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In the early 1960s, the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s Division for International Cooperation (Mashav) poured its efforts into presenting the State of Israel as a champion for women’s advancement in the “developing world.” These efforts were part of a broad international development program designed to nourish relations between Israel and newly-emerging nation-states in the Global South, in order to bring the country out of international isolation. In addition to hosting thousands of women from Africa, Asia and Latin America in Israel for month-long seminars in nutrition, social work, education and public health, the Foreign Ministry began to sponsor “on the spot” training courses for women in their home countries.
This paper focuses on one of the earliest of such initiatives, the Kenya-Israel School of Social Work. Arriving in Kenya in 1962, the school’s Israeli educators presented themselves as “community development experts,” whose commitment to the Zionist project provided them with the tools to help ignite among rural women in East Africa a sense of national belonging, a desire to participate in their country’s growth, and the skills to do so. By examining correspondence between Israeli officials and the school’s staff, the paper traces their efforts to present Israel’s fabled pioneering ethos and technical expertise as a model for postcolonial African states, and for African women’s advancement in particular. It will examine the ways in which Israeli ideas about gender and citizenship informed the school’s curriculum. The paper will then explore the ‘on the ground’ challenges that ultimately led to the school’s failure. Drawing upon detailed reports written by Kenyan government officials and the local staff from the UN’s Bureau for Technical Assistance, I will illuminate the tensions and conflicts that emerged between these groups and the Israeli educators and diplomats involved in the school’s creation and operation. Despite the insistence of Israeli officials and educators that they intuitively understood the nation-building project in Kenya, as well as the role of women within it, these reports suggest instead that Kenya’s government officials, UN agents, and some of the school’s graduates felt that Israeli educators and diplomats were frequently oblivious to the social, economic and political dynamics that shaped gender relations in Kenya.