The Kenyan Parastatal, a Few Yugoslav Experts, Two European Development Agencies, and a Variety of Interests: The Dawa Pharmaceutical Factory in Nairobi

Although Kenya was not among the closest Yugoslav allies within the Non-Aligned Movement, Nairobi was chosen as the location for the establishment of the largest and most advanced pharmaceutical factory in Eastern and Central Africa in the mid-1970s, in cooperation with the Yugoslav pharmaceutical manufacturer Krka. With the latter seeing Africa as its launchpad to international markets, this joint venture with Kenyan parastatal ICDC and several private investors was far from being an example of assistance motivated by socialist solidarity. As such, the Nairobi factory Dawa, provides an excellent case study with which to discuss the de-politicized fabric of Yugoslav economic entanglements with its Non-Aligned co-members, in particular some of the least economically developed African countries. Contrary to preposterous attempts to export Soviet socialist modernity into the Global South, the logic behind the Yugoslav cooperation in the industrial sector was to display that such (modest) examples could thrive in an environment where capitalism still prevailed and could possibly be replicated by other, much more potentially progressive actors. Building upon archival funds from the Yugoslav/Slovenian federal and republican foreign policy bodies that provide detailed insight into different stages of this project, from pre-investment plans from the early 1970s to the challenging daily operation in the 1980s, my paper will point to specificities of the early forms of South-South cooperation and its troublesome embeddedness in the global financial and technological hierarchies. Considering that economic projects such as Dawa were strategically positioned to facilitate the establishment of postcolonial self-centred industrial production while also being experienced as a meeting place for experts from Africa and (socialist and non-aligned part of) Europe, my analysis will provide an opportunity to discuss the challenges connected with the implementation of the two flagship projects of the Non-Aligned Movement at the time: the New International Economic Order and Collective Self-Reliance. In this regard, the significance of technology transfer and capacity building provided by the more developed developing country, as Yugoslavia defined itself during the sensitive period of African postcolonial state-building, will be discussed in particular.