Many are engaged in producing handicrafts and other goods for tourists. Others earn a livelihood as tailors, shoemakers, mechanics and in other trades. Small retail and food establishments abound. They get little encouragement from the state and the private financial sector. But the future is uncertain.
Population growth seems to be outstripping the capacity for indigenous development.
From just over 8 million in the 1960s, Kenya's population has skyrocketed to 30 million, and by some estimates will grow to 43 million by the year 2010. This has produced a massive rural to urban migration, as evidenced in Nairobi by settlements quite possibly housing over a million persons that stretch for miles. 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.