The Rise and Fall of Kenyan Entrepreneurs

This book analyses middle-class enterprises in Kenya with special regard to their founders’ social mobility. Using concrete events, individual biographies and in-depth empirical material, Maike Voigt demonstrates how the interplay of personal and familial characteristics with larger political and economic trends determines individual social mobility. Methodologically innovative, ethnographically sound and with analytical clarity, this study highlights the short-term changes, insecurity and opportunities inherent in entrepreneurs’ life courses. It is a thought-provoking contribution to empirical and conceptual debates on social mobility, entrepreneurship and the rise and fall of the middle classes in contemporary African societies and beyond.