Paper presented at Minding her Business Conference,
University College Dublin,
June 13-15, 2024.
University College Dublin,
June 13-15, 2024.
Browsing through the voluminous (and dusty) folios of the Kenyan Ministry of Economic Planning and Development at the National Archives of Nairobi, one soon notices a small signature scattered across the many pages. Starting from a few files, the initials of “JT” appear on an increasing number of documents, to the point when the entire volume from 1967 was signed and archived by the mysterious “JT.” An attentive investigator will discover that the “JT” abbreviation was adopted for time-saving by a woman busy navigating the complex webs of power within the expanding post-independence Kenyan state. Appointed as an under-secretary to the Treasury on March 15, 1964, less than half a year after the end of the seven decades of British rule, Miss Joan Tyrrell occupied a curious (and largely invisible) position, characteristic of its time and place. The new Kenyan government, headed by Jomo Kenyatta, did not pursue the same politics of “Africanization” as its neighbours. White Kenyans and expatriate staff continued to occupy senior decision-making positions in the country while the government encouraged foreign investment and lobbied to attract a diverse range of sources of foreign aid. Nordic donors topped the charts of economic assistance, aiming to solidify their “soft power” in the region.
Joan Tyrrell found herself in an understated but key diplomatic position, brokering, lobbying and negotiating the many geopolitical interests at play. A descendant of British settlers, she was integrated into the elaborate network of high-level decision-makers, bridging domestic and foreign interests. With the official title of “under-secretary,” she was the sole author behind all the official correspondence and reports. She facilitated the Nordic and, more specifically, the Norwegian involvement in the region. The assistance of the Norwegian Agency for International Development in Kenya materialised through a range of built projects—schools and hospitals—and large urban and rural development plans. Tyrrell forged personalised connections with the Nordic diplomats and, corresponding between the Treasury, the Ministry of Works, the Ministry of Economic Planning and Development and the Norwegian Embassy, was instrumental in bringing the many Norwegian architectural and planning projects in Kenya to life.
Exploring the previously unstudied archival materials from the Kenyan National Archives, this paper reconstructs the role of Joan Tyrrell and other female actors within the post-independence Kenyan bureaucracy. By following the barely-visible clues—trivial notes scribbled on the margins of the already-overlooked mundane bureaucratic documents—the paper pursues the evidential paradigm as proposed by Carlo Ginzburg in Clues, Myth and the Historical Method. With evidence gathered from bureaucratic documents, interviews with family members and personal archives, this paper will fill the historical gap in addressing the role of women in the post-independence Kenyan government and problematise issues of gender, governance, race and belonging. In doing so, the paper will provide a new perspective on the way gender was mobilised in international diplomatic relations, a role which, in the case of Joan Tyrrell, also facilitated the global dissemination of Nordic modernist architecture.