Ujamaa began its work in January 2001 but got its official registration in September of the same year. The genesis of Ujamaa Center lay in the restlessness borne out of the moment of need and opportunity in Kenya that needed an organized response as the ballast of cooperation activity continued to fall from precipice to precipice. Kenya has and continues to undergo great change in perspective. Kenyans have lost faith in the mainstream state driven processes of development and are increasingly becoming more

and more critical of the other centers of civic mobilisation. Whether this trend is driven by the lack of a specific character of the civil society, government or the private sector or lack of known standards and priorities to which the leadership of these three pillars of society oblige and comply with is not useful scholarship. What is useful and true is that the characters of the dominant mainstream ideologies are deceptive and can only lead to exploitation. Ujamaa Center was thus founded as an experiment in spirituality and volunteerism, an experiment in constructing alternative systems to these mainstream ideologies. The Center is registered in Kenya as a not for profit, non-governmental organization.

Our goal is to challenge, through organised social action the entrenched systemic exploitation of local communities and the entrenched social inequities in the coast of Kenya to which there is growing awareness. Ujamaa’s strategy is to implement vibrant programs that will effect the greatest change in the lives of communities and their organisations in Kenya. The Center places emphasis on facilitating relationships, which capitalise on the use of alternative systems and spirituality in order to build social and community capital. The first phase of this effort is based in the Coast but it is hoped the learning from this pilot phase will be replicated in other parts of the country.