This is the Wikipedia entry for the definition of a Banana Republic. The only modifications are in square parenthesis and italics, for the Kenyan context…
In political science, the pejorative term Banana Republic denotes a politically unstable country [every general election from the advent of multi party democracy has had violence, last case being 2007, be the judge] dependent upon limited primary productions(e.g. bananas [coffee, tea and flowers are the back-bone of our 'economy']), which is ruled by a plutocracy, a small, self-elected, wealthy group who exploit the country by means of a politico-economicoligarchy [the same names have dominated the political scene for the last 50 years, Kenyatta, Kibaki, Odinga, Moi. Uhuru, the richest man in Kenya, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, is running for President in next year's General Election]. The term banana republic originally denoted the fictional “Republic of Anchuria”, a “servile dictatorship” that abetted (or supported for kickbacks) the exploitation of large-scale plantation agriculture, especially banana cultivation[Maize scandal, anyone?]. In U.S. politics, the termbanana republic was a political descriptor first used by the American writer O. Henry in Cabbages and Kings (1904), a book of thematically related short stories derived from his 1896–97 residence in Honduras, where he was hiding from U.S. law for bank embezzlement.
In practice, a banana republic is a country operated as a commercial enterprise for private profit, effected by the collusion between the State and favoured monopolies [Think the CMC Saga that's unfolding before our eyes at the moment