The main hypothesis here is that the notion of economic and social development has been misconceived by most stakeholders in matters of development. This misconception is the main cause of underdevelopment in Kenya, which leads to all the reasons most authors and commentators have given to explain Kenya's situation. Therefore, it is only possible to characterise the role of human development in Kenyan economic development after understanding what the notion of economic and social development means and whether in the Kenyan context human development should actually precede economic development or vice versa. This approach to development has created the phenomenon of Africans living "parallel lives" as recently reported in "The East African" on June 25, 2007. This phenomenon can be explained by the fact that there is a native African way of life concurrently competing, though unfavourably, with the imported dominant Western culture. The main argument in this article, therefore, is that the institutional changes through social policy targeting the modernisation of the Kenyan traditional way of life ought to be the driver of economic growth and curriculum reforms, instead of expecting economic growth and curriculum reforms to generate development. (Contains 4 notes.)