If black Africa is to make its own way economically, it will have to develop far greater numbers of native-born businessmen. Ghana and Nigeria have both made headway in that direction, but neither is moving any faster than Kenya, which won its independence from Britain less than five years ago. More and more of Kenya's blacks, who make up 97% of the country's population of 10 million, have been going into enterprises that once were the preserve of whites and Asians.
President Jomo Kenyatta has lately sought to accelerate that trend with a vigorous drive for "Africanization." He has refused to issue work permits to non-Africans when blacks can perform the same job, ruled that certain rural businesses be operated by natives only. Kenyatta has also put pressure on big foreign-run companies to step up their management-training programs for black employees. Kenya's Labor Minister Eliud Ngala Mwendwa last month warned white and Asian businessmen that unless they train more blacks to fill management positions, they "will be seriously embarrassed and may even be forced out of business in the not-too-distant-future."
Myths of Hemingway. If Kenya's government is impatient, so are its citizens, many of whom are preparing for business careers by attending night classes or by signing up for British correspondence courses. Of those Kenyans who have already made it, many are foreign-educated men who have also shown their talents in government service. Three of the most successful:
> Sugar Mogul Charles Wanyoike Rubia, 45, doubles as chairman of the Kenya Development Finance Co., a four-year-old, nonprofit organization created to help establish new industry. A member of the dominant Kikuyu tribe, from which Kenya draws a large proportion of its successful native businessmen, the missionary-educated Rubia was once a clerk in a local stock brokerage, later became a dry-goods retailer before serving from 1962 to 1967 as Nairobi's first African mayor. Rubia's development company recently doubled its capitalization to $9,000,000. "Industry does not generally attract outside investors," he says, "unless there is active participation in industry within the country itself."
> Travel Director Simon Thuo Kairo, 37, also a Kikuyu, is determined to disabuse tourists "of the myths of Hemingway and Robert Ruark—of the faithful, ignorant, black gun bearer and other noble savages of yesteryear." A graduate of a South Dakota Presbyterian college, Kairo put in two years as President Kenyatta's private secretary before staking $17,000 in receipts from his 300-acre cattle, maize and sheep farm to start Kenya's first African-owned safari operation. Kairo's safaris, however, are not designed for big-game hunting. Equipped with five Volkswagen minibuses, he takes his clients to "meet the people in the villages and let them enjoy African dishes."