Tag Archives: Kenya

really Mr. Moi, really?

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I have great respect for Kenya’s retired President Moi. The man from Baringo had many faults but he deserves credit for letting go when the time came in 2002 due to a constitutionally mandated term limit. He could have pulled a fast one on Kenya like many a dictator have done on the Continent even in the post-1989 era of pretend democratization. That said, his 24-year tenure was nothing to sing about. Kenya’s per capita income declined under his rule. The 1992 and 1997 election-related ethnic clashes occurred under his watch. Moi played the ethnic card more than any other Kenyan politician on record. Detention without trial was the norm for anyone who dared disagree with baba (father). Moi banned political parties in the early 1908s. In 1988 he rubbished the secret ballot and required that voters queue behind their preferred candidates. In short, Moi’s Kenya was nowhere near being a liberal democracy.

So when the former president runs around Kenya being characteristically anti-reform by campaigning against the proposed constitution and claiming that “I was not a dictator. People wanted peace” we can only sit back and ask: really Mr. Moi, really?

au sending more troops to somalia, defends Sudan’s al-Bashir

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The African Union Summit in Uganda resolved to send an additional 2000 troops to Somalia. 5000 Ugandan and Burundian troops are already stationed in Mogadishu to prop up the beleaguered transitional government. The same summit resolution also sought to change the rules of engagement to allow AU troops to preemptively attack suspected terrorist al-Shabab strongholds.

Nice and dandy, except so far we can’t make much of Museveni’s threat to take the fight to the Somali insurgents. There are no details as to where the additional 2000 troops will come from within the region. Ethiopia and Kenya share porous borders with Somalia and have large populations of ethnic Somalis and so are highly unlikely to send troops. Tanzania’s large Muslim population may not take well the idea of their troops in Somalia. My guess is that the additional troops will come from either Uganda, Rwanda and/or Burundi or some country from farther afield.

At the same summit current AU chairman President Bingu wa Mutharika of Malawi took fault with the ICC’s indictment of the genocidal Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir. This is yet another proof of what kind of club the AU is. I may not fully agree with the political wisdom behind the indictment of a sitting president (because sadly, justice is highly political) but the likes of Mr. Mutharika should visit Darfur and UN camps in eastern Chad before defending al-Bashir.

quick hits

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This is progress. I hope PLO does not go the way of most idealists and get sucked into the vortex that is Kenya’s corruption and patronage networks. Relatedly, the latest TI ratings suggest that corruption may have declined a tiny bit in Kenya. Rwanda still leads the pack as the least corrupt country in the wider region, although critics argue that this has come at the price of basic civil liberties as the mountainous country transmogrifies into an unapologetic police state.

Be sure to read WTF Friday on wronging rights…

hapa na pale (here and there)

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Bankelele has a nice post on medical investment in East Africa.

For the business-minded, here is one more reason for Kenyans to vote YES in the August 4th referendum for a new constitution. I remain apprehensive about the size of government that will result from a victory for the YES camp. But as a student of history I am also hopeful that effective government, i.e. creation of grassroots administrative and TAXATION apparatuses in provincial counties, will lead to faster Kenyanization of ALL of Kenya. And who knows, may be the need to finance government will give officials incentives to formulate policies that promote growth and generate revenue.

In other news, EASSy, the third international fibre optic cable to land on the Kenyan shores, will soon roll out, hopefully helping lower the cost of internet connectivity not only in Kenya but in the wider East African region as well.

And lastly, being only nine days away from a short vacation back home I join Magical Kenya in saying JAMBO!

Mwakwere seeks to retain seat in matuga by-election

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Latest: The Daily Nation reports that former Kenyan Transport Minister Ali Chirau Mwakwere has been re-elected as member of parliament for Matuga. Mr. Mwakwere will probably be reinstated as Transport Minister by President Kibaki. The Matuga by-election was occasioned by a court order that annulled Mwakwere’s initial election in the 2007 general election.

Update: Mwakwere leading the tally halfway through the counting.

Former Kenyan Transport Minister Ali Chirau Mwakwere faces a tough challenge in his quest to retain his seat in the Matuga by-election being held today. Mr. Mwakwere lost his seat after a court ruling over constituency-wide irregularities in the 2007 general election. Mr. Mwakwere is contesting the seat on a Party of National Unity (PNU) ticket while his main challenger Mr. Hassan Mwanyoha is running on the Orange Democratic Ticket.

demographic transition in kenya, signs of hope

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Kenyan women, on average, still have a staggering 4.6 children in their lifetime, down from 4.9 in 2003. One Mr. Omwenga – a public health administrator – says that part of the problem is polygyny, which at 13% is still a too-common-for-comfort practice in most of rural, poorer and more Islamized parts of Kenya. Mr. Omwenga contends that “women in polygamous marriages had a tendency to compete with one another to have more children, thereby raising the total fertility rate for each woman” adding that “the situation in such marriages is made worse if women are competing with their co-wives to balance the sex of their children.”

The 2008/09 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey (KDHS), the findings of which Mr. Omwenga was commenting on, projects that Kenya has a total population of 40 million. According to the survey the east African nation is on track to reduce the rather high fertility rates if the current economic trends hold. As it is, almost half of Kenyan girls have their first sexual encounter before they are 18. But wealthier and more educated women do so three years later, on average. Younger women are also less likely to be in polygamous relationships, a positive sign if Mr. Omwenga’s observation is factually sound.

Although at 40 million strong, Kenya is still far from a Malthusian disaster despite the endemic food shortages in the arid areas to the north and north east of the country (Ethiopia to the north has over 70 million). That said, the Kenyan government should do a better job of familiarizing Kenyan families with methods of family planning. If living standards are to go up, inflationary-adjusted economic growth must outstrip population growth by a big enough margin. Although in the long-term education (especially the education of girls), greater female labor force participation and the general secular decline of polygamy as more Kenyan men style up will do the trick in reducing fertility rates, the foundation for these has to be laid now. Fewer children NOW will translate into better education for them, including for the all important but oftentimes neglected Kenyan girl-child.

Urban Poverty

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This is the kind of story that makes you sick in the stomach. The story is about the plight of women in Nairobi’s slums and focuses on one Ms Kambura:

In 2006, she was gang-raped by four men who infected her with the Aids virus, hardy 100 metres from her one-room home. She had gone to the “toilet” in Athara, one of the open fields that residents of this informal settlement run to for lack of sanitary facilities. It was 8pm, but for residents here, that is late enough to be mugged, raped, even killed by gangs that roam the slums.

Kenyan urban poverty is a tinderbox waiting for a lighter, especially in light of the ever rising income disparities in major towns and cities.

In related news, the business pages of the Nation report that despite the downturn in the housing markets in the developed world home markets in places like Kenya, and Nairobi in particular, are still lucrative.

Currently, the rental market in Kenya is facing an upward pressure as a result of a rising middle class.The demand is believed to be higher than the supply of housing units. Statistics from the government and private sector players indicate that the annual demand for housing in Kenya stands at 150,000 units.This demand far outstrips the supply, which is estimated at about 35,000 units a year. The index shows that investing in Kenya’s housing industry has better returns than in the United States and the United Kingdom.

I wonder if the people at the city councils of Nairobi and other cities ever think of how they could exploit this huge gap between demand and supply to provide housing for their residents and make profits while at it – profits that they can then steal 20% of (if they REALLY have to) instead of resorting to rent-seeking practices like inflating the cost of cemeteries.

economic history… and some people’s lived experience

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I am currently doing some research on the economic history of medieval Europe and came across an interesting quote from one Francesco Guicciar commenting on 16th century Spain:

... poverty is great here, and I believe it is due not so much to the quality of the country as to the nature of the Spaniards, who do not exert themselves; they rather send to other nations the raw materials which grow in their Kingdom only to buy them back manufactured by others, as in the case of wool and silk which they sell to others in order to buy them back from them as cloths of silk and wool

The quote reminded me of the thoughts I have whenever I buy Nescafe in Kenyan supermarkets or read about Nigeria importing refined petroleum products.

Raila hospitalized

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Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga has been hospitalized, apparently due to fatigue. The 65 year-old Mr. Odinga has no publicly known health condition except for his eye problems that have seen him take several trips to Germany for treatment. His aides say that Mr. Odinga will be confined to bed rest for a few days.

Update: The Standard reports that Mr. Odinga has undergone minor surgery to ease pressure on his brain after a minor accident. The BBC says the same. The AP speculates that Mr. Odinga may be suffering from “hydrocephalus, a condition where excessive fluid builds up on the brain. If left untreated, symptoms of the condition include cognitive problems and difficulty walking.” It appears that Mr. Odinga hit his head recently and had to get a hole drilled into his skull to drain fluid that had built up too close to his brain as a result. His aides, doctor and sister in law (one Connie Sigei) insisted that the Prime Minister is in stable condition and will be back on his feet in a few days. Ms. Sigei added that she “brought him boiled maize and he ate it all, drank water and asked for more.”

populism gone mad

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The Kenyan parliament today passed a law that empowers the finance minister to fix prices of “essential goods” in an effort to tame unscrupulous traders who exploit wananchi with arbitrary price hikes. That is the story the sponsors of the bill want us to believe. Trade Minister Amos Kimunya has criticized the bill as a bad signal to investors. Kenya, he said, is still committed to the principles of economic liberalization. I concur with Mr. Kimunya’s criticism of the bill. Hayek’s old wisdom about the impossibility of controlling the economy still holds; You can’t fix retail prices without also having to fix the costs of production, transportation, advertising etc. And don’t even get me started on the demerits of allowing politicians – like Finance Ministers – to have this much power over the market.

The market definitely needs responsible regulation but in this instance the best way to protect wananchi, if this is the true aim of parliament, would have been to reduce the barriers of entry in the relevant industries and let competition and the invisible hand of the market drive the prices down. It is the best way to do it. President Kibaki should reject this bill.

UPDATE: For more read Jaindi Kisero of the Nation

failed states index

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Foreign Policy, in its July/August issue has 2010’s failed states index. The Continent has 12 of the top 20 worst performers on this index, with Somalia, Chad, Sudan, Zimbabwe and the DRC being in the top five respectively. Kenya is 13th on this index, performing worse than Niger, Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone, among other basket cases. The substantive meaning of the rankings aside (I’d rather be in Kenya than in Sierra Leone on any day), the index is a grim reminder of how badly governed the Continent is. The best ranked mainland African state is Ghana, at number 54. Mauritius leads the Continent at number 30, out of 177.

Also in the FP issue is an exposé of Bozize’s Central African Republic. I used to think that he was doing a relatively good job. Turns out he is full of bucket-loads of horse manure:

“Bozizé has fared no better than his predecessors, ruling a territory the size of Texas with a GDP significantly smaller than that of Pine Bluff, Arkansas.”

And don’t miss out on Ayittey’s ranking of the world’s worst dictators. Our good friend Rob is second only to the crazy guy who runs North Korea.

Lastly, I must say something about my favorite punching bag Idriss Deby’s Chad. Idriss Deby is a study in ineffectual leadership and is on the list of Africa’s many ‘wasted dictatorships.’ In 2006 he successfully conned his way out of the World Bank brokered plan to use revenue from the Chad-Cameroon pipeline to reduce poverty among his country’s extremely impoverished 10.3 million souls. He now uses most of Chad’s oil revenue to fund his poorly-run security forces that remain vulnerable to any rebel group that can land its hands on a technical. But with over 1.5 billion barrels in reserves and a world thirsty for oil, it appears that this Zaghawa “warrior” is here to stay, his incompetence notwithstanding.

The HDI numbers tell it all. The literacy rate in Chad is at a dismal 25%. Life expectancy stands at 48 years. 80% of Chadian’s live on less than a dollar a day. The growth rate of the economy, -1% last year, -0.2% in 2008 and 0.6% in 2007, cannot keep up with the population growth rate of more than 2% (despite a rather high infant mortality rate of 97 deaths/1000 live births) – which means that Chadians’ living standards will continue to decline into the foreseeable future.  The bulk of Chadians (more than 80%) make do with subsistence agriculture. Oil, cotton, cattle and gum arabic are the country’s main export commodities.

sources: FP and The CIA World Factbook

“the town seemed to exist only for sickness and death”

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Time has this story about the “most malarial town on earth,” Apac in Uganda. The pictures tell it all, life in Apac appears to be singularly harsh.

The story also reports that malaria steals away 1.3 percentage points off Africa’s annual growth rate. It is encouraging, though, to know that the fight to eradicate malaria is not yet lost because “the logistics of such a plan are less complex than they seem, because while malaria affects half the world’s countries, just seven — the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, southern Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda — account for two-thirds of all cases.”

As is the case with most failures on the Continent, failure to eradicate malaria can be attributed to bad leadership and state incapacity. Time reports:

What do these failures have in common? Bad government.

To paraphrase Achebe, the trouble with Africa is STILL simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the African character. There is nothing wrong with the African land or climate or water or air or anything else. The African problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which are the hallmarks of true leadership . . . . in the meantime, millions on the Continent continue to die of treatable illnesses while tens of millions more live like it’s still 1600.

legislators’ salaries

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Annual compensation of members of parliament in US dollars:

Nigeria 224,000

United States 174,000

Kenya 157,000

South Africa 66,080

Uganda 39,960

Ghana 33,120

The disparities are mind-boggling. It is a shame really that Nigerian parliamentarians should be making the kind of money they make, given the level of their per capita GDP. Ditto the Kenyans. Although there is a strong case to be made for such high pays to make MPs less dependent on the executive for handouts (as has been argued by Barkan and co.), such measures should be tempered by the respect for the lived experience of a country’s citizenry.

nairobi blasts were grenade attacks

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The Daily Nation reports that the blasts at a “NO” rally in Uhuru Park, Nairobi were caused by grenades. This confirms Kenyans’ worst fear – that the explosions were not accidents but an organized attack on those opposed to the draft constitution. One hopes that Kenyan politicians will be sober-minded as the relevant authorities investigate this incident. The last thing we need is careless finger-pointing and sabre-rattling.

I hope that the president and his prime minister will follow on their promise to bring those responsible to book. This is a potentially dangerous attack on Kenya’s young and troubled democracy. Freedom of expression is one of the key pillars of civilized society. This is an attack on every Kenyan’s freedom of expression. Those opposed to the draft constitution should be allowed to do so openly and as loudly as they can, as long as they are within the limits of the law.

Politicians all over Kenya are currently on campaign mode for or against the draft constitution. The referendum on the new document will be held on the 4th of August this year. The main sources of division in the proposed constitution include land management, devolution of power from the centre, inclusion of Kadhi’s courts to adjudicate on Muslim family law and the existence of a loophole that could allow for the legalization of abortion.

it was never going to be an easy ride

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The two decade-old clamour for a new constitution in Kenya has not been an easy ride. One is reminded of the saba saba rallies from the early 1990s. Most vivid of all was the shocking image of Rev. Timothy Njoya being clobbered by armed police men. Then came the Bomas constitutional conference under the NARC Administration that produced the document that was rejected at the 2005 referendum. The current constitutional review process also seems to have acquired a lot of enemies. On the surface – and this is what the mainstream Kenyan media seems to trumpet – it appears that those who are politically opposed to the draft are wary of the massive head-start that a YES victory would grant Premier Odinga in the 2012 presidential election. I beg to differ.

Me thinks that most of the political opposition to the document are founded on distributional concerns. The new set up will take a lot of power from the centre and redistribute it to the people. This will significantly alter resource allocation processes, including the management of land. It will also render obsolete the patronage networks that we call the provincial administration. It is not a coincidence that the biggest opponents to the draft also happen to be the biggest landowners, including former President Moi, among others. Imagine this for a second: President Kibaki is on the YES team, but the treasure continues to dilly and dally with the allocation of money for civic education… how can this be?

Mutahi Ngunyi has a different, but interesting take on things. Kwendo Opanga, shares his thoughts on the same, while Mutua tackles the rather risible decision of the courts to declare the current constitution unconstitutional!