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BACHELOR’S PROJECT ABSTRACT THE IMPACT OF FOREIGN AID ON DEMOCRACY IN KENYA (November, 2013) This study seeks to demonstrate the aspect that foreign aid in actual sense does not promote democracy. In retrospect, aid undermines the quality of governance by weakening the institutions of accountability and instead promotes corruption, cronyism and market distortion. It also makes governments more responsible to the donor agencies and governments rather than the citizenry that gave them their mandate. This perpetuates neopatrimonialism (based on neo-patrimonialism theory) in most developing countries and especially in Sub-Saharan Africa where leaders establish patronage links with specific bilateral partners. Foreign aid is given by the rich industrialized states of the Global North to the poor economies of the Global South to aid in bridging the development gap. This has however had the repercussion of dividing the global political economy into countries of the metropolis (rich states) and satellite states (poor states). The study made use of the library data and adopted content analysis to review the existing literature on aid, growth, development. This assisted with identifying the gaps in the literature. Content analysis of the literature from books, journal articles, economic surveys (Republic of Kenya) and other related sources like World Bank records on aid disbursement to SubSaharan African states shall be done to show that foreign aid undermines democratic consolidation and that it promotes corruption and institutional decay. Based on the findings, our conclusions are that aid actually impedes democratic consolidation in many Sub-Saharan African countries rather than the hugely held notion that it promotes democracy. In addition, institutional decay and high prevalence of corruption in Kenya have been associated with overdependence on foreign aid. In fact, democracy in Kenya is as a result of other internally generated factors like ordinary people getting frustrated with irresponsive leadership of their presidents from the time after independence until now (Ake, 1999). This however does not negate the role the Western donors have played in Kenya’s democratization process. The scope of this study is between the years of 1990 and 2000 respectively. 1