Reflexions sur le Kenya d'aujourd'hui

Poverty a reality we can't deny

Story by Stephen Musau
Publication Date: 3/12/2007

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) released yet another report showing wide disparities in Kenya’s socio-economic landscape. Despite the efforts to deny its contents by Cabinent ministers Henry Obwocha and Amos Kimunya respectively, it is a true reflection on where Kenya is.

The seven realms identified as insecurities, that is food, economic, health, environmental, personal, community and political, all point a finger to the historical inequalities perfected since independence.

THE INEQUALITIES HAVE LED TO poverty, insecurities, unemployment, marginalisation, inferiorities and basically lack of infrastructure for development.

The seven areas identified by the UNDP and how they interplay start from that personal conviction. First, on how individuals think, act and practice in terms of attitudes, traditions, culture and vision and second, the kind of persons they put in leadership.

If the thinking of an individual is tribal, then all these insecurities shall reign and reports shall keep on being produced with similar indexes.

Management is critical in whatever happens in society. It is leadership at the local, national and global levels that determines how wealth is created and distributed. It is leadership that determines a community’s or country’s development and growth.

This is what Kenya has lacked over the years and is urgently needed to transform the country, not rebuffs.

Focusing on food insecurity for instance, more than 50 per cent of Kenya’s land mass is arid and semi-arid. These areas have not been put into any meaningful economic use since colonial days.

Agricultural production

Bandits have used much of these areas for their heinous activities and as hideouts with very little economic action. Yet the areas have high potential for agricultural production and tourism.

Kenya needs visionary leadership to transform and open up these regions, devolve and decentralise development. Eastern parts of Kenya, Coastal regions, North Eastern and farthest Northern parts of Rift Valley have huge potentials and needs to be considered as priorities for transformation.

The community insecurity mentioned in the report emanates from that individual tension, fear of invasions by another individual or another tribe or even families. It also emanates from inflammatory remarks by leaders and those in positions of influence.

Kenya has certainly done well in many fronts, but to ensure that the people enjoy their freedoms and liberties, they need to be emancipated from want through technology and creativity.

IF HUMAN SECURITY AND development are to be realised, there is need to fight corruption and mismanagement of public resources. Moreover, efforts must be made to eliminate human rights violations and bad governance.

The challenge will always remain: Do Africa countries have visionary and quality leadership to address all these without fear and drawbacks? How efficiently are the resources and wealth equitably shared to benefit everybody?

Denials will not help in this regard. Instead, the State must seek ways of addressing the felt needs.