Yes, Kenya has been repurposed for private gain in state capture

A report released last week by the NGO Africog argues that the Kenyan state has been privatised, repurposed for private gain in a process described as state capture. The report concludes that this is the reason why the country is unable to carry out any of the promised public reforms. The report uses the failed fight against corruption to demonstrate state capture in Kenya, arguing that since a genuine fight against corruption would threaten the interests of those in power, there can only ever be a vacuous show that such a fight is underway.

An antidote to state capture is democratic elections. Democratically elected governments tend to be sensitive to the wishes of the electorate and suffer from less control by the special interests that facilitate the capture of the state and whose payback becomes corrupt access to public resources. However, as demonstrated by the challenges in the last three presidential contests, elections in Kenya remain hugely problematic. In fact, the report argues that a feature of state capture is the inability to hold free and fair elections as to do so would threaten the control of those in power.