A crisis of population growth can be averted if the country's rural wealth is not siphoned off to support lavish urban lifestyles or exported away in super profits by foreign investors. Kenya can never compete with the industrial world. For many, including those in the middle class, survival is tied to an exceptionally strong kinship network of obligations and responsibilities and a deep and intense morality and sense of community from. The common pictures of highly politicized tribal competition for power misses the point. The tribe in contemporary Kenya is necessary for individual survival for all but the Westernized elite.
Local languages serve to protect local resources against outside intrusion.
Tribal networks give individuals access to resources inside and outside ones region, and are necessary building blocks of a new Kenyan society. Not surprisingly, tribal ties are weakest in Nairobi where ethnic diversity is highest. Class and racial tensions are at their highest in Nairobi. The poor are openly disdainful of the extravagances of the elite. This has racial implications as members of the country's South Asian population possess a disproportionate share of its wealth and are highly visible in the more lucrative sectors of the economy, particularly the foreign private sector.