Lack of political will to make Kenya food secure is a major factor in the recurring food crisis. Famine, drought and high food prices are prevalent within the crisis, and often result in human and livestock fatalities. President Mwai Kibaki has failed to provide long-term solutions to avert predictable hunger and food shortage, and instead put sections of the country in a state of high dependency on food aid. During his decade of many unfulfilled promises, he declared drought and famine ‘a national disaster’ at least four times.
On July 13, 2004 Kibaki declared that period’s drought which had caused 60 per cent crop failure in five provinces, a national disaster. Up to 4.3 million adults and 1.5 million children would need food aid for the next six months. He then appealed for both local and international food donation and funding. Kibaki said, during that year alone, the government had distributed food worth KSh1.5 billion, and required a further $32 million (KSh2.56 billion) to provide water, sanitation, health and nutrition, agriculture, livestock and education. A shortage of four million bags of maize was also predicted for the next harvest.
That same year, the then Justice and Constitutional Affairs assistant minister Robinson Githae, told Kenyans to diversify their eating habits and start eating ants, rats, donkeys and other edibles, to get rid of hunger as others did elsewhere in Africa. Kenyans felt insulted by his remarks, which reflected a high level of arrogance and asked whether he ate such food. He defended his call by saying: “When you are facing starvation, you should eat anything and everything you can find. Even God will not forgive you if you starve.” Regardless, it was reminiscent of the journalistic cliché – “Let them eat cake”, controversially attributed to Marie Antoinette, who was Queen of France during the French Revolution, and thought to have cared less about her starving subjects. Githae was also perceived as insensitive to cultural and religious beliefs which influence the eating habits of Kenyans. His reaction was typical of Kenyan lawmakers who usually opt for easy answers to the country’s insurmountable crises.
When President Kibaki was delivering his new year’s address in January 2006, he once again declared then-ongoing famine in parts of the country, a national disaster. Up to 2.5 million people would need famine relief, estimated to cost KSh11 billion ($151 million). Prolonged drought had caused crop failure and livestock losses. He appealed to local and international partners to assist Government’s efforts to help those affected. Other areas which required urgent help were the provision of water, healthcare, restocking of livestock, education and provision of seeds to farmers for the next crop season. In the arid eastern and northern parts of the country, more than 30 people and hundreds of livestock had already died within three months of the drought.
In January 2009, Kibaki yet again declared that period’s drought and famine a national disaster, and launched an appeal to raise over KSh37 billion to address the situation. Around 10 million Kenyans were then food insecure and the government would import 7 million bags of maize at the cost of KSh17 billion to mitigate the crisis.
The latest national disaster declaration was on May 30, 2011 when President Kibaki mentioned that due to the persistent drought, necessary interventions be put in place within the relevant ministries to assist affected citizens. It was the usual appeal for relief food. The government would allocate Ksh1 billion for livestock off-take and provide an additional KSh600 million to the Water ministry, to facilitate efficient transportation of water to the people and livestock.
The politics of hunger, drought and famine
Agriculture is the backbone of Kenya’s economy and contributes 24 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) directly. It is also the country’s top foreign exchange earner, contributing around 60 per cent of export earnings from tea and coffee. Kenya’s main staple food is maize, though there are other cereals like rice, wheat, millet and sorghum. Around 75 per cent of Kenyans participate in agriculture, which makes it the most important economic sector in the country (see kenya.usaid.gov). It is therefore preposterous that an agrarian economy like Kenya is constantly undergoing a food crisis.
In his book: ‘Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (1981), Amrtya Sen, the 1998 Nobel Laureate in Economics, demonstrated that “famine occurs not only from a lack of food, but from inequalities built into mechanisms for distributing food.” This means that there are other underlying social and economic factors which lead to starvation within some groups in society, such as: declining wages, unemployment, rising food prices, and poor food-distribution systems.
In the 2010 report of a joint international mission by the African Network on the Right to Food (RAPDA) and Human Rights Organization on the Right to food (FIAN) titled: ‘Kenya’s hunger crisis – the result of right to food violations’, it was found that a number of structural problems contributed to drought and man-made emergencies, which led to famine. However, cases of extreme famine in the past four years were due to periods of failed rains and the impact of post-election violence in 2007. These findings were from a research mission undertaken on September 20-26, 2009. The investigating team visited various parts of Kenya and spoke to community representatives in hunger-prone areas; policy makers; individuals at national and local levels; non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and Community Based Organizations (CBOs). The results indicated a widespread food insecurity situation that left very few communities unaffected.
Some of the underlying structural problems identified by the mission included:
• A high level of inequality in Kenya.
• Exclusion of the poor and vulnerable groups from the social, economic and political spheres.
• Widespread corruption and nepotism.
• A lack of investment in sustainable agriculture.
• A fragmented and contradictory legislative and policy framework.
The above contexts point to the government’s failure “to adhere to its obligations to respect, protect and fulfill the right to food as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and other international and regional human rights instruments” (Page 5).
On January 16, 2006 newspaper reporter Otsieno Namwaya wrote an exclusive article in the East African Standard titled, ‘Kenya: Playing politics with hunger’. He investigated, analyzed and proved that ministers in Kibaki’s administration, their cronies and top government officials, benefited financially from the political economy of famine. This was evident in the licensing of companies awarded contracts to supply maize to famine-stricken areas in 2004, by then-Agriculture minister, Kipruto arap Kirwa. The government’s tendering process had been egregiously flouted in the selection of companies which imported the maize, as noted later in a Parliamentary Investments Committee report. During that period, around 39 people and an unknown number of livestock died.
The 2004 famine-national-disaster declaration which required KSh4 billion was never lifted and in 2005, another disaster was declared by the government, aiming to raise KSh11 billion to fight the famine. Meanwhile, investigations revealed that over one million bags of maize laid idle, some of it rotting, at the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB) silos in North Rift, while many Kenyans starved elsewhere. The reason was lack of storage space because the silos were full of the last season’s harvest. There were 450,000 bags at the NCPB branch in Kitale and another 450,000 at the Moi’s Bridge depot.
Farmers were being turned away with truckloads of newly-harvested maize and had to sell them to private companies at throwaway prices. Some threatened to export their maize to Uganda if the government was not willing to buy from them. There were over 300,000 bags of maize stored at two privately owned stores in Kitale and frustrated farmers had to sell at half the regular price which was KSh800, instead of KSh1,600. The government was faulted for being unprepared whenever the time for purchasing maize came. The Finance ministry also delayed in releasing the money budgeted for buying maize. The cost of fertilizer had also risen, making maize production expensive, yet corruption hindered farmers from recovering their money through government purchases.
The then Mandera MP Billow Kerrow, revealed that NCPB officials colluded with some businesspeople so that they could sell their stocks first. It was therefore intentional when they failed to transport maize to silos in the famine-stricken areas. But the Ministry of Agriculture was the worst, because it was responsible for purchasing and distributing maize to various parts of Kenya, yet was not doing so. He also cited political manipulation as a factor in the widespread famine. “There are people who played politics with food in my constituency in the lead up to the [2005 constitutional] referendum. A lot of food was diverted and sold to finance the Banana campaign ahead of the referendum. That is why people are dying for lack of food,” he said.
Then-nominated MP Professor Ruth Oniang’o, claimed that corruption drove the politics of maize and food, with ministers cashing in on the unfortunate situation to make money. “Declaring a famine that has stalked us for the better part of the year a national disaster is so that donors can move in with money. But this is ironical because there is a food surplus. This is abusing the goodwill from donors. It will not be surprising if it turns out that the companies that will be given tenders to either import or ferry maize to the famine-stricken regions at the expense of donors and Kenyan taxpayers, are owned by ministers and senior government officials,” she said. She hails from western Kenya which had surplus maize rotting at that time. To be continued in Part 2.
Jared Odero
About the Author
1 Timothy 5:8:
“But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.”
Kibaki has failed to care for his house “Kenya” because of his bad leadership.
Kenya
The corruption is sickening
And Britain raises hackles by saying so
Aug 11th 2005 | nairobi | from the print edition
SINCE Mwai Kibaki won the presidency over two years ago, the subject of corruption has never been far away. In a decisive electoral reaction against the culture of graft and bribery that came to permeate every level of Kenyan society under his predecessor, Daniel arap Moi, Mr Kibaki won his mandate on an anti-corruption platform. The president has been cheered along by many Kenyans, fed up with the way their country’s economic promise has been squandered by greedy politicians. Foreign donors are exhausted by the cynicism of those same politicians embezzling or misspending foreign aid.
But in the absence of any obvious sense of urgency from Kenya’s own politicians, it is the donors, and particularly the British, the former colonial masters, who have made most of the running. Last month the British ratcheted up the pressure on Kenya’s government by taking the aggressive step of banning a minister, Chris Murungaru, from visiting Britain. The move has caused a storm in Kenya and a lot of undiplomatic language about neo-imperialism and bullying. Relations between Kenya and Britain, one of its biggest donors, are at their lowest ebb for years.
The British government has refused to say why it has banned Mr Murungaru, but it is clear that allegations of corruption are at the nub of the row. For his part, Mr Murungaru says he is the victim of a personal campaign to discredit him waged by Britain, in particular by its recently departed high commissioner, Sir Edward Clay. It was he who made the most undiplomatic speech, in July 2004, when he condemned Kenya’s corrupt government officials’ “arrogance and greed” and “gluttony”, which caused them to “vomit all over the shoes” of donors. Earlier this year Sir Edward rammed the point home by handing Mr Kibaki a dossier of 20 “suspicious transactions”. The British Foreign Office has not confirmed whether Mr Murungaru has been linked to any of them, but notes that 18 of the cases are under investigation by Kenya’s Anti-Corruption Commission.
What made Sir Edward speak out was a rising sense of despair among Kenyans and donors at the failure of Mr Kibaki’s government to match words with deeds. Few doubt the president’s integrity. In Mr Murungaru’s case, the British note that Mr Kibaki himself has not joined the chorus of wounded pride that has filled the Kenyan press on the transport minister’s behalf. Still, it is clear that the campaign against corruption has drifted since Mr Kibaki took over, especially since the government’s top anti-corruption official, John Githongo, resigned earlier this year in frustration at his inability to pursue cases to the upper echelons of government.
It is impossible to measure corruption precisely, but Transparency International, a Berlin-based lobby, still rates Kenya as one of the world’s most corrupt countries, on a par with Angola, Iraq and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The lobby’s latest Kenya Bribery Index suggests that the number of bribery cases reported by the public in dealings between public and private officials has dipped from 40% to 34% of all encounters. But the average bribe paid has soared, from 1,484 Kenyan shillings ($20) to 4,958 ($68).
Kenya’s tragedy is that, as East Africa’s biggest and most sophisticated economy, it would be doing so much better—were it not for corruption. A prominent western banker based in Kenya calls it “a middle-income country performing as a low-income one”. Aaron Ringera, a judge who heads the Anti-Corruption Commission, says beating corruption is “a matter of life and death to this country”.
With Mr Githongo gone, many Kenyans see Mr Ringera as their last hope. He has brought several new bills before parliament to open up procurement practices and publish the financial records of ministers and members of parliament. He now claims to have all the legal weapons he needs and a team of 200 investigators. He also says he has several investigations into politicians’ malpractice under way.
But to Mr Ringera’s dismay, MPs will still not give his office the power to prosecute those cases; that remains the job of the attorney-general, who is a political appointee. Kenyans and donors will be watching closely what happens in those cases. By keeping corruption high on the news agenda, Britain may make Mr Ringera’s job a little easier.
The real reason for Kenya’s food crisis, say analysts and residents, is structural: repeated failed and poor rains and long-term poor management of water, land and markets have become a fact of life. Even before this year’s drought, half the people in Isiolo received food relief. That figure has now increased to 75 per cent and is set to rise further.
“Food aid is not addressing the causes: drought is the easiest thing to blame,” says James Shikwati, director of the Inter Region Economic Network, a Kenyan think-tank. “The narrative of famine is owned by outsiders – we’ve surrendered our responsibility to others.”
Agencies say an extra 800,000 Kenyans will need food aid this month, on top of the 2.4m that spurred the Kenyan government to declare a national disaster in May. UN food agency WFP is supplying food for 1.6m. The government is also providing 800,000 with food aid, distributing water and buying back livestock.
Many locals say the 2009 drought was worse than this year’s. That drought was followed by flooding so bad entire bridges were washed away. This supports the theory that water diversion, deforestation, erosion and a failure to conserve vegetation and harvest rainwater are also contributing to poor pasture and barren lands.
Long-term underdevelopment of the Kenyan north is also a factor. “The Kenyan budget is a ‘railway line budget’, all crowded around the railway from Mombasa to border of Uganda; the extreme south and north of Kenya have been neglected for years,” says Mr Shikwati. Lack of investment means roads are poor and such weak infrastructure can push market prices higher.
The drought also highlights the failure to resolve violent ethnic rivalry for grazing land and water as well as competition for grasslands between cattle and rare wildlife. Cattle rustling, a constant feature of nomadic life, regularly turns fatal. In June, 12 were killed in one of several gunfights.
“The pain I feel is too much,” said Ronte Lemaramba, a herder, after his brother was killed in a battle over a water point when two rival armed communities moved in from remote areas in search of water.
The starving tribes in Kenya are Primitive apart from their Mps who are Semi-illitrates no body will come and solve their ammagedon unless they liberate themselves from kenya govt through organising guerrilla wars and uniting with Southern Sudan . These Turkana tribes will be annihilated and wiped out in Kenya ,and their territories will be occupied by Kikuyu tribes that dominates Kenya.
Relief food has become a cash cow to a few select persons
Saturday March 24, 2012
By VINCENT BARTOO
While relief food is meant to save the lives of starving residents in arid and semi-arid regions, the food has become a cash cow for Government officials and politicians.
Investigation by The Standard On Saturday in drought-prone Turkana and Pokot counties reveals a scam, denying residents the much-needed relief from famine that ravages them yearly.
Special Programmes Minister Esther Murugi has already appealed for Sh6 billion to buy relief food to alleviate hunger for more than five million Kenyans. Sadly, the food may not reach these people and might instead be used to line the pockets of corrupt Government officials and politicians.
They take advantage of the high levels of illiteracy of the communities in these regions and their pastoralist nature to divert their food, robbing them of a fundamental constitutional right.
When a DC in Pokot was last year arrested and charged with theft of relief food, the lid was lifted on a scam shamefully perpetrated at high levels of Government.
The 280 bags of maize was meant for residents of Tabach in Pokot North, but the lorry was intercepted as it drove to Kitale town where the food was to be sold. The DC�s case is still before a Kitale court but this has not stopped fellow provincial administrators from continuing with the vice.
Investigations by The Standard On Saturday reveal how easy it is for such administrators to pilfer the food with impunity, a fact even Special Programmes Permanent Secretary Andrew Mondoh admits.
When The Standard On Saturday visited Lodwar, we met a self-confessed former relief food broker, Paul Ekaran alias Lokopir, whose job was to link the provincial administrators with potential buyers of the food.
He linked the buyers and DCs and District Officers who are in charge of the food. “I did the dirty job for them until one day it dawned on me that what I was doing was wrong,” said Lokopir.
The corrupt DCs and DOs would issue Lokopir with a signed Form S11 authorising him to get the maize from the Lodwar National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB) depot. The Form S11, we established, is a blank cheque given to DCs and DOs to plunder relief food.
All it takes is just a signature and a stamp from the DC�s office and the food is released by the NCPB to the bearer of the form. Lokopir pauses from the interview and calls a DO on speakerphone, informing him that he has a buyer who intended to buy relief food. The DO, unaware he had quit the trade, asks Lokopir to tell the buyer to wait till the next day as they were awaiting supply of maize.
Although NCPB spokesman Evans Wasike denied involvement of the board in the scam, Lokopir reveals some corrupt board officials at the depots were culpable.
“They are aware of what is going on. How can I take the Form S11 to them and they give me 200 bags yet I am not a Government employee?” he posed. A civil servant based at Lodwar who sought anonymity broke it down for The Standard On Saturday saying theft of the relief food is easy to execute.
Loopholes in distribution
He reveals the provincial administrators take advantage of loopholes in the distribution to steal and sell them, raking in millions. “Information about how much food a district receives only gets to the DC, so only he, the NCPB officials, and the Ministry of Special Programmes know how much is received as relief food,” he said.
The senior official said the DC, DOs, and NCPB officials then collude to divert huge quantities of the food meant for needy residents without their knowledge.
“So, if Kerio in Turkana Central for instance is to get 500 bags, only 200 bags are taken there. The rest is embezzled,” he added. The other loophole is the constant lack of transport to ferry the food to far-flung areas.
“Turkana County is expansive yet we do not have trucks. We rely mostly on National Youth Service (NYS) trucks occasionally given to us to ferry relief food,” said the official.
He said when the NYS trucks are withdrawn, relief food is stored at NCPB depots awaiting transportation. “The waiting provides a perfect chance for theft as they pile,” said the official.
The pastoralist nature of the communities in these regions, he added, coupled with low levels of education have worked in favour of the corrupt officials.
“These communities move a lot in search of water and pasture for their animals. Records can indicate they got food yet they left the area,” said the official. He added some chiefs tried to raise the red flag over the scam but they were soon compromised.
“They (DCs and DOs) know outspoken chiefs. They allocate them the stolen maize to silence them,” reveals the official. Ordinarily, relief food comprises maize, beans and cooking fat but locals in these areas mainly know of maize.
“They do not know what they are entitled to. So they just receive whatever comes. The rest benefits the corrupt officials,” added the official. Ms Seline Locham, the Coordinator of Turkana Women Advocacy Development Organisation, enlisted the services of locals known as �social auditors� to secretly monitor movement of relief food.
“Our findings were shocking. One day, one of my auditors asked for a lift in one of the GK lorries carrying relief food,” said Locham. She recalled getting a text message from the auditor informing her that the lorry had stopped midway the trip and offloaded part of the relief food to another private lorry.
“The private lorry had empty sacks. The relief food that is normally in Government of Kenya branded sacks were offloaded to the empty sacks,” added Locham. This happened in a remote part of Turkana Central District, providing an ideal environment to execute the theft.
“He (auditor) then started taking photos from his phone but he was detected and warned of dire consequences if he dared expose what he saw,” she said.
In Pokot County, provincial administrators also have a field day squandering relief food with little fear of being caught. It is here that relief food found in a private lorry was impounded and a DC and NCPB officials arrested and charged for theft after the media exposed it.
Campaign tool
Another resident, Julius Lotela, recalls a landslide that hit Tabach location, displacing locals and destroying their crops.
“When we sought relief food for the displaced people, it had been exhausted to our dismay because no distribution had been done due to rains that kept us well fed,” he said.
Lotela, who sits in the district steering group that decides on distribution of relief food, said they tried to take the local provincial administration to task over the matter in vain. “They covered up the matter while intimidating us and it ended there. I quit the steering group,” he said. Lotela is convinced that about 70 per cent of the relief food is embezzled by provincial administrators including chiefs.
Our investigations also revealed that District Education Officers in these areas also loot the food meant for school feeding programmes. Some Members of Parliament from these areas are other beneficiaries of the relief food gravy train in two ways.
“They intimidate and threaten relief food agencies and even Government officials into getting contracts to supply the food,” said a senior provincial administrator.
He said the MPs, knowing the theft that goes on with the food, also demand their share of the stolen food. “For any food that goes to any location in their constituencies, they have their share. You decline their demands at your own risk,” added the administrator.
He further disclosed that the politicians use the relief food as a campaign tool.
“This happens a lot during the dry spells. They take the GoK maize, put it into new bags and go round supplying them to win support,” added the administrator.
http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/print.php?id=2000054784&cid=4