Filed under: africa | Tags: Corruption, Kenya, kenyan constitution, Nairobi, Transparency International
What I liked:
- The bicameral parliament. It is expensive but will serve to give the regions a voice.
- The regional governments. Great idea, but how are they going to be funded? I would have loved it if there was a provision that each region should generate enough revenue to fund a fixed percentage of its budget. This way the regional governments can have incentives to promote economic activity in their regions. Better yet the central government should have been mandated to only issue matching grants to these regions – to spur competition among them for funds for such sectors as education, healthcare, infrastructure development, etc
- Retention of the Kadhis courts. I am glad that sanity prevailed on this one. Kenyan Christians were being absolutely crazy in their opposition to this.
What I did not like:
- The judiciary. Judges of the Supreme Court should have had life tenure. They should have created regional court systems. And they should have done away with the “traditional” court systems – whatever they are?
- Traditional marriages should have been trashed. Marriage should be between two people. Polygamy is an affront on women’s rights. Period.
- And about gay marriage, I don’t think it was necessary to spell out that marriage is between a man and a woman. These guys should have been open minded enough to allow for the possibility of Kenyans being more liberal than they currently are.
- Vote share for Nairobi in the Senate. Nairobi should have had one of the biggest shares of Senate votes – by virtue of it being the economic hub. Instead the Rift Valley, with its many underdeveloped counties, has the largest share. Call it urban bias, but I don’t like the idea of rural non-tax-payers always having the biggest say on who gets to steal the money paid in taxes by Nairobians and other city dwellers.
- The lack for autonomy of towns and cities. The counties idea is great, but we should have designated cities and towns that were autonomous – with their own police forces and stuff. Security and Justice are political and should have been devolved too.
And in other news, Kenya is still among the most corrupt countries in the world. The new TI corruption perception index ranks Kenya at 146 out of 180 states. This is one more reason to fire Amos Wako, Kenya’s Attorney general since forever. And while we are at it we should also get rid of the Chief Justice. Mr. Gicheru has not lived up to expectations. He was appointed to clean up the judiciary but ended up in the pockets of the powers that be.
Filed under: africa | Tags: Kenya, Museveni, Nigeria, Chad, Zimbabwe, Southern Sudan, Mugabe, Economist, UNHCR, eastern Congo
“There are other questions too. Should IDPs stay in rural areas or be resettled in towns? Providing the right amount of assistance is tricky as well. Too much, and an African government risks turning camps into subsidised slums. Too little, and people die.”
The above quote is from this weeks Economist Newspaper. As I have argued before, I think that the move to come up with a framework to protect IDPs on the Continent is a charade. I don’t get how the likes of Mugabe (one of the chief displacers of people on the Continent) are supposed to be entrusted with protecting the same people. Having UNHCR do the job sounds good but is riddled with huge moral hazard problems – as illustrated by the above quote.
Meanwhile, this is the kind of life that many an African autocrat (and soon the effects of climate change) forces his fellow citizens to live.
Filed under: africa | Tags: aid watch, development assistance, Kenya, William Easterly
I am a regular reader of Bill Easterly’s Aid Watch blog. I like his skepticism with regard to the efficacy of aid in the developing world. But every time I read something by him I am always left wondering; what do African finance ministers’ think? I would appreciate having some opinions from the people he keeps writing about – because otherwise he is no better than the WB or IMF clowns who conduct their business from a distance without local input. Easterly’s solutions-based approach could do with a little bit of input from third world government officials.
Filed under: africa | Tags: crime, crime in nairobi, Jeffrey Gettleman, Kenya, kidnappings, Nairobi, New York Times
The New York Times has a story on the security situation in Nairobi. In the interest of full disclosure, Nairobi is my home town. I was there this summer and would like to point out – just for the record – that although Nairobi may not be the safest place in the world, it is not the most dangerous city in the world either. The city has 4 million people, give or take. Income inequality is off the charts. The city’s economy cannot provide enough jobs for its youth, most of whom do not spend enough time in school and therefore resort to petty theft to earn a living. This summer there was a wave of kidnappings. Some were by real criminals. At least one that got exposed was by a young woman trying to get money from her father by pretending that she was kidnapped.The Nairobi city council is run by a bunch of clowns.
I agree with Gettleman that the incidence of crime in Nairobi is way too high. That said, Nairobi is not Jo’burg or Kabul. It is still very much a live-able city – as evidenced by the many NGOs and UN agencies that have set up shop in there.
Filed under: africa | Tags: Charter cities, kalenjin, Kenya, Kibaki, Kikuyu, Land, Paul Romer, Raila, Rift Valley, Rift Valley Province, Ruto
I just read this on the BBC and can’t stop wishing that it is all hype. The report quotes a number of Kenyans – mostly from the Rift Valley – who seem to be acknowledging that segments of the Kenyan population are arming ahead of the 2012 elections. And this time round instead of machetes and bows and arrows they are getting guns, machine guns. A Kenyan working for an NGO in Eldoret confirmed the BBC report.
I am assuming, or rather hoping that the Kenyan intelligence community is not sleeping on the job like they did in the run-up to the 2007 elections. If people are buying machine guns it can only mean one thing. If Kenya is ever to have a civil war it will be fought in the Rift Valley. Other political conflicts in Kenya have always been over the sharing of divisible goods – mainly payoffs in terms of good jobs and chances for sleaze among the many ethnic entrepreneurs that populate the Kenyan political landscape. But the conflict in the Rift Valley will be about a somewhat indivisible good – LAND. Those that own the land will not let go or share it easily, more so if they have machine guns. And those that think that the land was taken from them wrongly will perhaps also be willing to fight for the land, more so if they also have machine guns.
The contest in 2012 just seems to get messier and messier. Kibaki should consider calling a snap election and then stepping down. That may catch the plotters unawares and bring a decisive victory to one party or the other. May be then the government will be able to deal with all these issues – land, judicial reforms, security etc – without the many distractions that the current government faces.
And in other news, Jaindi Kisero (one of my favorite columnists) has a piece on the slightly positive signs the Kenyan economy has shown so far. If only the nation’s political class would get its act togehter…
I also found this discussion on the IMF and WB interesting.
One, more thing. Last week I attended a talk by Paul Romer on Charter cities. The idea is as exciting as it is provocative. I still don’t know what to make of it though. Read more about it here.
Filed under: africa | Tags: Aaron Ringera, Annan, Corruption, Hague, ICC, KACC, Kenya, Kofi, Moreno, Moreno-Ocampo
I just watched a clip on the Nation’s website showing the press conference at which outgoing director of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission, retired judge Ringera announced his departure from Integrity Centre. I don’t understand exactly why it took him so long to see the sense in doing this.The clip also hinted at rumors that Ringera may get a job in the judiciary. I hope not. He was ineffectual at KACC. He earned 2 million shillings a month and delivered nothing for Wanjiku. Public service, and the emoluments that come with it, is not the right of a select group of Kenyans. We should not keep recycling the same names. And this is not restricted to just the high profile national offices. We transfer ineffectual DCs, PPOs, directors and chiefs all the time. No wonder the more we try to implement change the more things stay the same.
As Ringera left he made some very useful suggestions on how parliament can strengthen the KACC. May be we should award his courage in resigning by implementing some of these ideas.
And on a sort of related topic, I wish Annan and Ocampo would stop issuing threats. Just give us the names. Let us know who is suspected of having done what in last year’s post poll violence. These leaders need to be named and shamed instead of being given more time to continue mis-shaping Kenya’s destiny.
Filed under: African Economies, africa | Tags: africa, aid watch, Al-Shabab, Bread, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mogadishu, New York Times Review of Books, Puntland, Somalia, somalia pirates, Somaliland, Texas in Africa, William Easterly
Taking a break from Collier and Hoeffler and Crawford Young (and into my third cup of tea for the night) I came across the following links…
William Easterly has his usual skepticism when it comes to practitioner-certainty in the field of Economics. How I wish I had time to read the two books he is banging on about in the New York Review of Books.
This result of a World Bank funded project is sort of long-ish, but I liked because one of the authors is a fellow student at the department – and because it touches on something that I care about. I can’t wait for the time I shall be doing similar fieldwork…
And Texas in Africa has a piece on Somalia that is asking the right questions. Is it time for the US and the rest of the world to call Al Shabab to the negotiating table? May be not.
Filed under: africa | Tags: Kalonzo Musyoka, Kenya, Kioko Man'geli, tribalism
Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka is an embarrassment to Kenya. It is most disturbing when someone of his stature decides to play the ethnic card over the sacking of a government employee (In this case Dr. Eng. Kioko Mang’eli, former MD of the Kenya Bureau of Standards). I mean he is the Vice President of the Republic of Kenya. He is part of the same government that sacked the dude! Does he know this?? Why do we let our leaders get away with this sort of blatant tribalism?
Macharia Gaitho puts it best in today’s Daily Nation:
Why then, should Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka, MP Johnstone Muthama and other two-bit politicians lower themselves to claim that Dr Mang’eli’s sacking was part of a push against their Akamba folk in the public service? Nobody ever told us that the Dr-Eng’s appointment in the first place, had anything to do with his being Mkamba!
Filed under: Corruption, East Africa, Kenya, Politics, africa | Tags: hussein ali, Kenya, Kenya Police, Kibaki, ODM, Philip Ransley, PNU, Raila, Ransley Report
In an ideal world the ranking of an institution as the most corrupt in a country is enough reason for the head of that institution to resign or initiate radical reforms to mitigate the situation. But this has never been true for the Kenya Police Force. Every year, the Kenya Police Force has emerged as the most corrupt institution in the country without serious repercussions at Vigilance House. It therefore came as welcome news when the president announced today the replacement of Major General Ali with Mathew Iteere as Police Commissioner.
Ali tried to rein in organized crime and to tame the proscribed Mungiki sect. The executive lacked the political will to let him finish the job and Ali lacked the spine to take the fight to those who stood in his way. He was also anti-reform, which must be the main reason why the president has chosen to show him the door. His legacy will forever be tarnished by the force’s extra-judicial killings that took place on his watch. But he will also be remembered as the no-nonsense commissioner who moved the force from the backward days of the Nyayo era police state towards a force befitting a quasi-democracy. Many would agree that for a reformer he lasted for too long at the helm and therefore failed (kind of like what will become the fate of his former boss, President Kibaki).
Mr. Iteere, from the paramilitary GSU, comes in at a time when the force needs urgent structural and operational reforms (as recommended by the Ransley report). I know nothing about the man but I hope he is strong enough to stand up to the president’s men (and increasingly the Premier’s men too) who might stand in his way. We wish him well.
Filed under: africa | Tags: africa, agriculture, climate change, Congo, demographic dividend, Drought, Economist, Famine, farming, green revolution, Kenya
The Economist has two interesting pieces on the demographic trends in Africa. The first article notes that the fertility rates on the continent are finally beginning to come down. The second one discusses the chances that Africa will take advantage of the democratic dividend and execute its own green revolution.
As I have argued before, there is a great deal of economic sense in bringing population growth on the Continent under control – at least until people’s life options have been increased enough so that they can make well informed choices on the number of offspring to have. The usual critics of family planning measures – the Church and conspiracy theorists – should take some time to visit slums or rural homes in which overburdened, dis-empowered daughters of the Continent with little or no economic wherewithal run
