PREFACE
Kenya is a country blessed with vast potential. Its beautiful tapestry of ethnic groups, cultures and majestic landscapes make us proud of the land where our unity and diversity reigns.
We have some of the best agricultural lands where leading world exports are grown. Our human resource is one of the best trained in the region and the continent, while our wildlife and tourism resources are some of the best in the world. However successive governments have failed to fully exploit these resources, or where resource exploitation has taken place, gains and benefits have accrued to a few but not the many. All these governments have lacked integrity and leadership. For this reason alone, about half of Kenya’s population remains poor.
Presently, the Kibaki Government’s own surveys indicate that there are about 16 million poor Kenyans, up from 13 million about ten years ago. The strength, resilience and the spirit of the poor and disadvantaged in our nation is awesome. The plight of the poor and disadvantaged deserves to be addressed. They have a voice and a stake in our nation. We cannot just detail their problems; we need action to resolve them.
Kenya’s level of economic inequality, reflected in the gap between the rich and the poor, is one of the highest in the world. We need not suffer this tragedy. Over forty years of independence and the last five years of a failed transition from the Moi era compels us to demand better economic performance and inclusive politics from the Kibaki Government.
Kenyans grow increasingly weary of the failure of old policies and spent men who have been at the helm since independence. The spent political icons have locked out the fresh, dynamic and younger generations from the political process and thwarted their ascent. The younger generations of talented politicians have been lost to the cause and service of our nation - wasted not because they fail to reach for the stars but because they grow up with no stars to reach for.
Thus the best minds have fled to other nations, and optimism has been replaced with cynicism. Of all the sins committed by our current political leaders, one that transcends above all is their appetite for corruption.
An ODM Government will pursue economic and social policies that aim to make all Kenyans winners and beneficiaries of economic growth. It will target policy interventions that support private sector development as part of our growth and development strategy. We will support small and medium enterprises and support informal business so that millions of youths who are currently unemployed can find productive and meaningful employment. We will pursue both growth and real development for the people. The ODM’s economic policy would therefore be based on key fundamental values of prosperity with equity and accountability.
The main economic and political challenges that face us as a nation falls into five main categories:
• Fostering high, sustainable and equitable economic growth and development
• Ensuring creation of productive, decent and useful employment
• Reducing the existing rampant, widespread poverty and inequality
• Fostering regional equity and development on a sustainable basis
• Guaranteeing accountable leadership, a new constitution and an ethical governance agenda
We will address these challenges to ensure all Kenyans live in dignity and enjoy better living standards. However, to tackle these challenges, we must clearly outline what an ODM Government will address and what our economic policy and strategy will target.
Fostering high, sustainable and equitable growth and development
The present challenge that Kenya faces is not about the high level of economic growth that Kenya has, or could have, achieved in the last few years. Kenya has had a history of achieving over 7%, and even double digit economic growth, as was the case in the 1960s and 1970s. The present challenge of economic growth is about the source, pattern and distribution of that growth and benefits thereof. An ODM Government will address this challenge.
It has been stated in various Government reports that Kenya has witnessed dramatic economic recovery over the last five years. While this may be true, a number of pertinent issues arise from this report that President Kibaki and the PNU seem to have conveniently glossed over.
It is essential that for the average citizen we explain this economic growth and critically ask which sectors of the economy are growing and whether this is where the bulk of Kenya’s poor and unemployed are found. The sectors that have grown dramatically, such as, agriculture, transport and communications, tourism and services, are all areas where Kenyans should have made potential gains. If agriculture has grown rapidly as reported, then the fact begs the question why is it that about 80% of Kenya’s poor, as indicated in Government reports, live in rural areas where farming and agriculture take place? This shows that only a few small sections of the vast agricultural sectors have grown. If tourism has grown at double digits as reported, why is it that over 70% of people in Coast Province live below the poverty line, and yet they host the leading tourism resources.
This pattern of growth is neither beneficial nor sustainable, and no wonder even with high levels of growth, the number of poor people is higher now than it was 10 years ago and unemployment still persists. This pattern clearly shows that growth is not the real issue. The real issue is about how the citizens are linked to the sectors and systems that create growth. Creating growth in a few elite sectors is no growth for the people of Kenya.
It is important to inquire which people and social groups are participating in the country’s growth process. Young, relatively well educated Kenyans are still excluded from the growth process. Kenya’s entrepreneurial class still finds it hard to operate business and access credit. Women and the marginalised are on the fringes of business and the economy. Workers still continue to receive lower wages, even as they work harder and cope with rising prices of essential goods.
An ODM Government will build an all inclusive production and economy system whereby benefits of growth are felt by the very person who is responsible for that growth.
In the Kibaki Government’s obsession of seeing “growth” as the primary role of government, it misses the point on the delicate and critical balance between economy and society. An economic system exists to serve the people, and not the othe way round. Hence, the pursuit of growth and profit alone, without considering the social, environmental and cultural context in which that growth is taking place, makes most Kenyans net losers.
Finally, growth is necessary, but not sufficient, for real development of the people. Development, and not growth and growth alone, should be the ultimate focus of any government and leadership. The economy might have grown in the last few years, but have the Kenyan people developed?
We have received free primary education, but has it led to quality learning of our children? We have recorded increases in tax revenue collection, but have these resources been spent efficiently and productively for the welfare of average citizen, who is the tax payer? Do Kenyans now live in a much more secure and safe environment? These are the fundamental challenges that ODM will address upon forming the next Government, in order to ensure that the Kenyan people enjoy not just increase in GDP (gross domestic product) but also enjoy an increase in what has come to be termed as Gross National Happiness (GNH), which is a measure of real and transformative development of our people.
To address these challenges and secure Kenya’s long term prosperity, ODM will:
• Boost infrastructural development
• Involve the youth in development projects
• Reduce the costs of access credit and business
• Boost private sector development, informal and medium-sized businesses
• Implement targeted special programmes for the poor, marginalised and vulnerable groups
Creating productive, decent and useful employment
Every government seeks to create jobs and ensure full employment of its productive resources, both labour and capital. Kenya as a developing country has abundant and well-trained human resources. Previous regimes have, however, failed to guarantee maximum, if not full, employment of the men and women we train in our educational institutions, even when the economy grows. For instance, as Table 1 below shows, there seems to be no link between the high level of economic growth reported in various years and the creation of employment.
The Kibaki Government has reported (various paper adverts by Treasury and President’s Kenyatta day speech) that about 467,000 new jobs have been created since Narc came to power and that this amounts to about 93% delivery of their 500,000 new pledge of jobs.
This statistic is a misrepresentation and distortion of facts. As the evidence above in Table 1 shows the Kenyan economy has over time and history been able to create between 400,000 and 450,000 new jobs on average— regardless of the party in power and regardless of whether the economy is booming or stagnant. As Table 1 above shows, between 1999 and 2002 (which was the period that the economy was in doldrums) there were still 454,000 new jobs that were created within the context of only 1.7% average economic growth. With the same breath, the economy has had about 467,000 new jobs since 2003, within the context of 5% average growth. Finally, the number of new jobs created has not changed significantly (about 1.8 million jobs) between the periods 1999-2002 compared with 2003-06.
It follows, therefore that even when the economy is growing rapidly, the rate of job creation has neither been proportionate nor commensurate with a booming economy, and the system and sectors that are creating jobs are not linked at all with the people who need employment most, that is, young university and college graduates, idle youths in urban centre and rural areas, and those who are laid off because of retrenchment and industry
closures. What is more, even those who are employed still face rising costs of living (hence the emergence of the “working poor”) or are in jobs that are not making full use of their training (“disguised unemployment”).
An ODM Government will change these ironies that have been created by past regimes and the current Kibaki Government which have failed to reconcile and link the realities of Kenya’s growth process with its labour and human resource potential.
To address these incongruencies an ODM Government will pursue the following broad policies:
• Use and hire local labour in key infrastructural and development projects
• Ensure effective backward linkages between growing sectors and local supply chains and services
• Re-train and export specialised skills in order to tap into the international market
• Streamline informal trading and facilitating its upgrading to decent medium enterprise firms
• Ensure that education and training are in line with the needs of the economy as a whole
Reducing rampant and widespread poverty and inequality
As already mentioned, when an economy grows only for a few, leaving the bulk out of the system and sectors that are growing, and when that growth does not even lead to job creation to tackle the mass unemployment, recipes emerge for widespread and rampant poverty. This is the quagmire that has been produced by years of economic recovery that has not been accompanied by effective social and protection policies.
It has been reported that overall poverty has fallen from 56% in 2000 to 45.9% in 2005/06. However, there are a number of issues that need to be analysed, as broad national figures and statistics conceal a great deal about the real situation at the grassroots, which is where the common wananchi live.
While it is true that the proportion or percentage of poverty has fallen between 2000 and 2006 statistics from the more recent Government survey show that the number of poor people has increased. As Table 2 shows, presently it is estimated that there are over 16 million poor Kenyans, up from 13 million ten years ago. A major explanation for this growth of poor Kenyans is population growth: today Kenya’s population is bigger than it was 10 years ago.
While this might be a factor, the fact remains that the absolute number of poor people has not just increased nationally, but also between and within Kenya’s provinces. In a province like Coast, the number of poor has risen astonishingly, despite the fact that Kenya prizes itself for having a booming tourism sector.
Additionally, as Table 3 on the following pages shows, while poverty is said to have sharply fallen in urban areas, inequality has increased.
This outcome has the potential of producing two negative results. One, it implies that the growth and development pursued by the Kibaki Government and past governments was one that bred an urban-based economic growth pattern. Two, it means that while urban areas continue to prosper, rural areas lag behind, hence producing a sharp rural-urban divide and leading to inequality in urban areas.
Evidence from the Gini index that measures the extent of the gap between the rich and poor clearly bears out that inequality in urban areas has indeed risen. That is plainly undesirable and unsustainable for Kenya as a country.
Reducing both the rate of poverty and the absolute number of poor people, and building regional cohesiveness and constructive integration between the rural and the urban areas shall be issues that an ODM Government will address through many regional programmes, all under the context of devolution and regional equity.
ODM Government will steer policy toward ensuring that all Kenyans are part and parcel of national progress and prosperity. In terms of general policy direction, we will seek to reduce poverty (both in rate and number of people) by:
• As a matter of priority, ensuring that all regions in Kenya are opened up by building infrastructure that will support the exploitation of the region’s potential and endowments.
• Ensuring equity in access to social and economic services for the people such as access to education, health and security.
• Ensuring equitable distribution of all public and government resources to all regions.
• Integrating effectively the local industries and economy with the national economy to ensure growth at national levels is linked with progress at the regional and grassroots level.
• Creating a system of special grants to regions that are extremely marginalized, less endowed, or those that face natural calamities.
Fostering regional equity and development on a sustainable basis
ODM Government’s policy of devolution is informed by the simple fact that the whole is a sum of its parts: A country is made up of the regions in which its people reside. In sum, there can be unity in diversity. Seen in this context, devolution and ensuring regional development and equity is a fundamental means of building a united, developed and prosperous Kenya that is at peace with itself. The regional disparities in present day Kenya attest to the fact that the Nation (the whole) cannot be at peace if its parts (different regions) are ailing, less developed and marginalized by the neglect of the Moi and Kibaki regimes. Table 3 shows the fact that Kenya has been building on a centralised and dictatorial system that has failed to devolve power and public resources to regions and rural areas where the bulk of Kenya’s poor continue to live.
Today, about 14 million of the 16 million Kenya’s poor live in rural areas; 8 in every 10 poor persons are found in rural areas. These facts result from a centralised system of power and public expenditure.
When it comes to access to various social services, the disparities are very high. As Table 4 demonstrates, disparities at a provincial level still remain high. For example, while Nairobi and Western province enrols nearly all of it children into primary school, North Eastern is only able to enrol about 20%; four in five children do not attend primary school, even in the era of free primary education.
As a measure also of the quality of learning, class size matters a lot. And from Table 4, it seems that even while Western Province enrols nearly all of its children, a teacher there has a class of about fifty pupils, compared to only 38 in Central province. Certainly, children of these two areas, though enjoying the same policy of free primary education, are bound to have different outcomes because of having different numbers of educational facilities or teachers.
But the development challenge of regional inequity goes deeper than just at the provincial level, and vast disparities are present, even between districts within the very same province. Take the example of Central province, the least poor region with 31% poverty rate. Government survey indicates that, for example, all 100% of the children aged 12-23 months in Nyeri district are fully immunised. The rate for a comparable District like Thika is 61.7% .
In a province like Rift Valley, net secondary attendance is low (at 17.3%), but the rate of attendance varies sharply between districts like Baringo (4.5%), Samburu (3.2%) and Turkana (1.4%).
The overall message is that regional equity does not have to be equity among provinces that might be ethnically oriented, but it is really about building equity within and between districts from the same region. This is the regional equity that an ODM Government will aim at building.
Done in the context of effective devolution of both power and resources, building regional equity will provide a strong and sufficient basis for building national unity, progress and prosperity for all.
Guaranteeing Accountable Leadership, a New Constitution and an Ethical Governance Agenda
In their struggle for independence, Kenyans were driven by their dislike for tyrannical, imperial and unaccountable settler-driven rule. We desired to replace this with a democratic and responsive and devolved government. However, no sooner was independence won than the new rulers moved to concentrate power in an imperial presidency, institutionalise impunity and subvert all the institutions of democratic governance.
In spite of being elected on the platform of restoration of democracy, accountability and responsive governance, President Kibaki – like Kenyatta and Moi before him – abandoned the “change agenda” and has presided over a reckless unaccountable government. Kenyans’ demands for a new democratic constitution, good economic governance and inclusion in decision-making have largely been trashed as expediency and impunity reign
supreme.
The impending General Elections offer us an opportunity to change all this. We need an accountable government, a new constitution and an ethical governance agenda. These pillars will provide the platform on which all that we set out in ODM’s Plan for Government rests.