Tag Archives: Kenya

quick hits

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The BBC reports that the Kimberley process, designed to rid the global diamond market of blood diamonds, is failing. This is largely because of second country exporters of diamond like the Ivory Coast. Made famous by the movie Blood Diamond which included among others the Beninois Djimon Hounsou and Leonardo DiCaprio, the attempts to stop the illicit trade in diamonds that was fueling wars across the Continent had so far been seen by many as a success. Many had hoped that the same success could be replicated in other commodities, especially in the DRC where mineral wealth in the eastern part of the country has been funding wars since the mid 1990s.

And in other news, William Easterly wrote a rather pointed critique of the Millenium Villages project and the tourism business surrounding it. This piece reminded me of the plight of the Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania whose lifestyle has long been “preserved” by the two governments as tourist attractions reserves – even as thousands of Maasai children remain out of school and without proper healthcare or diet because of the incompatibility of the centuries old traditional Maasai way of life with 21st century living (and this is not exclusive to the Maasai). I think it is about time governments and development experts got honest with themselves. Development means having a good education system, having access to healthcare so that people do not die of treatable illnesses, having a diet of at least 2500 calories a day, being well clothed and housed, among other things. If a lifestyle, however cherished, denies the people practising it these essentials for a comfortable human existent it belongs in the rubbish bin of history, regardless of whether such a lifestyle is considered authentic African or not.

on the new constitution: wanjiku doesn’t care

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The committee of experts charged with steering the process of giving Kenya a new constitution has come up with two contentious issues that they think should be ironed out before Kenyans can finally have  a new constitution – after over 20 years of waiting. The issues are:

1) whether to have a presidential, parliamentary or hybrid system  of government

2) whether the term of the current parliament should expire with the adoption of the new constitution.

To resolve these issues, the Attorney General, Amos Wako, wants Kenyans to submit their suggestions to his office. I say this is nonsense. The original idea to involve Wananchi in the writing of a new constitution was a mistake (I agreed with Moi, even back then as a high school kid) and any further involvement of “wanjiku” will remain an exercise in futility. Some of the best constitutions of the world – like the American one, for instance – were drafted by experts. Villagers in Siaya or Maragua do not care whether we have a presidential or parliamentary system. These are issues only in the heads of Kenya’s power-hungry ruling elite. All Wanjiku cares about is the number of sufurias in her kitchen. Period. Whatever system promises more sufurias she’ll be for it.

For full disclosure, I am not a fan of either PNU or ODM. President Kibaki is a living example of the excesses of an all powerful presidential system and a form of government lacking any separation of powers – the president and all members of his cabinet are also members of parliament. PNU wants to perpetuate such a system judging by what its talking heads are voicing.

That said, I think ODM’s call for a parliamentary system of government is also misguided. Kenya is a young democracy that needs stable government. Parliamentary systems, especially in fractious states like ours, are highly unstable. Look at Italy, Israel and Lebanon. They hold elections almost every few months and take forever to form governments. We need a stable and functional executive if we are going to accelerate Kenya’s economic development.

My two cents on this is that the solution lies in having a presidential system strengthened by a complete separation of powers. The president should be head of the executive and not a member of parliament. His cabinet ministers should also not be sitting members of parliament. Parliament should be independent. To acknowledge the ethnic realities of the country we need to have a two-tier legislature. The lower house should be composed of representatives from constituencies. The upper house should represent Kenya’s ethnic mix, with equal representatives from the major ethnic groups and regions.  The judiciary should be independent of the executive without any compromise whatsoever. Judges should have life tenure and have their pay regulated by an independent public servants remuneration commission.

And on the second point. 2012 is close enough. Let President Kibaki serve the rest of his term and go in peace.

the pros and cons of having a local tribunal

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Kenya’s Justice Minister, Mutula Kilonzo, has made it clear that the government does not want the architects of Kenya’s post-election killings to be tried in the Hague. He instead wants to create a local tribunal. Previous attempts to establish a local tribunal were defeated in the Kenyan parliament.

A local tribunal is both symbolic and practical. It is symbolic in the sense that it reaffirms Kenya’s sovereignty in the eyes of the international community. It would show that we are neither Somalia nor Chad (although we might be getting there if things go unchecked) and can take care of our own mess. It is also practical because Justice is political and sometimes the pursuit of justice may need to be subordinated to political expediency in order to achieve better results. It is no secret that some of  those who organised the killings early last year are the same ethnic princes (both in ODM and PNU) running the country right now. Dislodging these buffoons from power may end up creating even more instability in the country. Better have a local tribunal in which those behind the killings would be exposed and perhaps forced to pay some fine while preserving the current state of cautious stability.

But there is also a case for an international tribunal. 1500 (more or less) human beings, with families, were killed. They were denied the basic human right to life. Someone has to pay for this. Political expediency, it can be argued, should never guide the administration of justice. Only an international tribunal would guarantee an apolitical trial of the cold-blooded killers who planned and executed the slaughter of  hundreds of their fellow Kenyans in Nairobi, Nakuru, Naivasha, Kisumu, Mombasa and other urban centres.

Either way, I think it is time that Kofi Annan leaked out the names of those implicated in the organization and execution of the killings. Expose them now Mr. Annan.

Kenyan budget

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Kenya’s Minister of Finance, Uhuru Kenyatta, is due to read the budget for the next fiscal year in parliament on Thursday afternoon. Mr. Kenyatta is expected to unveil a KShs.867 billion (US $11.1b) budget. The biggest chunk of the money –  a staggering Shs.607b –  will go to recurrent expenditures with only 258b going to development expenditure. The latter is a marked improvement from last year when only 141b went to development projects.

More details to follow tomorrow…..

3% growth is a recession, Mr. President

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Kenyan President, Mwai Kibaki, said today in his Madaraka Day address that things were not as bad as they seem to be for most Kenyans. He assured Kenyans that the grand coalition government was intact and operating smoothly (Mr. Kibaki mistakes most Kenyans for ignorant Martians, I guess) and to buttress his point reminded the country that Kenya’s economy would grow by 3% in the year 2009, up from last year’s projection of 1.7%. Mr. Kibaki also added that his government was in the process of looking into how to create 300, 000 jobs in an effort to arrest Kenya’s crazy unemployment figures.

Like most of the President’s speeches of late, his Madaraka day address seemed like an exercise in speculation and the voicing of half-thought-out wishes.

The coalition government is ineffectual, expensive and divided. 3% growth in a country where income per capita is less than US $2000 is a recession. And about the 300,000 new jobs, I would bet a cow that the president either misread what was in his speech or it was a clerical error – like the one at the treasury that nearly cost Kenyan tax payers KSHS. 10 b – or the president just felt like telling us what he wished was the case.

Kenya is 46 this year. Most Kenyans are lucky if they live to be 46.

is it really that bad?

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I just read a piece by Jeffrey Gettleman, the sensationalist East Africa bureau chief for the New York Times. From reading the piece one gets the impression that Kenya is nothing but a dystopia: There is corruption everywhere, ten million people face starvation and everyone seems to be a victim of the violence that rocked the country last year. To some extent Mr. Gettleman’s assessment is accurate and it would do us some good if our politicians read some of his work – the sensationalism might just embarass them enough to have them change their ways and start acting in the interest of Kenyans.

But are things really that bad? Are we really on the verge of total collapse as a nation state? I don’t think so. Yes, ours is probably one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Crime may be high in Nairobi and other urban centres. And it is true that millions of Kenya are currently dependent on government food aid. But these phenomena are not unique to Kenya. Other countries have or have had similar problems in their history without necessarily becoming failed states.

I say we stop all the negativity. Yes we can and should criticize the government and our politicians when they do things against our interests. But we should never buy into the idea that we are a society on the brink of collapse, as some journalists out there would want us to believe. Even in the midst of our woes Kenya is seeing some important progress – not just economically but also politically. No one can dispute the fact that the Kenyan parliament has become a stronger institution (and a better check to the executive) than it used to be. The private sector continues to grow and the Kenyan civil society remains strong and committed to its duty to point out the government’s failings whenever necessary.

I am not saying that things are not bad. They are, big time. What I am saying is that they are not too bad to be fixed.

quick hits…..

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This is total nonsense. Kenyan politicians never cease to surprise me. Why would we want a foreigner heading our electoral commission? And this coming from our own Prime Minister? Where is your Kenyan pride, Prime Minister Odinga? Are you saying that out of almost 40 million men and women we cannot find one individual who is sober-minded and impartial enough to be trusted with the job of being chairman of the interim ECK? We expect more nationalism than this from you Mr. Odinga. Your statement sends a most ominous message – that all Kenyans are myopic, conceited tribalists who cannot be trusted with the running of an institution like the ECK. And that is just sad. And about foreigners… don’t get me started. It is my hope that when you thought about foreigners you meant someone from one of the 54 countries on the continent, because otherwise I would be doubly mad at you.

Finally, the Kenyan police’s bad habits have been brought to light:
The UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, arbitrary or summary executions, Mr. Philip Alston, has carried out investigations and found the Kenyan police and justice system guilty of summarily executing suspected criminals – mostly in Eastern Nairobi and the surrounding areas. The envoy’s report recommends the sacking of Attorney General Amos Wako and Police Commissioner Hussein Ali. I second this recommendation. This report exposes the government’s failure to maintain a functioning society in poor areas of the country and its attempts to cover up its failure and the rot that is the justice system by killing people without a trial. The crime problem in Eastern Nairobi and the surrounding areas is one of poverty and poor planning on the part of the government.

Poverty alleviating measures – like vocational training or micro-credit schemes – could be of help to the thousands of youth in this part of the country who find themselves without any alternative but to engage in crime for a living. The government could also reduce the crime rate by keeping young kids in school. Most of the thugs terrorizing residents of Eastern Nairobi are primary school and high school drop outs. Investing in schools and programs that keep teens in school could be the way forward. A more controversial plan could also be an attempt to have families be more responsible for how their children turn out. We cannot ignore the fact that poor parenting leads to social problems like crime, unwanted teenage pregnancies and the like. Public education on parenting might sound crass and too paternalistic to some but it might just be what some families need.

I am glad that the international community is paying attention to this problem. A lot of young Kenyans (mostly criminals, and suspected members of the murderous Mingiki sect) have been killed without being accorded due trial. Although most of them might have been guilty of robbery with violence, or murder (crimes deserving capital punishment according to Kenyan law) we are not Somalia or the Congo. We have laws and a court system. I hope Kibaki and Raila will carefully review the recommendations of the report and do something.

Kenyan accidents: time to come up with a response strategy

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fireA fire gutted down Nakumatt Downtown, killing more than 40 people. Then there was the tanker blast in Molo that killed more than 110. In both instances the reaction was mediocre. Utterly shameful. I read that it took the firefighters more than an hour to respond to the oil tanker blast in Molo. Molo town does not have any means to respond to fire emergencies. What we have learned in the last one week is that Kenyan authorities are not ready to react decisively in case of emergencies to save lives. Even the handling of the Nakumatt fire, right in the middle of Nairobi, was juvenile at best.

The tanker blast in particular should be of grave concern. Some time back a similar thing happened on the Kisumu-Busia highway, killing dozens of people. my questions are: was the tanker overspeeding? what was the condition of the road? what is the ministry of transport going to do about this?

We can’t just bury the dead and hope that this never happens again. It was not an act of God as some clowns are running around claiming. This was human error. Bad roads, poor maintenance or overspeeding may have caused the tanker to skid off the road. Inexplicable stupidity and mind-numbing poverty caused the locals to rush to the site of an accident filled with petrol fumes. People caused this to happen and people can put measures in place to ensure it never happens again.

Looking at the larger picture, this seems to be a very bad time for Kenya. The boat that is Kenya keeps getting more and more holes – corruption, food shortage, political instability and many others. I keep wondering just how patient we Kenyans are. In other places and in other times things would be so different. When are we going to chase these little men who govern us out of town?

what an obama presidency could do for african leadership

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There is excitement in the air. All around the world and here in the US in particular everyone seems thrilled by the idea that tomorrow Barrack Obama, the son of a Kenyan man and a Kansan woman, will be sworn in to become the 44th president of the United States. I am excited too, partly because of my own political persuasion and partly because being a Kenyan this is a special moment when the son of a Kenyan becomes the most powerful man in the world. I am not big on identity politics but I simply could not let this one go.

Back to the topic of this post. As we await the arrival of the Obamas in the White House I cannot help but wonder how an Obama presidency will affect leadership on the continent of his father – Africa. Already in Europe and Israel we have seen candidates mimic Obama as they attempt to woo voters. I hope that the same enthusiasm for this man’s brand of politics and political organization spreads to Africa. I hope that an Obama presidency will plant the seeds for African leadership based on lasting ideals and ideologies and not myopic ethno-economic calculations.

So let us all make merry and be happy as the world begins a new chapter with a renewed America. And let us strive to imitate what is best about America – it’s resiliency and unique ability of self-regeneration and most of all its peoples belief in themselves, even when the odds seem longer than they can overcome.

a few stories that highlight just how bad things are for some people

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The BBC reports that women in Niger have a 1 in 7 chance of dying during childbirth. The report also mentioned that more than half of maternal deaths in poor countries occur in Africa. I have talked about this in the past but it still is saddening to see such statistics and know that there are real people, real human beings behind them. IRIN also has a slightly positive story on maternal mortality in Somalia.

Turning to the bizzare, The Economist reports that albinos in East Africa are facing constant threat of death in the hands of crazies out to harvest their body parts – to be used by witches. This is the 21st century? How do people still believe in things like this? The Economist may have hyped it a bit, but the mere fact that such crazy things are still happening in communities in East Africa is shocking, and quite frankly embarrassing for Africa. I think it is time governments stopped pretending that people don’t do such weird things and go ahead and outlaw certain practices – like witchcraft and the like. Of course this may be a problem if some law-makers believe in that stuff too. And I would not be surprised if it turned out that some do because we are led by a brood of half-baked adults without a scintilla of statesmanship but full of superstitious and anachronistic nonesense that they present as “traditions.”

And lastly, a positive story from Malawi. The authorities tthere have adopted the use of mobile phones to assist in data collection. This discovery might help improve the standards of data collection across Africa, a continent where planning has been seriously hampered because of unreliable data collection and record-keeping.

scandals in Kenya: can we please have some big names behind bars??

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Right now Kenya seems like the most corrupt place on the planet (sort of a hyperbole, but it’s close to that). There is the running scandal of the sale of the  Grand Regency Hotel , there is that involving cheap imported maize, there is the one with the Kenya Tourism Board and then there is the giant one involving Triton and the Kenya Pipeline Company – and of course many smaller ones that never make it to the national news.

I am quite frankly disappointed by the coalition government. These old men running our country seem to have no idea of what it means for people to have trust in their government. There has to be less embarrassing ways to steal from poor people! There has to be smarter ways! That these thieves choose to steal in broad daylight and so shamelessly means that they have nothing but contempt for the average Kenyans. And for that they deserve punishment. Someone needs to be jailed for life – without parole. And they should pay heavy fines too. We must make corruption as expensive to the corrupt as it can get.

The current saga has got me thinking. May be the Kenyan model of mass movement of the 1990s has failed. Kibaki and Raila are both mass movement leaders but they are failing Kenyans almost in the same way that Moi did. May we should try a bourgeois liberation movement. May be if the middle and upper classes get politically active enough our leaders will listen to them. Because as it is it is so easy for Nairobi to dupe the millions of Kenyans who live in the rural areas and the slums in the major cities. Kibera, Mukuru, Kangemi and others prove this fact. But I don’t think that the Kenyan middle class would be so easily duped. The problem is that as a political constituency they lack the numbers and the courage. Many would rather spend their time in the many hypermarkets around town than to agitate for real change. Some might even owe their status to the corrupt ruling class.

As yet Kenya does not have leaders from the middle class – or the upper class for that matter. The little men who parade as gods around the country do not have any affiliations to any given class. It is no wonder that they usually just fight for their selfish interests. They have never been middle or upper class (not in wealth, but in their thinking) and they are in more than a rush to discard their humble roots (invariably by stealing from the public). They do not care much for the middle class, and they keep duping the vast majority of poor Kenyans (by playing on ethnicity). May be we need class conscious movements (nothing Marxist, just classist) to articulate the interests of various classes. May be then we shall have stable political parties that are based on ideas and not fleeting personalities and ethnic alliances.

The most frustrating thing about all this – African politics in general and the Kenyan corruption scandals in particular – is that our leaders seem completely oblivious. In some other place the minister in charge of the KPC would have resigned already. Just a few weeks ago the Belgian government resigned because of a scandal in the financial sector. I am not advocating for a government resignation. I just hope that someone high up there gets to pay for his mistakes. That’s all.

go harambee stars!!

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So for those of us who are not keen fans of the Stars, they will be playing the hosts – the Uganda Cranes – in the finals of the Challenge Cup tonight (Tuesday). I am hoping that our football team manages to do what our rugby team has struggled to do in the recent past – to beat Uganda in their home ground. We all know what happened with the Elgon Cup. Last year we barely won after going into the second leg in Nairobi trailing by 17 points.

So go Stars! You make us all proud.

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why am I not surprised

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The idiot who came up with the idea of selling maize to Kenyans at two different prices should be fired. This person should be fired for two reasons. Firstly, because the plan he came up with does not make any economic sense. It is common sense that prices find their own level. You cannot have the same commodity being sold at different prices to different people – unless this was backed up by other illusions like product differentiation and the like. Selling plain maize at different prices was simply daft.

Secondly, this person gave the government an image problem. By admitting to the country that there are two classes of Kenyans, the poor and the rich, this person betrayed the government’s reluctance to even the playing field for all Kenyans. Give cheap food to the poor in the slums and rural areas so they don’t litter the streets with their protests and keep the normal prices at the hypermarkets around town. Two Kenyas for two classes of Kenyans.

That the whole thing has failed does not surprise me. I doubt if even he government officials implementing it thought it would succeed. But they did it anyway, because the egg-head politicians, drunk with vulgar populism said so. WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?

That Kenya cannot guarantee itself food security in the 21st century is a big shame. This is something that people did – in desert regions – 10,000 years ago. How hard can it be? And then to respond to the food shortage with such silly ideas?

I know my lament is in vain, for the most part at least. Nobody will take the blame for this mess. Just like nobody took the blame for the lack of planning that created the food shortage to begin with. We – a nation of nearly forty million – shall continue to be run like some village in the middle of some rainforest where the chief and his henchmen do (very badly) whatever they want and nobody raises a finger. It is a sad world we live in.

ps: it turns out that the government has engaged a reverse gear on the new (anti) Media Law. Kudos to the media for drumming up support from the public.

africa continues to be myopic and ready for the picking

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So I keep reading stories about foreign governments like China, the Gulf States and South Korea that are planning on buying millions of acres of Africa’s arable land in order to provide food security for their citizens. From what I gather, most African governments are eager to sell 100 year leases in order to make a quick buck and then for 100 years condemn their countrymen and women to being near-slaves to foreigners in their own countries. How more stupid can our leaders get?

As a continent, Africa is the most food insecure place on the planet. Millions depend on food aid, even in supposedly more developed countries like Ghana, Kenya and Senegal. Some countries like Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, and nearly all of the Francophone Sahel have never known food security for decades. They have been permanent recipients of aid from the US and the World Food Program. It makes you wonder why it is not these governments making deals with their fellow African countries to guarantee the continent some food security.

Food production is what propelled human civilization. Mesopotamia, the Indus-Gangetic Valley, the Nile Valley, were all organised with an aim of improving food production so as to free up talent for other more meaningful human endeavors. Africa, nearly 12,000 years later, still cannot afford to feed its own people. It is not a question of land or water. The great lakes regions can feed the entire continent and still have a surplus. With the exception of the South West African countries and the Sahelian states, all of Sub-Saharan African countries ought to be food-secure. The fact that they are not is simply and squarely because of poor leadership.

And now these same inadequate leaders want to sell the land to foreigners. I am assuming that when foreign governments buy land they’ll treat it like they do with their embassies – provide their own security and run the show by their own rules. I wonder how different this will be from an outright recolonization of the African continent by more developed and better run countries.

We are still in the woods. And we are screwed for the foreseeable future. Like it is not even funny anymore. Our Mugabes, Obiangs and Zenawis continue to fail us big time. How hard can it be to run a country? Like seriously.

when will we have lasting political parties?

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True democracy is not just about holding elections every five years. It is also about having a constructive deliberative process. A process that focuses on issues. This is only possible with the creation of important institutions to mediate this process. In a true democracy, political parties are just as important as the legal provision for loyal opposition. Disorganized and unarticulated opposition is just as bad as, if not worse than, having a single party state. It breeds instability and degenerates into politics of contingency.

Sadly, Kenya’s democratic experiment is once again emerging as having failed. With the formation of PNU and ODM, I was hopeful that these two parties would consolidate and dig in their heels to become the peddlers of policies to the people. But sooner than later PNU started unravelling. Now we have ODM going throught the same trials. Members of parliament from the Rift Valley are threatening to quit the party – on what appears to be purely tribal grounds.

That Kenyan politicians are tribalistic is not a secret. It baffles me how nearly all MPs from a given area can always have the same positions on issues. Kenyan politics is such that just by knowing someone’s last name you can accurately predict their position on any political issue. This is total buffoonery. Absolute insanity. And at the very least extremely shameful.

I am disappointed in William Ruto. For a while I thought that he would be the man that detribalises the Rift Valley. While appreciating the concerns he may have over the implementation on the Waki report, he should not have come so publicly against it. He could have been more subtle and negotiated with the government – which he is a part of – from within.

Strictly speaking, I think the members of the Rift Valley have a point. The youth that were detailed for having engaged in violence were mere pawns of the political class. They should be freed. The people that should be in jail are the leaders who incited the youth. And Raila, Kibaki and Kalonzo should own up on their mess. Kibaki for not providind Kenyans with an open electoral process and Raila and Kalonzo for reacting to Kibaki’s mischief with mischief of their own.