In 1963 Jomo Kenyatta set as national goals
the eradication of poverty, ignorance and disease. But five decades later 46
percent of Kenyans live below the poverty line, most of them hungry, unemployed
and often die from preventable diseases.
Wealth inequalities in Kenya are bewildering.
The wealthiest urban households spend 691 times more than the poorest urban households.
The gap in educational attainment between middle income and poor Kenyan
children is at an all time high. 82 percent of the population in Turkana
Country is illiterate, compared to just 11 percent in Nairobi County.
The poor are not just a statistic. They are fellow
Kenyans: relatives, friends and neighbors. The scale of poverty and the magnitude of
inequality in Kenya is socially and politically unsustainable. Poverty in Kenya
is a national disaster.
Poverty is defined in terms of assets or income
or expenditure. But if you travel across this great country or walk our streets
you quickly realize that poverty is far more complex. Poverty is a continuum of
economic insecurity, a lack of opportunity, powerlessness and absence of
choice. Poverty often undermines and chips away at the core of our humanity;
hope and the dogged determination to strive and triumph.
In his book, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through
Profits, C.K. Prahalad wondered why with all our managerial know-how and
investment capacity we are unable to affect global poverty and
disenfranchisement. But Jeff Sachs reassures us that a global movement to end
poverty is taking shape.
There are two views about how poverty is
created and transmitted. In the first view people are poor because of
behavioral and cultural attributes. The poor are viewed as lazy, lacking in
drive and focus, often unable to see and seize opportunities to advance. The
poor lack education or skills and are held down bad choices. The poor are
victims and perpetrators of poverty.
In the second view considers poverty as a
structural phenomenon of a capitalist economy, which is rooted in the economic
and political institutions of society. According to this view, the poor are the
victims. How public resources for growth and productivity, such as schools,
access to health care, water and sanitation, roads, credit, markets, skills and
jobs are allocated determines the scale of poverty.
In their book, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty, Daron
Acemoglu and James Robinson argue that extractive political and economic
institutions lead to stagnation and poverty. Acemoglu and Robinson submit that
extractive political and economic institutions concentrate wealth and power in
the hands of a narrow elite, with no constraints on the exercise of this power,
especially in the allocation of public resources for growth and productivity.
Jeff Sachs was right when he observed that the ills the antipoverty movement
must confront are powerful and deadly.
Poverty is a syndrome characterized by a
constellation of conditions that reinforce one another: not just failing
schools, poor health, hunger and malnutrition, lack of clean water, poor
housing or lack of personal drive but unemployment, low wages, poor roads, lack
of markets, poor soils and degraded pasture resources. The conditions that
create poverty transcend micro and macro levels. They are deep systemic
problems in the structure and appropriation of political and economic power.
Speeches, party manifestos, vision
statements and uncoordinated sectoral policies will not reduce poverty. Kenya
needs an integrated antipoverty public policy.
The national government and the county
governments, along with parliament, senate and the county assemblies must
prioritize antipoverty policies. We must invest in the mechanisms that deliver equitable
growth and high productivity. Targeted conditional cash transfers to poor mothers
can improve child survival and educational achievement. We need growth models
that create jobs, an education system, which prepares citizens, at all levels,
for a competitive knowledge-based globalized economy.
Over 95 percent of poor Kenyans depend on smallholder
agriculture. The best poverty and hunger antidote are policies that provide
incentives for resource efficient climate and smart smallholder agricultural
production linked to innovations for sustainable intensification, extension
services, input credit, reliable public-private partnerships for value addition
through agribusiness and marketing. Not
mega irrigation projects.
Moreover, policies to improve training and skill
formation for youth, raising the minimum wage and employee benefits are more
likely to be designed and implemented if professional associations and labor
unions expend their immense political capital and agitate for enabling social
protection legislation.
No comments:
Post a Comment