Walk down the frenzied, color-splashed side streets of Nairobi where most people do their shopping. This is Africa, but for block after block, the signs on the dukas, as the shops are called, evoke India and Pakistan: Ganijee Glass Mart, Indian Emporium, Patel & Co., Shah & Sons, Ghela Manck, Hindustan Boot Co., Bombay Sweet Mart. Most of the shops of downtown Nairobi are in the hands of Indians and Pakistanis. Wearing Benares saris and Punjabi pants and Sikh turbans, these shopkeepers and their families, with their jet black hair, enormous black eyes and pale brown skin, living in a land run by African blacks, are the most visible evidence of the gravest minority problem in East Africa today.

There are 350,000 Asians, as the Indians and Pakistanis are called here, among East Africa’s 29 million people. About half of them live in Kenya, a quarter in Tanzania, a quarter in Uganda. They are the shopkeepers, clerks, artisans and foremen of East Africa, resented and often despised by the Africans who feel cut off from the economies of their own countries. The Asians fill just those jobs and places that Africans believe they now have enough experience and training to take.

Although they are called Asians, many either were born in East Africa or have spent most of their lives there. They consider East Africa home. Yet few have taken African citizenship, even when it was offered to them with little red tape by the African governments at independence. Made up of tight communities that never mixed much with Africans, the Asians believed that British citizenship, granted to them by the British colonial government, would be more valuable in the long run. Britain, however, has succumbed to its racial hysteria and refused entry to all but a few of the East African Asians, despite their so-called British passports. Though many are skilled, sophisticated and Westernized, the Asians now find that few countries welcome them. Even India and Pakistan, overpopulated and impoverished, do not really want them, nor do they want to go there.

Despite the recent panic and publicity over the problem, the East African governments have so far done little more than apply a bit of legal pressure to move Asians out of some shops, sales jobs and clerk positions. But the moves have frightened the Asians, causing a number of skilled and professional people to emigrate and many shop owners to stop ordering goods from abroad. The resulting depression and confusion have persuaded government officials, particularly in Kenya, to ease the pressure somewhat. The long-term goal, however, is clear: the African governments want their Asian populations reduced considerably.

Asians have lived on the coast of East Africa for hundreds of years, though not in large numbers. By 1866, 6,000 were here. They monopolized the shops and financed Arab ivory and slaving caravans into the interior.

The main influx, however, came at the turn of the 20th century. The British brought in 32,000 Indian laborers to build the railway from Mombasa on the coast to Lake Victoria in Uganda. After the job was finished, 7,000 remained in East Africa. Other Asians, encouraged by the British, followed the railway inland and set up shops at the stations along the line. The British also used Indians as troops to put down tribal uprisings and as clerks in the government service. Until white settlers from Britain and South Africa arrived in Kenya in substantial numbers, East Africa was ruled by the British almost as a province of India. In fact, all trade was in rupees. Indian emigration to East Africa continued over the years until independence. From 1959 through 1962, for example, the net influx was more than 5,000.

The Asian took a middle position in the stratified society that developed in the 20th century. He was inferior to the white settler but better situated than the African. Like the latter, he could not own land in the white highlands of central Kenya, but until the years just before independence he always had more representation than the African on the legislative council. His economic power was second only to that of the white man. The white man had the farmlands, the big trading firms and political power; the Asian had the small shops and some larger stores; the African had nothing.

Now there is a new order; the governments and political power of East Africa belong to the Africans. However, the shops, factories and banks, East Africa’s wholesaling, distributing and importing, its whole private economy, still belong almost entirely to Asians and whites. On Kenyatta Avenue, Nairobi’s main street, thirty-one businesses and shops are run by Asians, thirteen by Europeans and only one by an African. No independent country, let alone a new, sensitive country, would tolerate an alien monopoly over its economy for long. In a developing country, the monopoly is even more intolerable because it closes off one of the means of developing initiative and incentive in the people.

The problem could be solved with little uprooting of the Asians if East Africa had dynamic industrial economies developing fast enough to pull in great numbers of Africans. The Asians could hold onto the jobs and shops they had, while all new jobs and shops were reserved for Africans. But the economies are too sluggish for that. The average African has a chance for a job or a shop only if the government pushes aside an Asian to make room for him.

The troubles of the Asians are heightened by the resentment that most Africans feel toward Asian shopkeepers — the dukawallahs who own small family shops. Africans look on them as exploiters who have cheated African customers for years. The plight of a shopkeeper who must give up his work of a lifetime draws little or no sympathy from African officials. In fact, even well-educated, important officials sometimes grow incensed almost to the point of rage when they talk about the dukawallah. The clannishness of the Asian does nothing to dispel the image of exploitation.

Since Kenya has the most Asians, other African countries usually follow its lead in dealing with Asians. So far, Kenya has tried two ways of loosening the Asian hold on its economy — work permits and trading licenses. These have reduced Kenya’s Asian population by at least 10,000.

As the first device, the Kenya National Assembly passed an act that forbade noncitizens to work in Kenya without special permits. The government then ordered all noncitizen clerks and sales help to apply for the permits. They were the first targets because they held the jobs that Africans wanted immediately. Many Asian clerks and sales help were refused permits, and this triggered a well-publicized Asian exodus in early 1968.

Hundreds of Asians rushed to Nairobi airport every week to fill charter planes to Britain. Not all were clerks and sales help; many other Asians, the future suddenly etched for them, decided it was time to leave. The exodus was intensified by Asian fears that Britain would soon close its doors to them, and in a few months the fears were justified. Britain decided to limit the immigration of Commonwealth residents, even those with British passports, to 1,500 a year. That stopped the panic exodus, but Asians have been steadily leaving since then. Some qualify under the new British regulations, some return to India and Pakistan, others head for countries like Canada that need their skills.

The second push was the Trade Licensing Act, which the Kenya Government passed in late 1967, but did not use until early this year. It licensed all traders and required noncitizens to have special permission to trade in any area of Kenya except central Nairobi, central Mombasa and four smaller towns, these being designated “general business areas.” The act also authorized the government to publish a list of goods that could be sold throughout the country only by citizens.

Earlier this year, the government ordered 750 Asian shopkeepers to shut down. This was a small percentage of the 9,000 dukawallahs in Kenya, but the action panicked the businessmen. They were particularly shocked because a number of those refused licenses were dukawallahs in the “general business areas,” and a handful were citizens.

Mwai Kibaki, the Minister of Commerce and Industry, was pressed to explain why the government had refused licenses to some traders in the general business areas. He replied that the government had decided to reserve certain shops on the major streets of the big towns for Africans, because Africans have too difficult a time getting these shops on their own. But, he went on, Asians who received notices to stop business should not interpret this “as denial of permission to trade in the general business areas. They only apply to specific premises.” In short, the law allows Asians to trade in the general business areas, but does not guarantee them the right to keep their present shops.

There was even more confusion about the citizens who had been refused trading licenses. Officials hinted privately that this had been a mistake by some minor bureaucrats, and the government did change its decision in some of these cases. But it never made a public announcement acknowledging error. Moreover, the Ministry of Information, in a statement denying discrimination against Asian citizens, said the government had the right to redress imbalances and fulfill its obligations to African citizens “who suffered gross inequalities in the past.”

The government drive against dukawallahs touched off different reactions from Asian businessmen. One old man, refused a license, stood in his River Road grocery and said, in Hindi: “I was pleased with the notice. Now I can retire and go back to India.” He had lived in Kenya for thirty-five years and had owned the grocery for thirty four, but he was not a citizen.

His grandson stood by. He had been studying in Britain but had come home when he learned that the shop would close. “We did not expect this at all,” he said angrily in English. “This is a general business area.”

On another street, the owner of a corner store was bitter. He served lunches and tea in his shop and sold small items like cigarettes and candy. With resentful precision, he listed the items he could no longer carry because he was not a Kenya citizen: “cigarettes, matches, sweets, biscuits, nails. . . .” The list droned on. His business had dropped 50 per cent since January 1. Despite this, he did not intend to sell his shop. He thought he could rebuild a good business by switching to goods that noncitizens had the right to sell.

The Kenya Government has grown testy over criticism of its policies toward Asians. For one thing, officials are angry that the world refuses to look on these Asians as foreigners monopolizing the economy of someone else’s country. In addition, Africans believe that the Asians, hoping to persuade the British Government to increase the immigration quota, have tried to drum up sympathy for their plight.

In a recent speech, President Kenyatta said: “These people were given two years to decide their future, and they should not blame us.” Kenyatta was referring to a two-year period after independence in 1963 when all Asians could apply for citizenship without undergoing a naturalization process. About 14,000 Asians became citizens then, but the applications of 3,000 to 4,000 others are still pending. Another 4,000 Asians have applied since.

“Let them not cry,” Kenyatta went on, “for we gave them enough time to decide their future. I do not have any sympathy for these people. They go and say that the Kenya Government threw them out, but they did this themselves. They are now trying to raise cries everywhere that they are not being treated fairly. Let them go to Britain, India or the Arabian countries, or wherever they choose to belong.”

The Asians sometimes get a similar cold shoulder from their fellows who did become citizens. “As one who has been exhorting Asians for four successive years to identify themselves completely with the country in which they have lived and prospered for so long,” says Asian journalist Narain Singh, “I can work up no sympathy for them.”

It is not sure, however, that the Asian plight would be eased today if almost all Asians had sought citizenship. “I don’t think it mattered,” says a young Asian lawyer who is a citizen. “The fact that so few Asians took out citizenship has made the government seem magnanimous. It has made it easy for the government. It can say all citizens, regardless of race, are entitled to jobs and shops and still get rid of most of the Asians. If all Asians were citizens, I think the laws would say jobs and shops must go not to Kenya citizens but to Kenya citizens of African origin.”

The government’s program of Africanizing the jobs of the Asians may run into trouble in at least one area. In business, the Kenya Government may find it easier to push Asians out than to move Africans in. Most Africans in Kenya have little education and less credit. Officials of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry say that small African businessmen often keep books badly, overestimate profits, and overspend. They usually dip into shop funds to give money to the many poor relatives who hang around a successful African. With little experience, they make elementary mistakes, stocking the wrong goods at the wrong time. Many fail to concentrate on their business, and many refuse to put any profits back into it. Unless the government mounts a huge training program, there is a danger that the departing Asian shopkeeper will be replaced by a bankrupt African shopkeeper.

The Kenya trade licensing system may also cause trouble because it permits officials to choose one African over another after the Asian has left. This could create a class of fat-cat African businessmen — the few Africans with capital and experience and political pull getting most of the shops. They might be resented as much by the African masses as are the Asian businessmen today. Poor people never seem to like shopkeepers. A group of ten economists at the University College of Nairobi recently warned the government that “licensing should not be used to confer monopoly powers and benefits on a select group of citizen traders and businessmen. . . . If experience in other countries is any guide, the system .. . is likely to provide new opportunities and strong temptations for a wide variety of corrupt practices.”

The future for the Asian in Kenya and the rest of East Africa is shadowed. Of course, there are hopeful signs. As the percentage of Asians decreases, the hatred of them may lessen as well. As long as the laws talk in terms of citizenship instead of race, Asian citizens may expect relative freedom to operate in East Africa. The Asian population has skills that are needed by the large business corporations that have come to East Africa from Europe and America; as long as business wants these craftsmen and foremen, influential corporations will put pressure on the Kenya Government to slow down Africanization.

But these hopeful signs wilt in the heat of anti-Asian hatred. In many ways, it has reached a pitch akin to the anti-Ibo feeling in Northern Nigeria in the years before the Ibo massacres of 1966. The Africans want a large number of Asians to leave. Bowing to this popular mood and sharing in it, the political leaders will probably try to cut down the number of Asians as far as they can without crippling the economy. There will be terrible personal grief and calamity in all this, but the privileged position of the Asian will have to disintegrate under the force of race and nationalism.

Mr. Meisler, Africa correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, was formerly deputy director of the Office of Evaluation and Research in the Peace Corps.