Boundary Conditions for Digitization Preservation Focus Reform in Kenya: Process Tracing of Accountability and Implementation Failure

Kenya's digitization agenda has repeatedly encountered a puzzling pattern: well-funded preservation initiatives stall not at the point of technical installation but at the moment of organizational integration. the present analysis argues that the failure of digitization preservation reform in Kenya is best understood not as a technological deficit but as an accountability deficit embedded in the institutional architecture of implementation. Drawing on process tracing as an analytical method, the study reconstructs the causal mechanisms linking policy formulation to implementation breakdown across Kenyan public memory institutions. The analysis identifies three boundary conditions that determine whether accountability mechanisms translate into preservation outcomes: the alignment of mandate clarity with resource devolution, the presence of professional communities capable of exercising peer-based accountability, and the existence of feedback loops connecting preservation failures to administrative consequences. Where these conditions are absent, digitization initiatives produce what is termed 'archival theatre'—the performance of preservation without its substance.