Dr. Javan Zaumambo Mokebo

Imaging Economic Dependencies in Colonial Plantation Economies of Africa and the Caribbean through Credit, Labour and Control, 1890–1960

This project investigates how colonial plantation economies in Africa and the Caribbean institutionalised new forms of economic dependency in the aftermath of slavery. The study examines how fiscal instruments, specifically credit, debt, and taxation, reshaped coercive labour regimes and perpetuated asymmetrical relations between colonial states, employers, and labourers. The project aims to demonstrate that although abolition formally ended slavery, economic systems continued to reproduce Strong Asymmetrical Dependencies (SADs) through credit manipulation, wage regulation, and fiscal discipline. The project seeks to demonstrate how colonial fiscal policies and labour regulation transformed freedom into a condition of managed dependency, and how colonised communities resisted, negotiated, or adapted to coercive economic structures through everyday survival practices and state coercion. The study is largely grounded in archival, ethnographic-historical, and discourse analysis. The study employs a comparative transatlantic framework for British East Africa (comprising Kenya and Uganda) and the Caribbean (specifically, Jamaica and Trinidad). Through triangulation, these methods will facilitate analysis that links macro-economic policy to the micro-level experience of coercion. This study reinterprets post-abolition plantation economies as spaces of modern dependency that merged economic coercion with racial and legal hierarchies. This project further resonates with current patterns of global inequalities and debt governance. The finding will contribute to historical and contemporary debates on coerced labour, fiscal discipline, and development discourse. 

2018–2025
PhD in History, Kenyatta University, Kenya

2012–2015
MA in History, Kenyatta University, Kenya

since April 2026
Postdoctoral Researcher, Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies, University of Bonn, Germany

March 2026 
Lecturer, Pwani University, Kenya

September 2021–February 2026
Tutorial Fellow in History, Pwani University, Kenya

Published Essays

• 2023. "Missionaries and the Scramble for Africa. In Religion and World Civilizations: How Faith Shaped Societies from Antiquity to the Present, Vol. 3, edited by A. Holt, 140–143. New York: Bloomsbury Academic Publishing.
• 2023. "The Impact of Christianity on African Art." In Religion and World Civilizations: How Faith Shaped Societies from Antiquity to the Present, Vol. 2, edited by A. Holt, 229–231. New York: Bloomsbury Academic Publishing. 
• 2023. "Islamization under Idris Alawma." In Religion and World Civilizations: How Faith Shaped Societies from Antiquity to the Present, Vol. 3, edited by A. Holt, 145–147. New York: Bloomsbury Academic Publishing.
• 2023. "Prophecy and Legacy of Simon Kimbangu." In Religion and World Civilizations: How Faith Shaped Societies from Antiquity to the Present, Vol . 3, edited by A. Holt, 148–150. New York: Bloomsbury Academic Publishing.
• 2023. "Arrival of Christianity in the Kingdom of Congo." In Religion and World Civilizations: How Faith Shaped Societies from Antiquity to the Present, Vol. 3, edited by A. Holt, 129–130. New York: Bloomsbury Academic Publishing.
• 2023. "Establishment of the Sokoto Caliphate in West Africa." In Religion and World Civilizations: How Faith Shaped Societies from Antiquity to the Present, Vol 3, edited by A. Holt, 137–138. New York: Bloomsbury Academic Publishing. 

Brief

• 2023. Evidence Brief: What works to eliminate stigma as a barrier in accessing health services for people with mental illness in LMICs? Disability Evidence Portal. Access

Papers

• 2020. "Gender, Slavery and Slave Trade in the Horn of Africa." International Journal for Innovative Research in Multidisciplinary Field (IJIRMF) 6(6). 
• 2018. "The Rising Female-headed Households among the Nubians: A Case of Historical Marginalization of an Ethnic Minority in Kenya." The International Journal of Humanities & Social Studies 6(5). 
• 2018. "Gender Based Domestic Violence Against African Men: A Case of the Gusii of Kenya." International Journal of Humanities & Social Studies (IJHSSS). ISSN: 2349-6959(Online), ISSN: 2349-6711(Print).
• 2018. "The Rising Female-headed Households among the Nubians: A Case of Historical Marginalization of an Ethnic Minority in Kenya." The International Journal of Humanities & Social Studies 6(5).