Why East Africa and the world should care how Kenya votes on August 4

To other East Africans and, indeed the rest of the world that do business with Kenya, the draft constitution, if passed in the referendum this Wednesday, will not radically change the way things are done in the country.

However, while the words “radical reform” have been used in heated debate ahead of the referendum, the new constitution will certainly rearrange its politics in ways that only the Ethiopian constitution of 1994 did in the wider East African region.

Kenya’s food basket, the Rift Valley Province, has always been key to Kenya’s politics — from colonial times to post-Independence — but usually for the wrong reasons. The same is true as the country goes to a referendum on a new constitution.

Rift Valley is not just Kenya’s food basket, it is also the region where most of the flowers for the country’s lucrative export industry are grown.

And it boasts extensive tea plantations, spectacular tourism sites and resorts and a few remnant but rich white settler-owned farms and plantations.

What happens in the Rift Valley, therefore, has a noticeable impact on European consumers’ Valentine’s Day flowers and breakfast tea.

The most forceful voices against the proposed constitution are coming from that Rift Valley. They include former president Daniel arap Moi, and Higher Education Minister William Ruto.

Also, while opinion polls show that supporters of the draft constitution form the majority in all of Kenya’s eight provinces, the highest level of opposition to it is in the Rift Valley. If there is one province where the referendum vote could be lost, it is the Rift Valley.

The “No” or Red side, as they are officially known, are framing their objections around all manner of issues — land rights; the claim that the draft legalises abortion through the backdoor; and the fact that it has retained the kadhis’ courts.

But their real beef appears to be that the structure of a devolved government that the draft constitution proposes radically takes away the political and economic grip these politicians have had in the province, Kenya’s largest.

There was never a culturally cohesive Rift Valley Province geographically before the British colonialists came along.

Many communities that are to be found there today lived or criss-crossed through the place in years past, the most prominent being the pastoral Maasai.

They controlled the fertile plains of the vast region, dominating the agricultural tribes who were less “warlike.”

When the British arrived at the turn of the 20th century, it is this land they most coveted for settlement, which is why they called it the White Highlands.

To this end, they cajoled the Maasai into signing two very one-sided  “agreements” — one in 1904 and another in 1911 — that gave away the central Rift Valley plains around Naivasha and Nakuru and also the Laikipia plateau farther north.