The Legacy of Colonial Welfare in Kenya and its Impact on Care: A Study through the Experiences of Mothers Caring for Children with Disabilities in Low-Income Settlements

In postcolonial Kenya, there is a significant gap between disability rights legislation and the lived experiences of children with disabilities and their caregivers. This thesis posits that this gap can be explained through the enduring effects of colonial welfare in postcolonial Kenya. Colonial welfare refers to social assistance offered within Kenya before its independence from Britain, that was administered by settlers, charities, churches and the colonial administration. This thesis draws upon Critical Disability Theory informed by anticolonial and feminist intellectual thought to root its analysis of colonial welfare. Following this, it employs a two-pronged socio- legal methodological strategy, relying on desk based research into colonial welfare and qualitative semi-structured interviews from mothers and welfare practitioners on the experience of caring for children with disabilities in a postcolonial context. Through a reflective thematic analysis of these insights, the ideological and institutional legacy of colonial welfare is revealed. Colonial welfare ideologically positioned welfare provision as necessary only to boost capitalist production. As a result, disability related welfare was left to the margins and taken up by charities and churches, run by settlers and missionaries. These groups established lasting infrastructure still in use today and positioned themselves as the preferred sites of care for children with disabilities. Colonial welfare also laid down the foundations for neoliberal welfare policies to take root in post-independent Kenya. Just as the colonial state prioritised economic growth over welfare, so did the postcolonial state, under the neocolonial influence of the Bretton Woods Institutions. The result was the postcolonial state’s divestment from matters welfare which created an aid industrial complex and responsibilised vulnerable individuals and communities. This thesis seeks to reimagine care for children with disabilities and their caregivers by reckoning with this legacy and its incompatibility with just and dignified futures for children with disabilities and their caregivers.