Money, Value, and the State: Sovereignty and Citizenship in East Africa

Decolonization in East Africa was more than a political event: it was a step towards economic self-determination. In this innovative book, historian and anthropologist Kevin Donovan analyses the contradictions of economic sovereignty and citizenship in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda, placing money, credit, and smuggling at the center of the region’s shifting fortunes. Using detailed archival and ethnographic research undertaken across the region, Donovan reframes twentieth century statecraft and argues that self-determination was, at most, partially fulfilled, with state monetary infrastructures doing as much to produce divisions and inequality as they did to produce nations. A range of dissident practices, including smuggling and counterfeiting, arose as people produced value on their own terms. Weaving together discussions of currency controls, bank nationalizations and coffee smuggling with wider conceptual interventions, Money, Value and the State traces the struggles between bankers, bureaucrats, farmers and smugglers that shaped East Africa’s postcolonial political economy.