Matatu Workers, Passengers, and the History of Public Transportation in Nairobi, Kenya

FAIN: FB-56100-12

Kenda Mutongi
Presidents and Trustees of Williams College (Williamstown, MA 01267-2600)

This project examines the history of matatus, minibuses that 80% of Nairobi population rely on daily for transportation. Beyond their utilitarian function, matatus are a powerful site of historical, social, cultural, and economic analysis because they provide a window on social and political facets of late twentieth century Africa—for example, rapid urbanization, organized crime, indigenous entrepreneurship, the development of markets, labor disputes, class and respectability, and popular culture. This study is, in fact, a social, cultural, political, and economic history of the matatu industry. I argue that only an analysis that takes up all these angles on matatus can do justice to the importance of their place in Nairobi (and, by inference, allow scholars to understand the importance of similar minibus economies in other developing countries).

Associated Products

Matatu: A History of Popular Transportation in Nairobi (Book)
Title: Matatu: A History of Popular Transportation in Nairobi
Author: Kenda Mutongi
Abstract: Drive the streets of Nairobi, and you are sure to see many matatus—colorful minibuses that transport huge numbers of people around the city. Once ramshackle affairs held together with duct tape and wire, matatus today are name-brand vehicles maxed out with aftermarket detailing. They can be stately black or extravagantly colored, sporting names, slogans, or entire tableaus, with airbrushed portraits of everyone from Kanye West to Barack Obama. In this richly interdisciplinary book, Kenda Mutongi explores the history of the matatu from the 1960s to the present. As Mutongi shows, matatus offer a window onto the socioeconomic and political conditions of late-twentieth-century Africa. In their diversity of idiosyncratic designs, they reflect multiple and divergent aspects of Kenyan life—including, for example, rapid urbanization, organized crime, entrepreneurship, social insecurity, the transition to democracy, and popular culture—at once embodying Kenya’s staggering social problems as well as the bright promises of its future. Offering a shining model of interdisciplinary analysis, Mutongi mixes historical, ethnographic, literary, linguistic, and economic approaches to tell the story of the matatu and explore the entrepreneurial aesthetics of the postcolonial world.
Year: 2017
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Type: Single author monograph
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

Prizes

2018 Hagley Prize in Business History
Date: 4/7/2018
Organization: Hagley Museum and Library
Abstract: This prize is for the best book in business history (broadly defined) and consists of a medallion and $2,500, which are presented at the annual meeting of the Business History Conference. The award is established and funded through the Hagley Museum and Library of Wilmington, Delaware, one of the nation's most significant research libraries dedicated to the history of business. The award considers books from all methodological perspectives. It is particularly interested in innovative studies that have the potential to expand the boundaries of the discipline. Scholars, publishers, and other interested parties may submit nominations. Eligible books can have either an American or international focus. They must be written in English and published during the two years prior to the award.

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