Nevertheless, there remains something correct about the analogy, as such accounts are a collection of assertions linked only by the fact that they are about the same group of organisms (Sterelny 2018: 123).
More sophisticated nature documentaries may summarise causal features of the lives of animals belonging to specific species. An analogous conception of human nature has also been proposed, according to which human nature is a set of pervasive and robust causal nexuses amongst humans. The list that picks out this set would specify causal connections between antecedent properties, such as having been exposed to benzene or subject to abuse as a child, and consequent properties, such as developing cancer or being aggressive towards oneโs own children (Ramsey 2013: 988ff.). Human nature thus understood would have an explanatory component, a component internal to each item on the list. Human nature itself would, however, not be explanatory, but rather the label for a list of highly diverse causal connections.
An alternative way to integrate an explanatory component in a statistical normality account involves picking out that set of statistically common properties that have a purely evolutionary explanation (Machery 2008; 2018). This reinterpretation of the concept of naturalness that featured in the original package (TP1) involves a contrast with social learning. Processes grouped together under this latter description are taken to be alternative explanations to those provided by evolution. However, learning plays a central role, not only in the development of individual humans, but also in the iterated interaction of entire populations with environments structured and restructured through such interaction (Stotz 2010: 488ff.; Sterelny 2012: 23ff.). Hence, the proposal raises serious epistemic questions as to how the distinction is precisely to be drawn and operationalised. (For discussion, see Prinz 2012; Lewens 2012: 464ff.; Ramsey 2013: 985; Machery 2018: 15ff.; Sterelny 2018: 116; Kronfeldner 2018: 147ff.).
4. Explanatory Human Properties
The replacement of the concept of a fully developed form with a statistical notion yields a deflationary account of human nature with, at most, restricted explanatory import. The correlative, explanatory notion in the original package, that of the fully developed formโs blueprint (TP2), has to some authors seemed worth reframing in terms made possible by advances in modern biology, particularly in genetics.
Clearly, there must be explanations of why humans generally walk on two legs, speak and plan many of their actions in advance. Genealogical, or what have been called โultimateโ (Mayr) or โhistoricalโ (Kitcher) explanations can advert to the accumulation of coherence among entrenched, stable properties along a lineage. These may well have resulted from selection pressures shared by the relevant organisms (cf. Wimsatt 2003; Lewens 2009). The fact that there are exceptions to any generalisations concerning contemporary humans does not entail that there is no need for explanations of such exception-allowing generalisations. Plausibly, these general, though not universal truths will have โstructural explanationsโ, that is, explanations in terms of underlying structures or mechanisms (Kitcher 1986: 320; Devitt 2008: 353). These structures, so seems, might to a significant degree be inscribed in humansโ DNA.
The precise details of rapidly developing empirical science will improve our understanding of the extent to which there is a determinate relationship between contemporary humansโ genome and their physical, psychological and behavioural properties. There is, however, little plausibility that the blueprint metaphor might be applicable to the way DNA is transcribed, translated and interacts with its cellular environment. Such interaction is itself subject to influence by the organismโs external environment, including its social environment (Duprรฉ 2001: 29ff.; 2003: 111ff.; Griffiths 2011: 326; Prinz 2012: 17ff.; Griffiths & Tabery 2013: 71ff.; Griffiths & Stotz 2013: 98ff., 143ff.). For example, the feature of contemporary human life for which there must according to Aristotle be some kind of blueprint, viz. rational agency, is, as Sterelny has argued, so strongly dependent on social scaffolding that any claim to the effect that human rationality is somehow genetically programmed ignores the causal contributions of manifestly indispensable environmental factors (Sterelny 2018: 120).
4.1 Genetically Based Psychological Adaptations?
Nevertheless, humans do generally develop a specific set of physiological features, such as two lungs, one stomach, one pancreas and two eyes. Moreover, having such a bodily architecture is, according to the evidence from genetics, to a significant extent the result of developmental programmes that ground in gene regulatory networks (GRNs). These are stretches of non-coding DNA that regulate gene transcription. GRNs are modular, more or less strongly entrenched structures. The most highly conserved of these tend to be the phylogenetically most archaic (Carroll 2000; Walsh 2006: 436ff.; Willmore 2012: 227ff.). The GRNs responsible for basic physiological features may be taken, in a fairly innocuous sense, to belong to an evolved human nature.
Importantly, purely morphological features have generally not been the explananda of accounts that have gone under the rubric โhuman natureโ. What has frequently motivated explanatory accounts thus labelled is the search for underlying structures responsible for generally shared psychological features. โEvolutionary Psychologistsโ have built a research programme around the claim that humans share a psychological architecture that parallels that of their physiology. This, they believe, consists of a structured set of psychological โorgansโ or modules (Tooby & Cosmides 1990: 29f.; 1992: 38, 113). This architecture is, they claim, in turn the product of developmental programmes inscribed in humansโ DNA (1992: 45). Such generally distributed developmental programmes they label โhuman natureโ (1990: 23).
This conception raises the question of how analogous the characteristic physical and psychological โarchitecturesโ are. For one thing, the physical properties that tend to appear in such lists are far more coarse-grained than the candidates for shared psychological properties (D. Wilson 1994: 224ff.): the claim is not just that humans tend to have perceptual, desiderative, doxastic and emotional capacities, but that the mental states that realise these capacities tend to have contents of specific types. Perhaps an architecture of the former kindโof a formal psychologyโis a plausible, if relatively unexciting candidate for the mental side of what an evolved human nature should explain. Either way, any such conception needs to adduce criteria for the individuation of such โmental organsโ (D. Wilson 1994: 233). Relatedly, if the most strongly entrenched developmental programmes are the most archaic, it follows that, although these will be species-typical, they will not be species-specific. Programmes for the development of body parts have been identified for higher taxa, rather than for species.
A further issue that dogs any such attempts to explicate the โhumanโ dimension of human nature in terms of developmental programmes inscribed in human DNA concerns Evolutionary Psychologistsโ assertion that the programmes are the same in every specimen of the species. This assertion goes hand in hand with the claim that what is explained by such programmes is a deep psychological structure that is common to almost all humans and underlies the surface diversity of behavioural and psychological phenomena (Tooby & Cosmides 1990: 23f.). For Evolutionary Psychologists, the (near-)universality of both developmental programmes and deep psychological structure has an ultimate explanation in evolutionary processes that mark their products as natural in the sense of TP1. Both, they claim, are adaptations. These are features that were selected for because their possession in the past conferred a fitness advantage on their possessors. Evolutionary Psychologists conceive that advantage as conferred by the fulfilment of some specific function. They summarise selection for that function as โdesignโ, which they take to have operated equally on all species specimens since the Pleistocene. This move reintroduces the teleological idea of a fully developed form beyond mere statistical normality (TP3).
This move has been extensively criticised. First, selection pressures operate at the level of groups and hence need not lead to the same structures in all a groupโs members (D. Wilson 1994: 227ff.; Griffiths 2011: 325; Sterelny 2018: 120). Second, other evolutionary mechanisms than natural selection might be explanatorily decisive. Genetic drift or mutation and recombination might, for example, also confer โnaturalnessโ in the sense of evolutionary genesis (Buller 2000: 436). Third, as we have every reason to assume that the evolution of human psychology is ongoing, evolutionary biology provides little support for the claim that particular programmes and associated traits evolved to fixity in the Pleistocene (Buller 2000: 477ff.; Downes 2010).
Perhaps, however, there might turn out to be gene control networks that do generally structure certain features of the psychological development of contemporary humans (Walsh 2006: 440ff.). The quest for such GNRs can, then, count as the search for an explanatory nature of contemporary humans, where the explanatory function thus sought is divorced from any classificatory role.
4.2 Abandoning Intrinsicality
There has, however, been a move in general philosophy of science that, if acceptable, would transform the relationship between the taxonomic and explanatory features of species. This move was influentially initiated by Richard Boyd (1999a). It begins with the claim that the attempt to define natural kinds in terms of spatiotemporally unrestricted, intrinsic, necessary and sufficient conditions is a hangover from empiricism that should be abandoned by realist metaphysics. Instead, natural kinds should be understood as kinds that support induction and explanation, where generalisations at work in such processes need not be exceptionless. Thus understood, essences of natural kinds, i.e., their โnaturesโ, need be neither intrinsic nor be possessed by all and only members of the kinds. Instead, essences consist of property clusters integrated by stabilising mechanisms (โhomeostatic property clustersโ, HPCs). These are networks of causal relations such that the presence of certain properties tends to generate or uphold others and the workings of underlying mechanisms contribute to the same effect. Boyd names storms, galaxies and capitalism as plausible examples (Boyd 1999b: 82ff.). However, he takes species to be the paradigmatic HPC kinds. According to this view, the genealogical character of a speciesโ nature does not undermine its causal role. Rather, it helps to explain the specific way in which the properties cohere that make up the taxonโs essence. Moreover, these can include extrinsic properties, for example, properties of constructed niches (Boyd 1991: 142, 1999a: 164ff.; Griffiths 1999: 219ff.; R. Wilson et al. 2007: 202ff.).
Whether such an account can indeed adequately explain taxonomic practice for species taxa is a question that can be left open here (see Ereshefsky & Matthen 2005: 16ff.). By its own lights the account does not identify conditions for belonging to a species such as Homo sapiens (Samuels 2012: 25f.). Whether it enables the identification of factors that play the explanatory roles that the term โhuman natureโ might be supposed to pick out is perhaps the most interesting question. Two ways in which an account of human nature might be developed from such a starting point have been sketched.
According to Richard Samuelsโ proposal, human nature should be understood as the empirically discoverable proximal mechanisms responsible for psychological development and for the manifestation of psychological capacities. These will include physiological mechanisms, such as the development of the neural tube, as well as environmentally scaffolded learning procedures; they will also include the various modular systems distinguished by cognitive science, such as visual processing and memory systems (Samuels 2012: 22ff.). Like mere list conceptions (cf. ยง3.2), such an account has a precedent in Hume, for whom human nature also includes causal โprinciplesโ that structure operations of the human mind (1739โ40, Intro.), for example, the mechanisms of sympathy (III,iii,1; II,ii,6). Hume, however, thought of the relevant causal principles as intrinsic.
A second proposal, advanced by Paul Griffiths and Karola Stotz, explicitly suggests taking explanandum and explanans to be picked out by different uses of the expression “human nature”. In both cases, the โnatureโ in question is that of the taxon, not of individual organisms. The former use simply refers to โwhat human beings are likeโ, where โhuman beingsโ means all species specimens. Importantly, this characterisation does not aim at shared characteristics, but is open for polymorphisms both across a population and across life stages of individual organisms. The causal conception of human nature, what explains this spectrum of similarity and difference in life histories, is equated by Griffiths and Stotz with the organism-environment system that supports human development. It thus includes all the genetic, epigenetic and environmental resources responsible for varying human life cycles (Griffiths 2011: 319; Stotz & Griffiths 2018, 66f.). It follows that explanatory human nature at one point in time can be radically different from human nature at some other point in time.
Griffiths and Stotz are clear that this account diverges significantly from traditional accounts, as it rejects assumptions that human development has a goal, that human nature is possessed by all and only specimens of the species and that it consists of intrinsic properties. They see these assumptions as features of the folk biology of human nature that is as scientifically relevant as are folk conceptions of heat for its scientific understanding (Stotz 2010: 488; Griffiths 2011: 319ff.; Stotz & Griffiths 2018: 60ff.). This raises the question as to whether such a developmental systems account should not simply advocate abandoning the term, as is suggested by Sterelny (2018) on the basis of closely related considerations. A reason for not doing so might lie in the fact that, as talk of โhuman natureโ is often practised with normative intent or at least with normative consequences (Stotz & Griffiths 2018: 71f.), use of the term to pick out the real, complex explanatory factors at work might help to counter those normative uses that employ false, folk biological assumptions.
4.3 Secondary Altriciality as a Game-Changer
Explanatory accounts that emphasise developmental plasticity in the products of human DNA, in the neural architecture of the brain and in the human mind tend to reject the assumption that explanations of what humans are like should focus on intrinsic features. It should, however, be noted that such accounts can be interpreted as assigning the feature of heightened plasticity the key role in such explanations (cf. Montagu 1956: 79). Accounts that make plasticity causally central also raise the question as to whether there are not biological features that in turn explain it and should therefore be assigned a more central status in a theory of explanatory human nature.
A prime candidate for this role is what the zoologist Adolf Portmann labelled human โsecondary altricialityโ, a unique constellation of features of the human neonate relative to other primates: human neonates are, in their helplessness and possession of a relatively undeveloped brain, neurologically and behaviourally altricial, that is, in need of care. However they are also born with open and fully functioning sense organs, otherwise a mark of precocial species, in which neonates are able to fend for themselves (Portmann 1951: 44ff.). The facts that the human neonate brain is less than 30% of the size of the adult brain and that brain development after birth continues at the fetal rate for the first year (Walker & Ruff 1993, 227) led the anthropologist Ashley Montagu to talk of โexterogestationโ (Montagu 1961: 156). With these features in mind, Portmann characterised the care structures required by prolonged infant helplessness as the โsocial uterusโ (Portmann 1967: 330). Finally, the fact that the rapid development of the infant brain takes place during a time in which the infantโs sense organs are open and functioning places an adaptive premium on learning that is unparalleled among organisms (Gould 1977: 401; cf. Stotz & Griffiths 2018: 70).
Of course, these features are themselves contingent products of evolution that could be outlived by the species. Gould sees them as components of a general retardation of development that has characterised human evolution (Gould 1977: 365ff.), where โhumanโ should be seen as referring to the cladeโall the descendants of a common ancestorโrather than to the species. Anthropologists estimate that secondary altriciality characterised the lineage as from Homo erectus 1.5 million years ago (Rosenberg & Trevathan 1995: 167). We are, then, dealing with a set of deeply entrenched features, features that were in place long before behavioural modernity.
It is conceivable that the advent of secondary altriciality was a key transformation in generating the radical plasticity of human development beginning with early hominins. However, as Sterelny points out, there are serious difficulties with isolating any particular game changer. Secondary altriciality, or the plasticity that may in part be explained by it, would thus seem to fall victim to the same verdict as the game changers named by the traditional human nature slogans. However, maybe it is more plausible to think in terms of a matrix of traits: perhaps a game-changing constellation of properties present in the population after the split from pan can be shown to have generated forms of niche construction that fed back into and modified the original traits. These modifications may in turn have had further psychological and behavioural consequences in steps that plausibly brought selective advantages (Sterelny 2018: 115).
5. Human Nature, the Participant Perspective and Morality
5.1. Human Nature from a Participant Perspective
In such a culture-mind coevolutionary account, there may be a place for the referents of some of the traditional philosophical slogans intended to pin down โthe human essenceโ or โhuman natureโโreason, linguistic capacity (โthe speaking animalโ, Herder 1772 [2008: 97]), a more general symbolic capacity (animal symbolicum, Cassirer 1944: 44), freedom of the will (Pico della Mirandola 1486 [1965: 5]; Sartre 1946 [2007: 29, 47]), a specific, โpoliticalโ form of sociality, or a unique type of moral motivation (Hutcheson 1730: ยง15). These are likely, at best, to be the (still evolving) products in contemporary humans of processes set in motion by a trait constellation that includes proto-versions of (some of) these capacities. Such a view may also be compatible with an account of โwhat contemporary humans are likeโ that abstracts from the evolutionary time scale of eons and focuses instead on the present (cf. Duprรฉ 1993: 43), whilst neither merely cataloguing widely distributed traits (ยง3.2) nor attempting explanations in terms of the human genome (ยง4.1). The traditional slogans appear to be attempts to summarise some such accounts. It seems clear, though, that their aims are significantly different from those of the biologically, or otherwise scientifically orientated positions thus far surveyed.
Two features of such accounts are worth emphasising, both of which we already encountered in Aristotleโs contribution to the original package. The first involves a shift in perspective from that of the scientific observer to that of a participant in a contemporary human life form. Whereas the humanโor non-humanโbiologist may ask what modern humans are like, just as they may ask what bonobos are like, the question that traditional philosophical accounts of human nature are plausibly attempting to answer is what it is like to live oneโs life as a contemporary human. This question is likely to provoke the counter-question as to whether there is anything that it is like to live simply as a contemporary human, rather than as a human-in-a-specific-historical-and-cultural context (Habermas 1958: 32; Geertz 1973: 52f.; Duprรฉ 2003: 110f.). For the traditional sloganeers, the answer is clearly affirmative. The second feature of such accounts is that they tend to take it that reference to the capacities named in the traditional slogans is in some sense normatively, in particular, ethically significant.
The first claim of such accounts, then, is that there is some property of contemporary humans that is in some way descriptively or causally central to participating in their form of life. The second is that such participation involves subjection to normative standards rooted in the possession of some such property. Importantly, there is a step from the first to the second form of significance, and justification of the step requires argument. Even from a participant perspective, there is no automatic move from explanatory to normative significance.
According to an โinternalโ, participant account of human nature, certain capacities of contemporary, perhaps modern humans unavoidably structure the way they (we) live their (our) lives. Talk of โstructuringโ refers to three kinds of contributions to the matrix of capacities and dispositions that both enable and constrain the ways humans live their lives. These are contributions, first, to the specific shape other features of humans lives have and, second, to the way other such features hang together (Midgley 2000: 56ff.; Roughley 2011: 16ff.). Relatedly, they also make possible a whole new set of practices. All three relations are explanatory, although their explanatory role appears not necessarily to correspond to the role corresponding features, or earlier versions of the features, might have played in the evolutionary genealogy of contemporary human psychology. Having linguistic capacities is a prime candidate for the role of such a structural property: human perception, emotion, action planning and thought are all plausibly transformed in linguistic creatures, as are the connections between perception and belief, and the myriad relationships between thought and behaviour, connections exploited and deepened in a rich set of practices unavailable to non-linguistic animals. Similar things could be claimed for other properties named by the traditional slogans.
In contrast to the ways in which such capacities have frequently been referred to in the slogan mode, particularly to the pathos that has tended to accompany it, it seems highly implausible that any one such property will stand alone as structurally significant. It is more likely that we should be picking out a constellation of properties, a constellation that may well include properties variants of which are possessed by other animals. Other properties, including capacities that may be specific to contemporary humans, such as humour, may be less plausible candidates for a structural role.
Note that the fact that such accounts aim to answer a question asked from the participant perspective does not rule out that the features in question may be illuminated in their role for human self-understanding by data from empirical science. On the contrary, it seems highly likely that disciplines such as developmental and comparative psychology, and neuroscience will contribute significantly to an understanding of the possibilities and constraints inherent in the relevant capacities and in the way they interact.
5.2. Human Nature and the Human ergon
The paradigmatic strategy for deriving ethical consequences from claims about structural features of the human life form is the Platonic and Aristotelian ergon or function argument. The first premise of Aristotleโs version (Nicomachean Ethics 1097bโ1098a) connects function and goodness: if the characteristic function of an entity of a type X is to ฯ, then a good entity of type X is one that ฯs well. Aristotle confers plausibility on the claim by using examples such as social roles and bodily organs. If the function of an eye as an exemplar of its kind is to enable seeing, then a good eye is one that enables its bearer to see well. The second premise of the argument is a claim we encountered in section 1.4 of this entry, a claim we can now see as predicating a structural property of human life, the exercise of reason. According to this claim, the function or end of individual humans as humans is, depending on interpretation (Nussbaum 1995: 113ff.), either the exercise of reason or life according to reason. If this is correct, it follows that a good human being is one whose life centrally involves the exercise of, or life in accordance with, reason.
In the light of the discussion so far, it ought to be clear that, as it stands, the second premise of this argument is incompatible with the evolutionary biology of species. It asserts that the exercise of reason is not only the key structural property of human life, but also the realization of the fully developed human form. No sense can be made of this latter notion in evolutionary terms. Nevertheless, a series of prominent contemporary ethicistsโAlasdair MacIntyre (1999), Rosalind Hursthouse (1999), Philippa Foot (2001) and Martha Nussbaum (2006)โhave all made variants of the ergon argument central to their ethical theories. As each of these authors advance some version of the second premise, it is instructive to examine the ways in which they aim to avoid the challenge from evolutionary biology.
Before doing so, it is first worth noting that any ethical theory or theory of value is engaged in an enterprise that has no clear place in an evolutionary analysis. If we want to know what goodness is or what โgoodโ means, evolutionary theory is not the obvious place to look. This is particularly clear in view of the fact that evolutionary theory operates at the level of populations (Sober 1980: 370; Walsh 2006: 434), whereas ethical theory operates, at least primarily, at the level of individual agents. However, the specific conflict between evolutionary biology and neo-Aristotelian ethics results from the latterโs constructive use of the concept of species and, in particular, of a teleological conception of a fully developed form of individual members of the species โqua members of [the] speciesโ (MacIntyre 1999: 64, 71; cf. Thompson 2008: 29; Foot 2001: 27). The characterisation of achieving that form as fulfilling a โfunctionโ, which helps the analogy with bodily organs and social roles, is frequently replaced in contemporary discussions by talk of โflourishingโ (Aristotleโs eudaimonia). Such talk more naturally suggests comparisons with the lives of other organisms (although Aristotle himself excludes other animals from eudaimonia; cf. Nicomachean Ethics 1009b). The concept of flourishing in turn picks out biologicalโetymologically: botanicalโprocesses, but again not of a sort that play a role in evolutionary theory. It also seems primarily predicated of individual organisms. It may play a role in ecology; it is, however, most clearly at home in practical applications of biological knowledge, as in horticulture. In this respect, it is comparable to the concept of health.
Neo-Aristotelians claim that to describe an organism, whether a plant or a non-human or human animal, as flourishing is to measure it against a standard that is specific to the species to which it belongs. To do so is to evaluate it as a more or less good โspecimen of its species (or sub-species)โ (Hursthouse 1999: 198). The key move is then to claim that moral evaluation is, โquite seriouslyโ (Foot 2001: 16), evaluation of the same sort: just as a non-defective animal or plant exemplifies flourishing within the relevant speciesโ life form, someone who is morally good is someone who exemplifies human flourishing, i.e., the fully developed form of the species. This metaethical claim has provoked the worry as to whether such attributions to other organisms are really anything more than classifications, or at most evaluations of โstretched and deflatedโ kinds that are missing the key feature of authority that we require for genuine normativity (Lenman 2005: 46ff.).
5.2.1. Sidestepping the Darwinian Challenge?
Independently of questions concerning their theory of value, ethical Neo-Aristotelians need to respond to the question of how reference to a fully developed form of the species can survive the challenge from evolutionary theory. Three kinds of response may appear promising.
The first adverts to the plurality of forms of biological science, claiming that there are life sciences, such as physiology, botany, zoology and ethology in the context of which such evaluations have a place (Hursthouse 1999: 202; 2012: 172; MacIntyre 1999: 65). And if ethology can legitimately attribute not only characteristic features, but also defects or flourishing to species members, in spite of species not being natural kinds, then there is little reason why ethics shouldnโt do so too. This strategy might ground in one of the moves sketched in section 3.1 of this entry. It might be argued, with Kitcher and Duprรฉ, that such attributions are legitimate in other branches of biological science because there is a plurality of species concepts, indeed of kinds of species, where these are relative to epistemic interests. Or the claim might simply rest on a difference in what is taken to be the relevant time frame, where temporal relevance is indexed relative to the present. In ethics we are, it might be claimed, interested in humans as they are โat the moment and for a few millennia back and for maybe not much longer in the futureโ (Hursthouse 2012: 171).
This move amounts to the concession that talk of โthe human speciesโ is not to be understood literally. Whether this concession undermines the ethical theories that use the term is perhaps unclear. It leaves open the possibility that, as human nature may change significantly, there may be significant changes in what it means for humans to flourish and therefore in what is ethically required. This might be seen as a virtue, rather than a vice of the view.
A second response to the challenge from evolutionary biology aims to draw metaphysical consequences from epistemic or semantic claims. Michael Thompson has argued that what he calls alternatively โthe human life formโ and โthe human speciesโ is an a priori category. Thompson substantiates this claim by examining forms of discourse touched on in section 3.2, forms of discourse that are generally taken to be of mere heuristic importance for amateur practices of identification, viz. field guides or animal documentaries. Statements such as โThe domestic cat has four legs, two eyes, two ears and guts in its bellyโ, are, Thompson claims, instances of an important kind of predication that is neither tensed nor quantifiable. He calls these โnatural historical descriptionsโ or โAristotelian categoricalsโ (Thompson 2008: 64ff.). Such generic claims are not, he argues, made false where what is predicated is less than universal, or even statistically rare. Decisively, according to Thompson, our access to the notion of the human life form is non-empirical. It is, he claims, a presupposition of understanding ourselves from the first-person perspective as breathing, eating or feeling pain (Thompson 2004: 66ff.). Thus understood, the concept is independent of biology and therefore, if coherent, immune to problems raised by the Darwinian challenge.
Like Foot and Hursthouse, Thompson thinks that his Aristotelian categoricals allow inferences to specific judgments that members of species are defective (Thompson 2004: 54ff.; 2008: 80). He admits that such judgments in the case of the human life form are likely to be fraught with difficulties, but nevertheless believes that judgments of (non-)defective realization of a life form are the model for ethical evaluation (Thompson 2004: 30, 81f.). It may seem unclear how this might be the case in view of the fact that access to the human life form is supposed to be given as a presupposition of using the concept of โIโ. Another worry is that the everyday understanding on which Thompson draws may be nothing other than a branch of folk biology. The folk tendency to ascribe teleological essences to species, as to โracesโ and genders, is no indication of the reality of such essences (Lewens 2012: 469f.; Stotz & Griffiths 2018: 60ff.; cf. Pellegrin 1982 [1986: 16ff., 120] and Charles 2000: 343ff., 368, on Aristotleโs own orientation to the usage of โthe peopleโ).
A final response to evolutionary biologistsโ worries aims equally to distinguish the Neo-Aristotelian account of human nature from that of the sciences. However, it does so not by introducing a special metaphysics of โlife formsโ, but by explicitly constructing an ethical concept of human nature. Martha Nussbaum argues that the notion of human nature in play in what she calls โAristotelian essentialismโ is, as she puts it, โinternal and evaluativeโ. It is a hermeneutic product of โhumanโ self-understanding, constructed from within our best ethical outlook: โan ethical theory of human natureโ, she claims,
should force us to answer for ourselves, on the basis of our very own ethical judgment, the question which beings are fully human ones. (Nussbaum 1995: 121f.; cf. Nussbaum 1992: 212ff.; 2006: 181ff.; McDowell 1980 [1998: 18ff.]; Hursthouse 1999: 229; 2012: 174f.)
There can be no question here of moving from a biological โisโ to an ethical โoughtโ; rather, which features are taken to belong to human nature is itself seen as the result of ethical deliberation. Such a conception maintains the claim that the key ethical standard is that of human flourishing. However, it is clear that what counts as flourishing can only be specified on the basis of ethical deliberation, understood as striving for reflective equilibrium (Nussbaum 2006: 352ff.). In view of such a methodological proposal, there is a serious question as to what work is precisely done by the concept of human nature.
5.2.2. Human Flourishing
Neo-Aristotelians vary in the extent to which they flesh out a conception of species-specific flourishing. Nussbaum draws up a comprehensive, open-ended catalogue of what she calls โthe central human capacitiesโ. These are in part picked out because of their vulnerability to undermining or support by political measures. They include both basic bodily needs and more specifically human capacities, such as for humour, play, autonomy and practical reason (Nussbaum 1992: 216ff.; 2006: 76ff.). Such a catalogue allows the setting of three thresholds, below which a human organism would not count as living a human life at all (anencephalic children, for instance), as living a fully human life or as living a good human life (Nussbaum 2006: 181). Nussbaum explicitly argues that being of human parents is insufficient for crossing the first, evaluatively set threshold. Her conception is partly intended to provide guidelines as to how societies should conceive disability and as to when it is appropriate to take political measures in order to enable agents with nonstandard physical or mental conditions to cross the second and third thresholds.
Nussbaum has been careful to insist that enabling independence, rather than providing care, should be the prime aim. Nevertheless, the structure of an account that insists on a โspecies normโ, below which humans lacking certain capacities count as less than fully flourishing, has prompted accusations of illiberality. According to the complaint, it disrespects the right of members of, for example, deaf communities to set the standards for their own forms of life (Glackin 2016: 320ff.).
Other accounts of species-specific flourishing have been considerably more abstract. According to Hursthouse, plants flourish when their parts and operations are well suited to the ends of individual survival and continuance of the species. In social animals, flourishing also tends to involve characteristic pleasure and freedom from pain, and a contribution to appropriate functioning of relevant social groups (Hursthouse 1999: 197ff.). The good of human character traits conducive to pursuit of these four ends is transformed, Hursthouse claims, by the addition of โrationalityโ. As a result, humans flourish when they do what they correctly take themselves to have reason to doโunder the constraint that they do not thereby cease to foster the four ends set for other social animals (Hursthouse 1999: 222ff.). Impersonal benevolence is, for example, because of this constraint, unlikely to be a virtue. In such an ethical outlook, what particular agents have reason to do is the primary standard; it just seems to be applied under particular constraints. A key question is thus whether the content of this primary standard is really determined by the notion of species-specific flourishing.
Where Hursthouseโs account builds up to, and attempts to provide a โnaturalโ framework for, the traditional Aristotelian ergon of reason, MacIntyre builds his account around the claim that flourishing specific to the human โspeciesโ is essentially a matter of becoming an โindependent practical reasonerโ (MacIntyre 1999: 67ff.). It is because of the central importance of reasoning that, although human flourishing shares certain preconditions with the flourishing, say, of dolphins, it is also vulnerable in specific ways. MacIntyre argues that particular kinds of social practices enable the development of human reasoning capacities and that, because independent practical reasoning is, paradoxically, at core cooperatively developed and structured, the general aim of human flourishing is attained by participation in networks in local communities (MacIntyre 1999: 108). โIndependent practical reasonersโ are โdependent rational animalsโ. MacIntyreโs account thus makes room on an explanatory level for the evolutionary insight that humans can only become rational in a socio-cultural context which provides scaffolding for the development and exercise of rationality (ยง4). Normatively, however, this point is subordinated to the claim that, from the point of view of participation in the contemporary human life form, flourishing corresponds to the traditional slogan.
5.3. Reason as the Unique Structural Property
MacIntyre, Hursthouse and Nussbaum (Nussbaum 2006: 159f.) all aim to locate the human capacity for reasoning within a framework that encompasses other animals. Each argues that, although the capacities to recognise reasons as reasons and for deliberation on their basis transform the needs and abilities humans share with other animals, the reasons in question remain in some way dependent on humansโ embodied and social form of life. This emphasis is intended to distinguish an Aristotelian approach from other approaches for which the capacity to evaluate reasons for action as reasons and to distance oneself from ones desires is also the โcentral differenceโ between humans and other animals (Korsgaard 2006: 104; 2018: 38ff.; cf. MacIntyre 1999: 71ff.). According to Korsgaardโs Kantian interpretation of Aristotleโs ergon argument, humans cannot act without taking a normative stand on whether their desires provide them with reasons to act. This she takes to be the key structural feature of their life, which brings with it โa whole new way of functioning well or badlyโ (Korsgaard 2018: 48; cf. 1996: 93). In such an account, โhuman natureโ is monistically understood as this one structural feature which is so transformative that the concept of life applicable to organisms that instantiate it is no longer that applicable to organisms that donโt. Only โhumansโ live their lives, because only they possess the type of intentional control over their bodily movements that grounds in evaluation of their actions and self-evaluation as agents (Korsgaard 2006: 118; 2008: 141ff.; cf. Plessner 1928 [1975: 309f.]).
We have arrived at an interpretation of the traditional slogan that cuts it off from a metaphysics with any claims to be โnaturalisticโ. The claim now is that the structural effect of the capacity for reasoning transforms those features of humans that they share with other animals so thoroughly that those features pale into insignificance. What is โnaturalโ about the capacity for reasoning for humans here is its unavoidability for contemporary members of the species, at least for those without serious mental disabilities. Such assertions also tend to shade into normative claims that discount the normative status of โanimalโ needs in view of the normative authority of human reasoning (cf. McDowell 1996 [1998: 172f.]).
The most radical version of this thought leads to the claim encountered towards the end of section 1.4: that talk of โhuman natureโ involves no essential reference at all to the species Homo sapiens or to the hominin lineage. According to this view, the kind to which contemporary humans belong is a kind to which entities could also belong who have no genealogical relationship to humans. That kind is the kind of entities that act and believe in accordance with the reasons they take themselves to have. Aliens, synthetically created agents and angels are further candidates for membership in the kind, which would, unlike biological taxa, be spatiotemporally unrestricted. The traditional term for the kind, as employed by Aquinas and Kant, is โpersonโ (cf. Hull 1986: 9).
Roger Scruton has recently taken this line, arguing that persons can only be adequately understood in terms of a web of concepts inapplicable to other animals, concepts whose applicability grounds in an essential moral dimension of the personal life form. The concepts pick out components of a life form that is permeated by relationships of responsibility, as expressed in reactive attitudes such as indignation, guilt and gratitude. Such emotions he takes to involve a demand for accountability, and as such to be exclusive to the personal life form, not variants of animal emotions (Scruton 2017: 52). As a result, he claims, they situate their bearers in some sense โoutside the natural orderโ (Scruton 2017: 26). According to such an account, we should embrace a methodological dualism with respect to humans: as animals, they are subject to the same kinds of biological explanations as all other organisms, but as persons, they are subject to explanations that are radically different in kind. These are explanations in terms of reasons and meanings, that is, exercises in โVerstehenโ, whose applicability Scruton takes to be independent of causal explanation (Scruton 2017: 30ff., 46).
Such an account demonstrates with admirable clarity that there is no necessary connection between a theory of โhuman natureโ and metaphysical naturalism. It also reinforces the fact, emphasised throughout this entry, that discussions of โhuman natureโ require both serious conceptual spadework and explicit justification of the use of any one such concept rather than another.
Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu wa za Banga[a] (/mษbuหหtuห หsษseษช หsษkoส/; born Joseph-Dรฉsirรฉ Mobutu; 14 October 1930 โ 7 September 1997), commonly known as Mobutu Sese Seko or simply just Mobutu, was a Congolese politician and military officer who was the president of Zaire from 1965 to 1997 (known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo until 1971). He also served as Chairman of the Organisation of African Unity from 1967 to 1968. During the Congo Crisis, Mobutu, serving as Chief of Staff of the Army and supported by Belgium and the United States, deposed the democratically elected government of left-wing nationalist Patrice Lumumba in 1960. Mobutu installed a government that arranged for Lumumba’s execution in 1961, and continued to lead the country’s armed forces until he took power directly in a second coup in 1965.
To consolidate his power, he established the Popular Movement of the Revolution as the sole legal political party in 1967, changed the Congo’s name to Zaire in 1971, and his own name to Mobutu Sese Seko in 1972. Mobutu claimed that his political ideology was “neither left nor right, nor even centre“,[1] though nevertheless he developed a regime that was intensely autocratic even by African standards of his time. He attempted to purge the country of all colonial cultural influence through his program of “national authenticity“.[2][3] Mobutu was the object of a pervasive cult of personality.[4] During his rule, he amassed a large personal fortune through economic exploitation and corruption, leading some to call his rule a “kleptocracy“.[5][6] He presided over a period of widespread human rights violations. Under his rule, the nation also suffered from uncontrolled inflation, a large debt, and massive currency devaluations.
Mobutu received strong support (military, diplomatic and economic) from the United States, France, and Belgium, who believed he was a strong opponent of communism in Francophone Africa. He also built close ties with the governments of apartheidSouth Africa, Israel and the Greek junta. From 1972 onward, he was also supported by Mao Zedong of China, mainly due to his anti-Soviet stance but also as part of Mao’s attempts to create a bloc of Afro-Asian nations led by him. The massive Chinese economic aid that flowed into Zaire gave Mobutu more flexibility in his dealings with Western governments, allowed him to identify as an “anti-capitalist revolutionary”, and enabled him to avoid going to the International Monetary Fund for assistance.[7]
By 1990, economic deterioration and unrest forced Mobutu Sese Seko into coalition with his power opponents. Although he used his troops to thwart change, his antics did not last long. In May 1997, rebel forces led by Laurent-Dรฉsirรฉ Kabila overran the country and forced him into exile. Already suffering from advanced prostate cancer, he died three months later in Morocco. Mobutu was notorious for corruption, nepotism, and the embezzlement of between US$4 billion and $15 billion during his rule. He was known for extravagances such as shopping trips to Paris via the supersonic Concorde aircraft.[8]
Mobutu, a member of the Ngbandi ethnic group,[9] was born in 1930 in Lisala, Belgian Congo.[10] Mobutu’s mother, Marie Madeleine Yemo, was a hotel maid who fled to Lisala to escape the harem of a local village chief. There she met and married Albรฉric Gbemani, a cook for a Belgian judge.[11] Shortly afterward she gave birth to Mobutu. The name “Mobutu” was selected by an uncle.
Gbemani died when Mobutu was eight.[12] Thereafter, he was raised by an uncle and a grandfather.
The Belgian judge’s wife took a liking to Mobutu and taught him to speak, read, and write fluently in the French language, the official language of the country in the colonial period. His widowed mother Yemo relied on the help of relatives to support her four children, and the family moved often. Mobutu’s earliest education took place in the capital Lรฉopoldville (now Kinshasa). His mother eventually sent him to an uncle in Coquilhatville (present-day Mbandaka), where he attended the Christian Brothers School, a Catholic-mission boarding school. A tall and physically imposing figure at 6 ft 3 in (1.91 m), Mobutu dominated school sports. He also excelled in academic subjects and ran the class newspaper. He was known for his pranks and impish sense of humor.
A classmate recalled that when the Belgian priests, whose first language was Dutch, made an error in French, Mobutu would leap to his feet in class and point out the mistake. In 1949 Mobutu stowed away aboard a boat, traveling downriver to Lรฉopoldville, where he met a girl. The priests found him several weeks later. At the end of the school year, in lieu of being sent to prison, he was ordered to serve seven years in the colonial army, the Force Publique (FP). This was a usual punishment for rebellious students.[13]
Mobutu found discipline in army life, as well as a father figure in Sergeant Louis Bobozo. Mobutu kept up his studies by borrowing European newspapers from the Belgian officers and books from wherever he could find them, reading them on sentry duty and whenever he had a spare moment. His favourites were the writings of French president Charles de Gaulle, British prime minister Winston Churchill, and Italian Renaissance philosopher Niccolรฒ Machiavelli. After passing a course in accounting, Mobutu began to dabble professionally in journalism. Still angry after his clashes with the school priests, he did not marry in a church. His contribution to the wedding festivities was a crate of beer, all his army salary could afford.[14]
As a soldier, Mobutu wrote in pseudonym on contemporary politics for Actualitรฉs Africaines (African News), a magazine set up by a Belgian colonial. In 1956, he quit the army and became a full-time journalist,[15] writing for the Lรฉopoldville daily L’Avenir.[16]
Two years later, he went to Belgium to cover the 1958 World Exposition and stayed to receive training in journalism. By this time, Mobutu had met many of the young Congolese intellectuals who were challenging colonial rule. He became friendly with Patrice Lumumba and joined Lumumba’s Congolese National Movement (MNC). Mobutu eventually became Lumumba’s personal aide. Several contemporaries indicate that Belgian intelligence had recruited Mobutu to be an informer to the government.[17]
During the 1960 talks in Brussels on Congolese independence, the US embassy held a reception for the Congolese delegation. Embassy staff were each assigned a list of delegation members to meet, and discussed their impressions afterward. The ambassador noted, “One name kept coming up. But it wasn’t on anyone’s list because he wasn’t an official delegation member, he was Lumumba’s secretary. But everyone agreed that this was an extremely intelligent man, very young, perhaps immature, but a man with great potential.”[18]
Following the general election, Lumumba was tasked with creating a government. He gave Mobutu the office of Secretary of State to the Presidency. Mobutu held much influence in the final determination of the rest of the government.[19]
Colonel Mobutu in 1960Mobutu in a 1963 visit to Israel, where he participated in a shortened IDF paratrooper course
On 5 July 1960, soldiers of the Force Publique stationed at Camp Lรฉopold II in Lรฉopoldville, dissatisfied with their all-white leadership and working conditions, mutinied. The revolt spread across the region in the following days. Mobutu assisted other officials in negotiating with the mutineers to secure the release of the officers and their families.[20] On 8 July the full Council of Ministers convened in an extraordinary session under the chairmanship of President Joseph Kasa-Vubu at Camp Lรฉopold II to address the task of Africanising the garrison.[21]
The former had shown some influence over the mutinying troops, but Kasa-Vubu and the Bakongo ministers feared that he would enact a coup d’รฉtat if he were given power. The latter was perceived as calmer and more thoughtful.[22] Lumumba saw Mpolo as courageous, but favored Mobutu’s prudence. As the discussions continued, the cabinet began to divide according to who they preferred to serve as chief of staff. Lumumba wanted to keep both men in his government and wished to avoid upsetting one of their camps of supporters.[22] In the end Mobutu was given the role and awarded the rank of colonel.[23] The following day government delegations left the capital to oversee the Africanisation of the army; Mobutu was sent to รquateur.[24]
The British diplomat Brian Urquhart serving with the United Nations wrote: “When I first met Mobutu in July 1960, he was Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba’s chief military assistant and had just promoted himself from sergeant to lieutenant-colonel. By comparison with his boss, Mobutu was a pillar of pragmatism and common sense. It was to him that we appealed when our people were arrested by Lumumba’s hashish-stimulated guards. It was he who would bring up, in a disarmingly casual way, Lumumba’s most outrageous requests โ that the UN should, for example, meet the pay roll of the potentially mutinous Congolese army. In those early days, Mobutu seemed a comparatively sensible young man, one who might even, at least now and then, have the best interests of his newly independent country at heart.”[25]
Encouraged by a Belgian government intent on maintaining its access to rich Congolese mines, secessionist violence erupted in the south. Concerned that the United Nations force sent to help restore order was not helping to crush the secessionists, Lumumba turned to the Soviet Union for assistance. He received massive military aid and about a thousand Soviet technical advisers within six weeks. As this was during the Cold War, the US government feared that the Soviet activity was a maneuver to spread communist influence in Central Africa. Kasa-Vubu was encouraged by the US and Belgium to dismiss Lumumba, which he did on 5 September. An outraged Lumumba declared Kasa-Vubu deposed. Parliament refused to recognise the dismissals and urged reconciliation, but no agreement was reached.
Lumumba and Kasa-Vubu each ordered Mobutu to arrest the other. As Army Chief of Staff, Mobutu came under great pressure from multiple sources. The embassies of Western nations, which helped pay the soldiers’ salaries, as well as Kasa-Vubu and Mobutu’s subordinates, all favored getting rid of the Soviet presence. On 14 September Mobutu launched a bloodless coup, declaring both Kasa-Vubu and Lumumba to be “neutralised” and establishing a new government of university graduates, the College of Commissioners-General. Lumumba rejected this action but was forced to retire to his residence, where UN peacekeepers prevented Mobutu’s soldiers from arresting him. Urquhart recalled that on the day of the coup, Mobutu showed up unannounced at the UN headquarters in Lรฉopoldville and refused to leave, until the radio announced the coup, leading Mobutu to say over and over again “C’est moi!” (“This is me!”).[25] Recognizing that Mobutu had only gone to the UN headquarters in case the coup should fail, Urquhart ordered him out.[25]
Losing confidence that the international community would support his reinstatement, Lumumba fled in late November to join his supporters in Stanleyville to establish a new government. He was captured by Mobutu’s troops in early December, and incarcerated at his headquarters in Thysville. However, Mobutu still considered him a threat, and transferred him to the rebelling State of Katanga on 17 January 1961. Lumumba disappeared from public view. It was later discovered that he was executed the same day by the secessionist forces of Moise Tshombe, after Mobutu’s government turned him over.[26]
Colonel Joseph-Desirรฉ Mobutu (left) with President Joseph Kasa-Vubu, 1961
On 23 January 1961, Kasa-Vubu promoted Mobutu to major-general. Historian De Witte argues that this was a political action, “aimed to strengthen the army, the president’s sole support, and Mobutu’s position within the army”.[27]
In 1964, Pierre Mulele led partisans in another rebellion. They quickly occupied two-thirds of the Congo. In response, the Congolese army, led by Mobutu, reconquered the entire territory through 1965.
Prime Minister Moise Tshombe’s Congolese National Convention had won a large majority in the March 1965 elections, but Kasa-Vubu appointed an anti-Tshombe leader, รvariste Kimba, as prime minister-designate. However, Parliament twice refused to confirm him. With the government in near-paralysis, Mobutu seized power in a bloodless coup on 24 November. He had turned 35 a month earlier.[28]
Under the auspices of a state of exception (regime d’exception), Mobutu assumed sweepingโalmost absoluteโpowers for five years.[29] In his first speech upon taking power, Mobutu told a large crowd at Lรฉopoldville’s main stadium that, since politicians had brought the Congo to ruin in five years, it would take him at least that long to set things right again, and therefore there would be no more political party activity for five years.[30] On 30 November 1965 Parliament approved a measure which turned over most legislative powers to Mobutu and his cabinet, though it retained the right to review his decrees. In early March 1966 he opened a new session of Parliament by declaring that he was revoking their right of review, and two weeks later his government permanently suspended the body and assumed all of its remaining functions.[31]
A Congolese cotton shirt embellished with a portrait of Mobutu from the collection of the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam
Initially, Mobutu’s government presented itself as apolitical or even anti-political. The word “politician” carried negative connotations, and became almost synonymous with someone who was wicked or corrupt. In 1966 the Corps of Volunteers of the Republic was established, a vanguard movement designed to mobilize popular support behind Mobutu, who was proclaimed the nation’s “Second National Hero” after Lumumba. Despite the role he played in Lumumba’s ousting, Mobutu worked to present himself as a successor to Lumumba’s legacy. One of his key tenets early in his rule was “authentic Congolese nationalism”. In 1966, Mobutu started renaming cities that had European names with more “authentic” African names, and in this way Lรฉopoldville became Kinshasa, Stanleyville became Kisangani and รlisabethville became Lubumbashi.[32]
1967 marked the debut of the Popular Movement of the Revolution (MPR), which until 1990 was the nation’s only legal political party. Among the themes advanced by the MPR in its doctrine, the Manifesto of N’Sele, were nationalism, revolution, and “authenticity”. Revolution was described as a “truly national revolution, essentially pragmatic”, which called for “the repudiation of both capitalism and communism”. One of the MPR’s slogans was “Neither left nor right”, to which would be added “nor even center” in later years.
That same year, all trade unions were consolidated into a single union, the National Union of Zairian Workers, and brought under government control. Mobutu intended for the union to serve as an instrument of support for government policy, rather than as an independent group. Independent trade unions were illegal until 1991.
Mobutu sworn in as President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo following the 1970 election
Facing many challenges early in his rule, Mobutu converted much opposition into submission through patronage; those he could not co-opt, he dealt with forcefully. In 1966, four cabinet members were arrested on charges of complicity in an attempted coup, tried by a military tribunal, and publicly executed in an open-air spectacle witnessed by over 50,000 people. Uprisings by former Katangan gendarmeries were crushed, as were the Stanleyville mutinies of 1967 led by white mercenaries.[33] By 1970, nearly all potential threats to his authority had been smashed, and for the most part, law and order was brought to nearly all parts of the country. That year marked the pinnacle of Mobutu’s legitimacy and power.
In 1970 King Baudouin of Belgium made a highly successful state visit to Kinshasa. That same year presidential and legislative elections were held. Although the constitution allowed for the existence of two parties, the MPR was the only party allowed to nominate candidates. For the presidential election, Mobutu was the only candidate. Voting was not secret; voters chose a green paper if they supported Mobutu’s candidacy, and a red paper if they opposed his candidacy. Casting a green ballot was deemed a vote for hope, while a red ballot was deemed a vote for chaos. Under the circumstances, the result was inevitableโaccording to official figures, Mobutu was confirmed in office with near-unanimous support, garnering 10,131,669 votes to only 157 “no” votes.[34] It later emerged that almost 30,500 more votes were cast than the actual number of registered voters.[35][36] The legislative elections were held in a similar fashion. Voters were presented with a single list from the MPR; according to official figures, an implausible 98.33% of voters voted in favor of the MPR list.
As he consolidated power, Mobutu set up several military forces whose sole purpose was to protect him. These included the Special Presidential Division, Civil Guard and Service for Action, and Military Intelligence (SNIP).
Embarking on a campaign of pro-Africa cultural awareness, called authenticitรฉ, Mobutu began renaming cities that reflected the colonial past, starting on 1 June 1966: Lรฉopoldville became Kinshasa, Elisabethville became Lubumbashi, and Stanleyville became Kisangani. In October 1971, he renamed the country as the Republic of Zaire.[32] He ordered the people to change their European names to African ones, and priests were warned that they would face five years’ imprisonment if they were caught baptizing a Zairian child with a European name.[32] Western attire and ties were banned, and men were forced to wear a Mao-style tunic known as an abacost (shorthand for ร bas le costume, or “down with the suit”).[37] Christmas was moved from December to June because it was more of an “authentic” date.[32]
In 1972, in accordance with his own decree of a year earlier, Mobutu renamed himself Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga (meaning “The all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, goes from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake.”).[38][39] Around this time, he eschewed his military uniform in favor of what would become his classic imageโthe tall, imposing man carrying a walking stick while wearing an abacost, thick-framed glasses, and leopard-skin toque.
In 1974, a new constitution consolidated Mobutu’s grip on the country. It defined the MPR as the “single institution” in the country. It was officially defined as “the nation politically organized”โin essence, the state was a transmission belt for the party. All citizens automatically became members of the MPR from birth. The constitution stated that the MPR was embodied by the party’s president, who was elected every seven years at its national convention. At the same time, the party president was automatically nominated as the sole candidate for a seven-year term as president of the republic; he was confirmed in office by a referendum. The document codified the emergency powers Mobutu had exercised since 1965; it vested Mobutu with “plenitude of power exercise”, effectively concentrating all governing power in his hands. Mobutu was reelected three times under this system, each time by implausibly high margins of 98 percent or more. A single list of MPR candidates was returned to the legislature every five years with equally implausible margins; official figures gave the MPR list unanimous or near-unanimous support. At one of those elections, in 1975, formal voting was dispensed with altogether. Instead, the election took place by acclaim; candidates were presented at public locations around the country where they could be applauded.
Early in his rule, Mobutu consolidated power by publicly executing political rivals, secessionists, coup plotters, and other threats to his rule. To set an example, many were hanged before large audiences. Such victims included former Prime Minister รvariste Kimba, who, with three cabinet membersโJรฉrรดme Anany (Defense Minister), Emmanuel Bamba (Finance Minister), and Alexandre Mahamba (Minister of Mines and Energy)โwas tried in May 1966, and sent to the gallows on 30 May, before an audience of 50,000 spectators. The men were executed on charges of being in contact with Colonel Alphonse Bangala and Major Pierre Efomi, for the purpose of planning a coup. Mobutu explained the executions as follows: “One had to strike through a spectacular example, and create the conditions of regime discipline. When a chief takes a decision, he decides โ period.”[40]
In 1968, Pierre Mulele, Lumumba’s Minister of Education and a rebel leader during the 1964 Simba rebellion, was lured out of exile in Brazzaville on the belief that he would receive amnesty. Instead, he was tortured and killed by Mobutu’s forces. While Mulele was still alive, his eyes were gouged out, his genitals were ripped off, and his limbs were amputated one by one.[41]
Mobutu later switched to a new tactic, buying off political rivals. He used the slogan “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer still”[42] to describe his tactic of co-opting political opponents through bribery. A favorite Mobutu tactic was to play “musical chairs”, rotating members of his government, switching the cabinet roster constantly to ensure that no one would pose a threat to his rule. Between November 1965 and April 1997, Mobutu reshuffled his cabinet 60 times.[43] The frequent cabinet reshuffles as intended encouraged insecurity in his ministers, who knew that the mercurial Mobutu would reshuffle his cabinet with no regard for efficiency and competence on the part of his ministers.[43] The frequency that men entered and left the cabinet also encouraged gross corruption because ministers never knew how long they might be in office, thus encouraging them to steal as much as possible while they were in the cabinet.[43] Another tactic was to arrest and sometimes torture dissident members of the government, only to later pardon them and reward them with high office.[43] The Congolese historian Emizet F. Kisangani wrote: “Most public officials knew that regardless of their inefficiency and degree of corruption, they could reenter the government. To hold a government position required neither a sense of management nor a good conscience. On most occasions, effectiveness and a good conscience were major obstacles to political advancement. Mobutu demanded absolute personal allegiance in return for the opportunity to accumulate wealth”.[43] As early as 1970, it was estimated that Mobutu had stolen 60% of the national budget that year, marking him as one of the most corrupt leaders in Africa and the world.[43] Kisangani wrote that Mobutu created a system of institutional corruption that greatly debased public morality by rewarding venality and greed.[44]
In 1972, Mobutu tried unsuccessfully to have himself named president for life.[45] In June 1983, he raised himself to the rank of Field Marshal;[46] the order was signed by General Likulia Bolongo. Victor Nendaka Bika, in his capacity as Vice-President of the Bureau of the Central Committee, second authority in the land, addressed a speech filled with praise for President Mobutu.
Mobutu Sese Seko in army fatigues, 1978
To gain the revenues of Congolese resources, Mobutu initially nationalized foreign-owned firms and forced European investors out of the country. But in many cases he handed the management of these firms to relatives and close associates, who quickly exercised their own corruption and stole the companies’ assets. In 1973โ1974, Mobutu launched his “Zairianization” campaign, nationalising foreign owned businesses that were handed over to Zairians.[32] In October 1973, the Arab oil shock ended the “long summer” of prosperity in the West that had begun in 1945, and sent the world economy into its sharpest contraction since the Great Depression. One consequence of the oil shock and the resulting global recession was that the price of copper dropped by 50% over the course of 1974, which proved to be a disaster for Zaire as copper was its most important export.[32] The American historian Thomas Odom wrote because of the collapse in copper prices Zaire went from “prosperity to bankruptcy almost overnight” in 1974.[32] The economic collapse forced Zaire to turn towards the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help it manage its debts which could no longer be serviced.[32] Seeking an alternative source of support as the auditors for the IMF discovered major corruption within the Zairian finances, Mobutu visited China in 1974 and returned wearing a Mao jacket and the new title of Citoyen Mobutu (“Citizen Mobutu”).[47] Influenced by the Cultural Revolution, Mobutu shifted to the left and announced his intention to “radicalize the Zairian revolution”.[47] The businesses that Mobutu had just handed over to Zairians were in turn nationalized and placed under state control.[47] At the same time, Mobutu imposed a 50% salary cut to state employees, which led a failed coup attempt against him in June 1975.[47]
By 1977, Mobutu’s nationalizations had precipitated such an economic slump that Mobutu was forced to try to woo foreign investors back.[48] Katangan rebels based in Angola invaded Zaire that year, in retaliation for Mobutu’s support for anti-MPLA rebels. France airlifted 1,500 Moroccan paratroopers into the country and repulsed the rebels, ending Shaba I. The rebels attacked Zaire again, in greater numbers, in the Shaba II invasion of 1978. The governments of Belgium and France deployed troops with logistical support from the United States and defeated the rebels again. The poor performance of the Zairian Army during both Shaba invasions, which humiliated Mobutu by forcing him to ask for foreign troops, did not lead to military reforms.[49] However, Mobutu reduced the size of the Army from 51,000 troops in 1978 down to 23,000 troops in 1980.[49] By 1980, it was estimated that about 90% of the Zairian Army were Ngbandi as Mobutu did not trust the other peoples of Zaire to serve in the Army.[49] The most loyal and best of Mobutu’s units were his bodyguards, the Israeli-trained Division Spรฉciale Prรฉsidentille that was made up exclusively of Ngbandi and was always commanded by one of Mobutu’s relatives.[50]
Mobutu was re-elected in single-candidate elections in 1977 and 1984. He spent most of his time increasing his personal fortune, which in 1984 was estimated to amount to US$5 billion.[51][52] He held most of it out of the country in Swiss banks (however, a comparatively small $3.4 million was declared found in Swiss banks after he was ousted.[53]). This was almost equivalent to the amount of the country’s foreign debt at the time. In a speech that he delivered on 20 May 1976 in a football stadium in Kinshasa that was filled with some 70,000 people, Mobutu openly accepted petty corruption, stating: “If you want to steal, steal a little in a nice way, but if you steal too much to become rich overnight, you will be caught”.[54] By 1989, the government was forced to default on international loans from Belgium.
Mobutu owned a fleet of Mercedes-Benz vehicles that he used to travel between his numerous palaces, while the nation’s roads deteriorated and many of his people starved. The infrastructure virtually collapsed, and many public service workers went months without being paid. Most of the money was siphoned off to Mobutu, his family, and top political and military leaders. Only the Special Presidential Division โ on whom his physical safety depended โ was paid adequately or regularly. A popular saying that “the civil servants pretended to work while the state pretended to pay them” expressed this grim reality.[55] The Forces Armรฉes Zaรฏroises (FAZ) suffered from low morale made worse by irregular salaries, dismal living conditions, shortages of supplies and a venal officer corps.[56] The soldiers of the FAZ behaved very much like a brutal occupying force who supported themselves by robbing the civilian population of Zaire.[56] A recurring feature of Mobutu’s rule were the seemingly endless number of roadblocks put by the FAZ who extorted money from the drivers of any passing automobile or lorries.[56]
Another feature of Mobutu’s economic mismanagement, directly linked to the way he and his friends siphoned off so much of the country’s wealth, was rampant inflation. The rapid decline in the real value of salaries strongly encouraged a culture of corruption and dishonesty among public servants of all kinds.
Mobutu was known for his opulent lifestyle. He cruised on the Congo on his yacht Kamanyola. In Gbadolite, he erected a palace, the “Versailles of the jungle”.[57] For shopping trips to Paris, he would charter a Concorde from Air France; he had the Gbadolite Airport constructed with a runway long enough to accommodate the Concorde’s extended take-off and landing requirements.[58] In 1989, Mobutu chartered Concorde aircraft F-BTSD for a 26 June โ 5 July trip to give a speech at the United Nations in New York City, then again on 16 July for French bicentennial celebrations in Paris (where he was a guest of President Franรงois Mitterrand), and on 19 September for a flight from Paris to Gbadolite, and another nonstop flight from Gbadolite to Marseille with the youth choir of Zaire.[59]
Mobutu’s rule earned a reputation as one of the world’s foremost examples of kleptocracy and nepotism.[60] Close relatives and fellow members of the Ngbandi tribe were awarded high positions in the military and government, and he groomed his eldest son, Nyiwa, to succeed him as president;[61] however, Nyiwa died from AIDS in 1994.[62]
Mobutu led one of the most enduring dictatorships in Africa and amassed a personal fortune estimated to be over US$5 billion by selling his nation’s rich natural resources while the people lived in poverty.[63] While in office, he formed a totalitarian regime responsible for numerous human rights violations, attempted to purge the country of all Belgian cultural influences, and maintained an anti-communist stance to gain positive international support.[30][64]
10 Makuta coin depicting Mobutu Sese Seko
Mobutu was the subject of one of the most pervasive personality cults of the twentieth century. The evening newscast opened with an image of him descending through clouds like a god. His portraits were hung in many public places, and government officials wore lapel pins bearing his portrait. He held such titles as “Father of the Nation”, “Messiah”, “Guide of the Revolution”, “Helmsman”, “Founder”, “Savior of the People”, and “Supreme Combatant”. In the 1996 documentary of the 1974 ForemanโAli fight in Zaire, dancers receiving the fighters can be heard chanting “Sese Seko, Sese Seko”. At one point, in early 1975, the media were forbidden to refer to anyone other than Mobutu by name; others were referred to only by the positions they held.[65][66]
Mobutu successfully capitalized on Cold War tensions among European nations and the United States. He gained significant support from the West and its international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund.[67]
Relations between Zaire and Belgium wavered between close intimacy and open hostility during the Mobutu years. More often than not, Belgian decision-makers responded in a lackluster way when Mobutu acted against the interests of Belgium, partly explained by the highly divided Belgian political class.[68] Relations soured early in Mobutu’s rule over disputes involving the substantial Belgian commercial and industrial holdings in the country, but they warmed soon afterwards. Mobutu and his family were received as personal guests of the Belgian monarch in 1968, and a convention for scientific and technical cooperation was signed that same year. During King Baudouin‘s highly successful visit to Kinshasa in 1970, a treaty of friendship and cooperation between the two countries was signed. However, Mobutu tore up the treaty in 1974 in protest at Belgium’s refusal to ban an anti-Mobutu book written by left-wing lawyer Jules Chomรฉ.[69] Mobutu’s “Zairianisation” policy, which expropriated foreign-held businesses and transferred their ownership to Zairians, added to the strain.[70] Mobutu maintained several personal contacts with prominent Belgians. Edmond Leburton, Belgian prime minister between 1973 and 1974, was someone greatly admired by the President.[71]Alfred Cahen, career diplomat and chef de cabinet of minister Henri Simonet, became a personal friend of Mobutu when he was a student at the Universitรฉ Libre de Bruxelles.[72] Relations with King Baudouin were mostly cordial, until Mobutu released a bold statement about the Belgian royal family. Prime Minister Wilfried Martens recalled in his memoirs that the palace gates closed completely after Mobutu published a handwritten letter of the King.[73] Because of that, Mobutu was one of only two heads of state who did not receive an invitation to the funeral of Baudouin, the other being Saddam Hussein of Iraq. Next to friendly ties with Belgians residing in Belgium, Mobutu had a number of Belgian advisors at his disposal. Some of them, such as Hugues Leclercq and Colonel Willy Mallants, were interviewed in Thierry Michel‘s documentary Mobutu, King of Zaire.
As what was then the second most populous French-speaking country in the world (it has subsequently come to have a larger population than France) and the most populous one in sub-Saharan Africa,[74] Zaire was of great strategic interest to France.[75] During the First Republic era, France tended to side with the conservative and federalist forces, as opposed to unitarists such as Lumumba.[74] Shortly after the Katangan secession was successfully crushed, Zaire (then called the Republic of the Congo) signed a treaty of technical and cultural cooperation with France. During the presidency of Charles de Gaulle, diplomatic relations between the two countries gradually grew stronger and closer due to their many shared geopolitical interests. In 1971, Finance Minister Valรฉry Giscard d’Estaing paid a visit to Zaire; later, after becoming France’s president, he would develop a close personal relationship with President Mobutu, and under his leadership, France became one of the Mobutu regime’s closest and most important foreign allies.[76] During the Shaba invasions, France sided firmly with Mobutu: during the first Shaba invasion, France airlifted 1,500 Moroccan troops to Zaire, and the rebels were repulsed;[77] a year later, during the second Shaba invasion, France itself (along with Belgium) would send French Foreign Legion paratroopers (2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment) to aid Mobutu.[78][79][80]
Relations with the People’s Republic of China[edit]
Initially, Zaire’s relationship with the People’s Republic of China was no better than its relationship with the Soviet Union. Memories of Chinese aid to Mulele and other Maoist rebels in Kwilu province during the ill-fated Simba Rebellion remained fresh on Mobutu’s mind. He also opposed seating the PRC at the United Nations. However, by 1972, he began to see the Chinese in a different light, as a counterbalance to both the Soviet Union as well as his intimate ties with the United States, Israel, and South Africa.[81][82] In November 1972, Mobutu extended diplomatic recognition to the Chinese (as well as East Germany and North Korea). The following year, Mobutu paid a visit to Beijing, where he met with chairman Mao Zedong and received promises of $100 million in technical aid.
In 1974, Mobutu made a surprise visit to both China and North Korea, during the time he was originally scheduled to visit the Soviet Union. Upon returning home, both his politics and rhetoric became markedly more radical; it was around this time that Mobutu began criticizing Belgium and the United States (the latter for not doing enough, in Mobutu’s opinion, to combat white minority rule in South Africa and Rhodesia), introduced the “obligatory civic work” program called salongo, and initiated “radicalization” (an extension of 1973’s “Zairianization” policy). Mobutu even borrowed a title โ the Helmsman โ from Mao. Incidentally, late 1974 to early 1975 was when his personality cult reached its peak.
China and Zaire shared a common goal in central Africa, namely doing everything in their power to halt Soviet gains in the area. Accordingly, both Zaire and China covertly funneled aid to the National Liberation Front of Angola (and later, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) in order to prevent their former allies, the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola, who were supported and augmented by Cuban forces, from coming to power. The Cubans, who exercised considerable influence in Africa in support of leftist and anti-imperialist forces, were heavily sponsored by the Soviet Union during the period. In addition to inviting Holden Roberto, the leader of the National Liberation Front of Angola, and his guerrillas to Beijing for training, China provided weapons and money to the rebels. Zaire itself launched an ill-fated, pre-emptive invasion of Angola in a bid to install a pro-Kinshasa government, but was repulsed by Cuban troops. The expedition was a fiasco with far-reaching repercussions, most notably the Shaba I and Shaba II invasions, both of which China opposed. China sent military aid to Zaire during both invasions, and accused the Soviet Union and Cuba (who were alleged to have supported the Shaban rebels, although this was and remains speculation) of working to de-stabilize central Africa.
Mobutu’s relationship with the Soviet Union was frosty and tense. A staunch anti-communist, he was not anxious to recognize the Soviets; the USSR had supportedโthough mostly in wordsโboth Patrice Lumumba, Mobutu’s democratically elected predecessor, and the Simba rebellion. However, to project a non-aligned image, he did renew ties in 1967; the first Soviet ambassador arrived and presented his credentials in 1968.[83] Mobutu did, however, join the United States in condemning the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia that year.[84] Mobutu viewed the Soviet presence as advantageous for two reasons: it allowed him to maintain an image of non-alignment, and it provided a convenient scapegoat for problems at home. For example, in 1970, he expelled four Soviet diplomats for carrying out “subversive activities”, and in 1971, twenty Soviet officials were declared persona non grata for allegedly instigating student demonstrations at Lovanium University.[85]
Moscow was the only major world capital Mobutu never visited, although he did accept an invitation to do so in 1974. For reasons unknown, he cancelled the visit at the last minute, and toured the People’s Republic of China and North Korea instead.[86]
Relations cooled further in 1975, when the two countries found themselves on opposing sides in the Angolan Civil War. This had a dramatic effect on Zairian foreign policy for the next decade; bereft of his claim to African leadership (Mobutu was one of the few leaders who refused to recognize the Marxist government of Angola), Mobutu turned increasingly to the US and its allies, adopting pro-American stances on such issues as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and Israel‘s position in international organizations.
Mobutu Sese Seko and Richard Nixon in Washington, D.C., October 1973Mobutu Sese Seko and U.S. President George H. W. Bush in Washington, D.C., 1989.
For the most part, Zaire enjoyed warm relations with the United States. The United States was the third largest donor of aid to Zaire (after Belgium and France), and Mobutu befriended several US presidents, including Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush. Relations did cool significantly in 1974โ1975 over Mobutu’s increasingly radical rhetoric (which included his scathing denunciations of American foreign policy),[87] and plummeted to an all-time low in the summer of 1975, when Mobutu accused the Central Intelligence Agency of plotting his overthrow and arrested eleven senior Zairian generals and several civilians, and condemned (in absentia) a former head of the Central Bank (Albert Ndele).[87] However, many people viewed these charges with skepticism; in fact, one of Mobutu’s staunchest critics, Nzongola-Ntalaja, speculated that Mobutu invented the plot as an excuse to purge the military of talented officers who might otherwise pose a threat to his rule.[88] In spite of these hindrances, the chilly relationship quickly thawed when both countries found each other supporting the same side during the Angolan Civil War.
Because of Mobutu’s poor human rights record, the Carter Administration put some distance between itself and the Kinshasa government;[89] even so, Zaire received nearly half the foreign aid Carter allocated to sub-Saharan Africa.[90] During the first Shaba invasion, the United States played a relatively inconsequential role; its belated intervention consisted of little more than the delivery of non-lethal supplies. But during the second Shaba invasion, the US played a much more active and decisive role by providing transportation and logistical support to the French and Belgian paratroopers that were deployed to aid Mobutu against the rebels. Carter echoed Mobutu’s (unsubstantiated) charges of Soviet and Cuban aid to the rebels, until it was apparent that no hard evidence existed to verify his claims.[91] In 1980, the US House of Representatives voted to terminate military aid to Zaire, but the US Senate reinstated the funds, in response to pressure from Carter and American business interests in Zaire.[92]
Mobutu enjoyed a very warm relationship with the Reagan Administration, through financial donations. During Reagan’s presidency, Mobutu visited the White House three times, and criticism of Zaire’s human rights record by the US was effectively muted. During a state visit by Mobutu in 1983, Reagan praised the Zairian strongman as “a voice of good sense and goodwill”.[93]
Mobutu also had a cordial relationship with Reagan’s successor, George H. W. Bush; he was the first African head of state to visit Bush at the White House.[94] Even so, Mobutu’s relationship with the US radically changed shortly afterward with the end of the Cold War. With the Soviet Union gone, there was no longer any reason to support Mobutu as a bulwark against communism. Accordingly, the US and other Western powers began pressuring Mobutu to democratize the regime. Regarding the change in US attitude to his regime, Mobutu bitterly remarked: “I am the latest victim of the cold war, no longer needed by the US. The lesson is that my support for American policy counts for nothing.”[95] In 1993, Mobutu was denied a visa by the US State Department after he sought to visit Washington, D.C.
Mobutu also had friends in America outside Washington. Mobutu was befriended by televangelist Pat Robertson, who promised to try to get the State Department to lift its ban on the African leader.[96]
Gui Polspoel with Frรฉdรฉric Franรงois and Mobutu in Gbadolite, 1992
In May 1990, due to the ending of the Cold War and a change in the international political climate, as well as economic problems and domestic unrest, Mobutu agreed to give up the MPR’s monopoly of power. In early May 1990, students studying at the Lubumbashi campus of the National University of Zaire protested against Mobutu’s regime, demanding his resignation.[97] On the night of 11 May 1990, electricity was cut off to the campus while a special military unit called Les Hiboux (“The Owls”) were sent in, armed with machetes and bayonets.[97] By the dawn of 12 May 1990, at least 290 students had been killed.[97] The massacre led to the nations of the European Economic Community (now the European Union), the United States, and Canada to end all non-humanitarian aid to Zaire, which marked the beginning of the end of Western support for Mobutu.[97]
Mobutu appointed a transitional government that would lead to promised elections but he retained substantial powers. Following the 1991 riots in Kinshasa by unpaid soldiers, Mobutu brought opposition figures into a coalition government, but still connived to retain control of the security services and important ministries. Factional divisions led to the creation of two governments in 1993, one pro- and one anti-Mobutu. The anti-Mobutu government was headed by Laurent Monsengwo and รtienne Tshisekedi of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS).
The economic situation was still dismal, and in 1994 the two groups merged into the High Council of Republic โ Parliament of Transition (HCR-PT). Mobutu appointed Kengo Wa Dondo, an advocate of austerity and free-market reforms, as prime minister. During this period, Mobutu was becoming increasingly physically frail and during one of his trips to Europe for medical treatment, ethnic Tutsis captured much of eastern Zaire.
The seeds of Mobutu’s downfall were sown in the Rwandan Genocide, when about 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred by about 200,000 Hutu extremists aided by the Rwandan government in 1994. The genocide ended when the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front seized the whole country, leading hundreds of thousands of Hutus including many of the genocidal killers, to flee into refugee camps in eastern Zaire. Mobutu welcomed the Hutu extremists as personal guests and allowed them to establish military and political bases in the eastern territories, from where they attacked and killed ethnic Tutsis across the border in Rwanda and in Zaire itself, ostensibly to prepare for a renewed offensive back into Rwanda. The new Rwandan government began sending military aid to the Zairian Tutsis in response. The resulting conflict began to destabilize eastern Zaire as a whole.
When Mobutu’s government issued an order in November 1996 forcing Tutsis to leave Zaire on penalty of death, the ethnic Tutsis in Zaire,[98] known as Banyamulenge, were the focal point of a rebellion. From eastern Zaire, the rebels, aided by foreign government forces under the leadership of President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and Rwandan Minister of Defense Paul Kagame launched an offensive to overthrow Mobutu, joining forces with locals opposed to him under Laurent-Dรฉsirรฉ Kabila as they marched west toward Kinshasa. Burundi and Angola also supported the growing rebellion, which mushroomed into the First Congo War.
Ailing with cancer, Mobutu was in Switzerland for treatment,[99] and he was unable to coordinate the resistance which crumbled in front of the march. The rebel forces would have completely overrun the country far sooner than it ultimately did if not for the country’s decrepit infrastructure. In most areas, no paved roads existed; the only vehicle paths were irregularly used dirt roads.
Mobutu went into temporary exile in Togo, until President Gnassingbรฉ Eyadรฉma insisted that Mobutu leave the country a few days later.[101] From 23 May 1997, he lived mostly in Rabat, Morocco.[102] He died there on 7 September 1997 from prostate cancer at the age of 66. He is interred in an above ground mausoleum at Rabat, in the Christian cemetery known as Cimetiรจre Europรฉen.
Mobutu was married twice. He married his first wife, Marie-Antoinette Gbiatibwa Gogbe Yetene, in 1955.[104] They had nine children. She died of heart failure on 22 October 1977 in Genolier, Switzerland, at the age of 36. On 1 May 1980, he married his mistress, Bobi Ladawa, on the eve of a visit by Pope John Paul II, thus legitimizing his relationship in the eyes of the Church. Two of his sons from his first marriage died during his lifetime, Jean-Paul “Nyiwa” (d. 16 September 1994) and Konga (d. 1992). Two more died in the years following his death: Kongulu (d. 24 September 1998), and Manda (d. 27 November 2004).[62] His elder son from his second marriage, Nzanga Mobutu Ngbangawe, now[when?] the head of the family, was a candidate in the 2006 presidential elections and later served in the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo as Minister of State for Agriculture. A daughter, Yakpwa (nicknamed Yaki), was briefly married to a Belgian, Pierre Janssen, who later wrote a book[105] that described Mobutu’s lifestyle in vivid detail.
Altogether, Mobutu had at least twenty-one children:[106]
With Bobi Ladawa (second wife): Nzanga, Giala, Toku, Ndokula (4)
With Kosia Ladawa (mistress and twin sister of his second wife): Ya-Litho, Tende, Sengboni (3)
With “Mama 41”: Senghor, Dongo, Nzanga (3)
With Mbanguula: A son (1)
With an unknown woman from Brazzaville: Robert (1)
On trips across Zaire he appropriated the droit de cuissage (right to deflower) as local chiefs offered him virgins; this practice was considered an honor for the virgin’s family.[107]
Mobutu was the subject of the three-part 1999 Belgian documentary Mobutu, King of Zaire by Thierry Michel. Mobutu was also featured in the 2000 feature film Lumumba, directed by Raoul Peck, which detailed the pre-coup and coup years from the perspective of Lumumba. Mobutu also featured in the 1996 American documentary When We Were Kings, which centred around the famed Rumble in the Jungle boxing bout between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali for the 1974 heavyweight championship of the world which took place in Kinshasa during Mobutu’s rule. In the 1978 war adventure film The Wild Geese, the villain, General Ndofa, described in the film as an extremely corrupt leader of a copper-rich nation in central Africa, was a thinly disguised version of Mobutu.[108]
Mobutu also might be considered as the inspiration behind some of the characters in the works of the poetry of Wole Soyinka, the novel A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul, and Anthills of the Savannah by Chinua Achebe. William Close, father of actress Glenn Close, was once a personal physician to Mobutu and wrote a book focusing on his service in Zaire. Barbara Kingsolver‘s 1998 historical novel The Poisonwood Bible depicts the events of the Congo Crisis from a fictional standpoint, featuring the role of Mobutu in the crisis. Mobutu was played by the Belgian actor Marc Zinga in the 2011 film Mister Bob. The French critic Isabelle Hanne praised Zinga’s performance as Mobutu, writing he “brilliantly embodies this Shakespearian and bloodthirsty figure.”[109] Mobutu was included as an additional promotional card in the card-driven strategy game Twilight Struggle. His card, when played, increases the stability of the country then known as Zaire and increases the influence of the United States over the African nation.
Mobutu’s palace in his hometown of Gbadolite, ransacked after he was deposed and exiled. Photographed c. 2010
According to Mobutu’s New York Times obituary: “He built his political longevity on three pillars: violence, cunning, and the use of state funds to buy off enemies. His systematic looting of the national treasury and major industries gave birth to the term ‘kleptocracy‘ to describe a rule of official corruption that reputedly made him one of the world’s wealthiest heads of state.”[110]
In 2011, Time magazine described him as the “archetypal African dictator”.[8]
Mobutu was infamous for embezzling the equivalent of billions of US dollars from his country. According to the most conservative estimates, he stole US$4โ5 billion from his country, and some sources put the figure as high as US$15 billion. According to Pierre Janssen, the ex-husband of Mobutu’s daughter Yaki, Mobutu had no concern for the cost of the expensive gifts he gave away to his cronies. Janssen married Yaki in a lavish ceremony that included three orchestras, a US$65,000 wedding cake, and a giant fireworks display. Yaki wore a US$70,000 wedding gown and US$3 million worth of jewels. Janssen wrote a book describing Mobutu’s daily routine, which included several daily bottles of wine, retainers flown in from overseas, and lavish meals.[66]
Mobutu had really staged a funeral for a generation of African leadership of which heโthe Dinosaur, as he had long been knownโwas the paragon: the client dictator of Cold Warneocolonialism, monomaniacal, perfectly corrupt, and absolutely ruinous to his nation.
Mobutu was instrumental in bringing the Rumble in the Jungle boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman to Zaire on 30 October 1974. According to the documentary When We Were Kings, promoter Don King promised each fighter five million dollars (U.S.) for the fight. To this end, King offered the bout to any African country that put up the money to host it, in exchange for recognition. Mobutu was willing to fund the ten million dollar purse and host the bout, in order to gain international recognition and legitimacy in the process. Mobutu gained Zaire and its people considerable publicity in the weeks even before the televised bout, as worldwide attention focused on his country. According to a quote in the film, Ali supposedly said: “Some countries go to war to get their names out there, and wars cost a lot more than ten million (dollars).” On 22 September 1974, Mobutu presented the rebuilt 20 May Stadium, a multi-million-dollar sports project constructed to host the Ali-Foreman boxing card, to the Zaire Ministry of Youth and Sport, and to the people of Zaire.[112]
$118.1 billion (nominal, 2022 est.)
0.575 medium (2021)
$27.59 billion (31 December 2017 est.)
54.2% of GDP (2017 est.)
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