Jomo Kenyatta government passed laws to encourage foreign investment, recognising that Kenya needed foreign-trained specialists in scientific and technical fields to aid its economic development. Under Kenyatta, Western companies regarded Kenya as a safe and profitable place for investment; between 1964 and 1970, large-scale foreign investment and industry in Kenya nearly doubled. In contrast to his economic policies, Kenyatta publicly claimed he would create a democratic socialist state with an equitable distribution of economic and social development. In 1965, when Thomas Mboya was minister for economic planning and development, the government issued a session paper titled "African Socialism and its Application to
Jomo Kenyatta whose assumptions about the Kikuyu it challenged. The book reflected Kenyatta's desire to use anthropology as a weapon against colonialism. In it, Kenyatta challenged the Eurocentric view of history by presenting an image of a golden African past by emphasising the perceived order, virtue, and self-sufficiency of Kikuyu society. Utilising a functionalist framework, he promoted the idea that traditional Kikuyu society had a cohesion and integrity that was better than anything offered by European colonialism. In this book, Kenyatta made clear his belief that the rights of the individual should be downgraded in favour of the interests of the group.