There is no doubt that Kikuyus are among the most industrious and hardworking tribes found in Kenya.
Kikuyu people are in almost every sector of the economy be it formal or informal. Their entrepreneurial nature, however, did not just come from the blues.
Gikuyu Centre for Cultural Studies (GCCS) documents that this entrepreneurial spirit can be traced back from the British colonial settlers who had colonised Kenya for decades before independence in 1963.
"Most Africans are poor, not because they are lazy or unwilling to work, but because they do not know how to make the best use of their land, and their forest and their cattle, " GCCS quotes the Book of Civilization Part 1 edited by AR Paterson in 1934, who was the then Director of Medical Services in the Kenya Colony.
With this in mind, GCCS documents further, the colonisers decided to use the most effective device of storytelling which was common with the Gikuyu people.
A book by the name 'Ûugi wa Bururi Witu' (The Knowledge of our Country) was used to 'sell' the message of money to the Agikuyu tribe.
In this particular book, as GCCS writes, a fictionalised story is told of a certain farmer who visits his neighbour and is impressed by his neighbour’s modern things like a paraffin lamp and a padlock among other things and wanted to have the same.
His neighbour told him that he bought them after selling one of his bulls on the advice of the veterinary officer and advised him to do the same.
"The story is a fictionalised narrative of actual events as they happened all over the newly reconfigured countryside," GCCS adds.
According to the cultural centre, the Agikuyu people were taught not to worry about where these 'magical things' came from but only worry about how to get money to buy them.
"The message became, convert your labour into money by working to provide yourself with the things you need," the cultural centre notes.
The centre also notes that Gikuyuland and its occupants were conquered by the British using a 3Cs strategy, Christianity, Civilization and Commerce.
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