Absurd Promises and Poverty : A picture of Kenya – Challenges and Issues

The basic objective of human development is enlarging people’s choices.¹ It should be to create an enabling environment for people to enjoy long, healthy and creative lives, to be educated, and to enjoy a decent standard of living, political freedom, guaranteed human rights and self respect. For this to be achieved there must be equality of opportunity for all people in society. Such opportunities must be sustainable from one generation to the next and people must be empowered to be able to participate in and benefit from the development process.

Poverty remains Africa’s most daunting challenge as access to job opportunities, education, health services, housing and water supply remain inadequate for the majority. The devastating impact of diseases like HIV/AIDS and Malaria has compounded an already challenging development situation in the region² as economic growth of most African countries has been unable to register a significant impact on poverty, either because it is insufficient or is insufficiently pro-poor in both its quality and structure.³

Until recently, poverty was understood largely in terms of income – or a lack of one. To be poor⁴ meant that one could not afford the cost of providing a proper diet or home. But it is about more than a shortfall in income or calorie intake. It is about the denial of opportunities and choices that are widely regarded as essential to lead a long, healthy, creative life and to enjoy a decent standard of living, freedom, dignity, self-esteem and the respect of others. People don’t live in the squalor of the slums, favellas, squatter communities, low-rent districts or beside garbage dumps because they want to. They have no other choice. Possessing little money, little education, few skills for the market-place and a multitude of health problems, have marginalised nearly half of all the people in the world to live in poverty, without much opportunity to improve their lives.⁵ With multiple inter-related dimensions, poverty makes a vicious cycle. Poor health, disease and disability can prevent people from working full time, limiting their income and their ability to work to move out of poverty. Health problems for the breadwinner means income problems, but an illness in the family can ruin an entire household. Not only is income lost, but expenses go up due to the need for medicines and health care and the need for family members to care for the sick person.

Those with less formal education tend to be disproportionately represented in the ranks of the poor, perhaps because they are more likely to hold poorly paid jobs or to be unemployed. Poor families often face enormous difficulties in keeping their children in school due to the costs, as well as to the pressure to have as many household members, including children, out working. The next generation, being poorly educated, could in turn end up holding similar poorly paid jobs.

As of 2013, an estimated 17.7 million children worldwide had lost one or both parents to AIDS. From simply being a cause of individual suffering, the epidemic has become a major economic and social crisis for entire economies, as it affects the economically productive sections of society and makes it harder to eradicate poverty. Most of these children (15.2 million) live in sub-Saharan Africa. Many millions more were orphaned for other reasons⁶ such as communal and ethnic violence which is also widespread fuelling fear and insecurity in the in the African region since “poor countries — especially those with significant inequality between ethnic and religious communities are far more likely to be embroiled in conflicts than rich ones”.⁷

The roots of poverty lie in a tangled web of local situations combined with national and international circumstances. It is the product of economic processes occurring at a variety of levels, as well as a range of particular social and economic conditions that appear to structure the possibilities of the individual.⁸ The process of development, in any society, should ideally be viewed and assessed in terms of what it does for an average individual. It has to be seen in terms of the benefits and opportunities that it generates for people and how these are eventually distributed – between men and women, the well off and deprived and across regions. Experience shows that, often, there is no direct correspondence between economic attainments of a society and the quality of life. It becomes necessary, therefore, to have a framework and evolve development strategies that forge and strengthen the link between the two, and encourage the most effective and efficient use of available resources for furthering the well-being of the people.⁹

Poverty’s multidimensional and complex nature and its various manifestations and forms, makes its definition difficult. It is a great moral and social challenge. And as an operational concept in the context of a poor country like Kenya, this condition has to be understood carefully, thus making it an intellectual challenge.¹⁰ Perceived differently by different people, some limit the term to mean a lack of material well-being and others arguing that lack of things like freedom, spiritual well-being, civil rights and nutrition must also contribute to the definition of poverty.

World Development Report 2000/2001 accepts the established view that poverty is encompassing not only low income and consumption but also low achievement in education, health, nutrition, and other areas of human development. And based on what people say and vulnerability and fear.¹¹ Though often defined in absolute or relative terms for purposes of comparing groups, poor people do have poverty means to them, it expands this definition to include powerlessness and voicelessness, their own definitions that arise from their own perceptions. Absolute Poverty is defined in terms of the requirements considered adequate to satisfy minimum basic needs, and the absolute poor have no means to meet these needs.

The conventional definition of Poverty in economic terms, focussing on individual and household, relative or absolute financial capacity, has now shifted as it has now generally been recognised that it cannot only be defined by a lack of material goods and opportunities¹² and that fundamentally it entails lack of access to income, employment opportunities, normal internal entitlements by the citizens to such things as freely determined consumption of goods and services, shelter and other basic needs of life. It is a human condition characterized by sustained or chronic deprivation of the resources, capabilities, choices, security and power necessary for the enjoyment of an adequate standard of living and other civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights.¹³

Poor people live without fundamental freedoms of action and choice that the better-off take for granted. They often lack adequate food and shelter, education and health, deprivations that deny them the kind of life that everyone values. They also face extreme vulnerability to ill health, economic dislocation, and natural disasters. In addition, they are often exposed to ill treatment by institutions of the state and society and are powerless to influence key decisions affecting their lives.¹⁴ Therefore, the government should do much to influence public debate to increase awareness of social benefits of pro-poor public action and build political support for such action by laying the political and legal basis for inclusive development, creating public administration for faster growth and equity, promoting inclusive decentralisation and community development, promoting gender equity, tackling social barriers and supporting poor peoples’ social capital.¹⁵

For achieving this, one of the key steps needed is promoting inclusive Decentralisation and Community Development hence the need for inclusive Governance so that fruits of growth are shared by all and not cornered by few.¹⁶ It is now widely acknowledged that significant changes in the existing situation can only be accomplished through greater empowerment of the population, and more effective participation in decision making at the level of the community. In recent years, the focus of development strategies in Kenya has turned to the issue of good and effective governance as a tool and condition for fostering social and economic development.¹⁷
Since the potential for social, economic growth and poverty reduction is heavily influenced by the state and social institutions,action to improve their functioning also improves both growth and equity, by reducing bureaucratic and social constraints to economic action and up-ward mobility since the poor suffer not only from lower incomes but also lower access to and quality of public services, such as basic health, education and infrastructure due to lack of the leverage to ensure that state institutions serve them fairly, and thus lack access to public facilities or receive goods and services of inferior quality, must pay for education and health services, which others receive for free.

Promoting inclusive decentralization and community development can bring service agencies closer to poor communities and poor people, potentially enhancing people’s control of the services to which they are entitled. This will require the strengthening of local capacity and devolution of financial resources. It is also necessary to have measures to avoid capture by local elites. Decentralization needs to be combined with effective mechanisms for popular participation and citizen monitoring of government agencies. Examples include decentralization that fosters community driven choices for resource use and project implementation. There is also a range of options for involving communities and households in sectoral activities such as parental involvement in schooling and users associations in water supply and irrigation.¹⁸

Strong rule of law and the absence of corruption contribute to growth – by providing a fair, rule-based environment in which firms and households can invest and grow since Corruption is often a highly regressive tax and poor pay more of their incomes proportionately, than do the wealthy and the middle class,¹⁹ taking a toll on economic performance, undermines employment opportunities, and clouds prospects for poverty reduction. Even petty corruption dramatically raises the cost of engaging in productive activities. For those without money and connections, petty corruption in public health or police services can have debilitating consequences.

The vice of corruption affects the lives of poor people through many other channels as well. It biases government spending away from socially valuable goods and services, such as education and healthcare. It diverts public resources from infrastructure investments that could benefit poor people, such as health clinics, and tends to increase public spending on capital-intensive investments that offer more opportunities for kickbacks, such as defence contracts, lowers the quality of infrastructure, since kickbacks are more lucrative on equipment purchases. It also undermines public service delivery.

The attitude of the policy makers at macro policy-levels, who see the country’s development solely in terms of growth in GDP/GNP, with a fervent hope that its fruits shall trickle down, which actually do trickle, but most often inequitably as the statistical story of poverty and deprivation stand in stark contrast to the chorus of growing economic prosperity and development.²⁰ While growth of GDP must be kept up, its ‘trickle down’ concept leaves much to be desired. It is here that, ‘inclusive growth’, led by inclusive governance holds the key, for taking the benefits of ‘Growth’ to those sections of people, who were hitherto deprived and marginalised.²¹

Therefore, it is important to concentrate our attention on the most vulnerable and numerous sections of the population for whom poverty is not merely a state of stagnation but a state of destitution and regression even on a slowly ascending curve of economic and social betterment.²² However, devising and implementing these changes requires strong political will, especially when the changes fundamentally challenge social values or entrenched interests. Poor people hunger for institutions that are fair, polite, honest, listening, trustworthy, and neither corrupt nor corrupting.

Poverty is the result of economic, political, and social processes that interact with each other and frequently reinforce each other in ways that exacerbate the deprivation in which poor people live. Meagre assets, inaccessible markets, and scarce job opportunities lock people in material poverty. That is why promoting opportunity – by stimulating economic growth, making markets work better for poor people, and building up their assets – is key to reducing poverty. But this is only part of the story.

In a world where political power is unequally distributed and often mimics the distribution of economic power, the way state institutions operate may be particularly unfavourable to poor people. For example, poor people frequently do not receive the benefits of public investment in education and health. And they are often the victims of corruption and arbitrariness on the part of the state. Poverty outcomes are also greatly affected by social norms, values, and customary practices that, within the family, the community, or the market, lead to exclusion of women, ethnic and racial groups, or the socially disadvantaged. That is why facilitating the empowerment of poor people – by making state and social institutions more responsive to them – is also key to reducing poverty.

Vulnerability to external and largely uncontrollable events – illness, violence, economic shocks, bad weather, and natural disasters – reinforces poor people’s sense of ill being, exacerbates their material poverty, and weakens their bargaining position. That is why enhancing security – by reducing the risk of such events as wars, disease, economic crises, and natural disasters – is key to reducing poverty. And so is reducing poor people’s vulnerability to risks and putting in place mechanisms to help them cope with adverse shocks.

HIV/AIDS is already one of the most important sources of insecurity in severely afflicted countries in Africa. While the immediate, devastating effects are at the individual and household level, the consequences are much broader, from intolerable strains on traditional child fostering mechanisms to extreme pressures on health systems and loss of productive labour affecting whole communities and nations, since more than 34 million people are infected with HIV with about 90 percent in the developing world, with 5 million more infected each year. Yet again, in countries at the centre of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and Malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa, where one in four adults is infected, AIDS orphans are becoming an overwhelming burden on both traditional and formal support mechanisms, and all the gains in life expectancy since the middle of the 20th century will soon be wiped out. Since the 1960s, life expectancy in Africa was significantly improving through the mid-1990s, but has been deteriorating since around 1995 as the effects of the AIDS pandemic continued to accumulate.²³ Action at the international level to develop an AIDS vaccine is crucial for the future, but differing experiences show that what will really make a difference now is effective leadership and societal change to prevent the spread of HIV and care for those already infected. This can involve confronting taboos about sexuality, targeting information and support to high-risk groups such as prostitutes, and providing compassionate care for AIDS sufferers. Brazil, Senegal, Thailand, and Uganda all illustrate what can be done when there is a will to act decisively.²⁴

Violence, conflict and systematic attacks on the opposition and members of minority ethnic groups residing within the ruling party’s strongholds popularly known as ethnic cleansing majorly for political vested interests which characterizes the Kenyan polity after every general election, induced by complete impunity of rule of law by officials and the political class drags developmental gains made between any two general elections by internally displacing people from their homes which further marginalises them by pushing them away from their productive assets and capacities – land and capital. This kind of violence which is often used as a tool for informal repression by the Kenyan rulers to retain electoral competition exacerbates divisions in the population and leaves deep scars, whose effects -destruction of fragile institutions of governance, flight of skills, personal losses, and social wounds that could take generations to heal a part from crippling economies by destroying physical, human, and social capital by reducing investment, diverting public spending from productive activities, and driving highly skilled workers to emigrate – create a vicious cycleof continued poverty and strife. In addition to the direct loss of life, they wreak social and economic havoc and create a terrible legacy of psychological and social trauma. While it is immensely important to sustain the focus on rebuilding societies after conflict, it is equally urgent to take measures to prevent conflict.

There is some evidence that strengthening pluralist institutions supporting the rights of the marginalised and the weak and providing the institutional basis for peaceful conflict resolution has a significant influence. Also important for averting conflict are efforts to get different groups to interact through more inclusive and participatory political institutions and through civil institutions. International action to reduce access to the resources to finance conflict and to reduce international trade in armaments is also necessary. If countries can get onto a path of inclusive development, they have the potential to shift from a vicious to a virtuous cycle. Violent conflict constitutes one of the most urgent and intractable areas for action affecting some of the poorest people in the world.²⁵

For decades, water scarcity has been a major issue in Kenya, caused mainly by years of recurrent droughts, poor management of water supply, contamination of the available water, and a sharp increase in water demand resulting from relatively high population growth. The lack of rainfall affects also the ability to acquire food and has led to eruptions of violence in Kenya In many areas, the shortage of water in Kenya has been amplified by the government’s lack of investment in water, especially in rural areas. Most of the urban poor Kenyans only have access to polluted water, which has caused cholera epidemics and multiple other diseases that affect health and livelihoods. Despite the critical shortage of clean water in Kenya’s urban slums, there also is a large rural to urban discrepancy in access to clean water in Kenya. In the more recent years, the focus of Kenya’s water crisis has shifted to the impact of climate change and climate variability. Furthermore, after decades of policy neglect, the Government of Kenya’s (2008) Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP)²⁶ has finally recognized the importance of safe water for its goal to reduce poverty.

Kenya’s economy is based around an agricultural hub, with agriculture providing about one third of the country’s income. When a drought occurs, this has severe implications on the entire economy and the people’s livelihood. Global warming is one critical factor that has prolonged the drought and as a result, millions of Kenyans are unable to grow their crops and keep their livestock alive. Because most Kenyans rely directly or indirectly on agriculture, when severe droughts occur, many Kenyans are left to starve unless food aid prevents a famine. Climate change – higher temperatures, changes in precipitation patterns, rising sea levels, and more frequent weather-related disasters – pose risks for people, agriculture, energy, and water supplies all over the world, but its effects are expected to be felt the most in developing countries,²⁷ the very countries that are least prepared to deal with them. At stake are recent gains in the fight against poverty, hunger, and disease, as well as the lives and livelihoods of billions of people.²⁸

As the planet warms, rainfall patterns shift and extreme events such as droughts, floods, and forest fires become more frequent. Millions in densely populated coastal areas and in island nations will lose their homes as the sea level rises. Poor people in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere face prospects of tragic crop failures; reduced agricultural productivity; and increased hunger, malnutrition, and disease.²⁹ Another main reason for why droughts have prolonged is due to deforestation which almost always leads to increased runoff, with negative implications in both the rainy as well as the subsequent dry season. A contradiction is the fact that Kenya also suffers from floods, though either at different periods or in different regions (especially in the narrow tropical belt along the Indian Ocean). Most parts of Kenya have two rainy seasons, March to May (long rains) and October to November (short rains), with the intensity of these rains having increased recently due to an increased climate variability. While at the global level about 1 billion people are locked out of having access to safe water due to poverty, inequality and government failure, it is also clear that not having access to clean water is a main driver of poverty and inequality. In Kenya, largely due to recurrent droughts, millions of families that rely on crops and livestock are threatened and thousands of people die each year as a result of thirst and hunger.³⁰

Climate change and its consequent global warming being a crisis of the commons cannot be solved without countries cooperating on a global scale to improve energy efficiencies, develop and deploy clean technologies, and expand natural “sinks” to grow green by absorbing gases. We need to protect human life and ecological resources. We must act together in a differentiated and equitable way. Because developed countries have produced most of the emissions of the past and have high per capita emissions, these countries should lead the way by significantly reducing their carbon footprints and stimulating research into green alternatives. Yet most of the world’s future emissions will be generated in the developing world. These countries will need adequate funds and technology transfer so they can pursue lower carbon paths – without jeopardizing their development prospects. And they need assistance to adapt to inevitable changes in climate.³¹

Gender mainstreaming is a pre-requisite for poverty reduction and sustainable development. The United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC July 1997) defined the concept of gender mainstreaming as: “…the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programmes, in any area and at all levels. It is a strategy for making the concerns and experiences of women as well as ofmen an integral part of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres, so that women and men benefit equally, and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal of mainstreaming is to achieve gender equality…”³²

Unequal gender relations are part of the broader issue of social inequities based on societal norms and values. But gender equality is of such pervasive significance that it deserves extra emphasis. While patterns of gender inequity vary greatly across societies, in almost all African countries a majority of girls and women (i.e. age and gender) are disadvantaged in terms of their relative power and control over material resources (in Kenya particularly, land titles are vested in men), and they often face more severe insecurities (for example, after the death of their husband). Poor women are thus doubly disadvantaged. Moreover, the lack of autonomy of women has significant negative consequences for the education and health of children. Greater gender equity is desirable in its own right and for its instrumental social and economic benefits for poverty reduction. There has been progress – for example, in education and health – but much more needs to be done. Experience indicates that a mix of political, legal, and direct public action is required. Use of public resources to subsidize girls’ education has been shown to pay off as a range of measures in productive activities, in Kenya notably micro finance and farming inputs, have produced documented benefits in terms of increased yield sand increased autonomy for women and better nutritional status of children.³³

In the hardest hit countries of Africa, a great number of schools have shut down because too many teachers have died of AIDS. In addition, many students have dropped out of schools due to lack of resources to pay for educational expenses and to the need to care for sick members of their families. The education sector, which is counted on by society to help nurture young people and enable them to have jobs in the future, is jeopardized. Moreover, the potentially powerful role of schools, as a channel of the life skills education needed for AIDS prevention and care, is lost. And this reinforces the need for investment in education, as there is evidence that better education is associated with higher contraceptive use and lower fertility. This evidence may reflect a variety of mechanisms. More education expands economic opportunities for women and so can raise the opportunity cost of having more children. Infant mortality is often lower in families in which women are better educated, and so fewer births are required to achieve a desirednumber of children.

Investments in improving poor people’s access to education and health can therefore have a double impact. These investments have been shown to improve growth and reduce poverty directly. To the extent that they are associated with lower fertility and population growth, they can also contribute to a virtuous circle of improved maternal health and better investment in children’s health and education.

In many countries, a majority depend upon agriculture and inadequate access to land is one of the primary causes of rural poverty. Most of the world’s poor either own no land or own land not worth owning. The land they live on is generally of poor quality for farming, and often subject to damage from storms and other natural disasters. Caught in a trap between marginal incomes and little chance to obtain funds for improvements, there is little opportunity for advancement. Land reforms, public investment in rural infrastructure, technology and marketing services along with increased credit and price stability are necessary to remove the multiple constraints restricting the possibilities of the rural poor.

Jobs are the cornerstone of economic and social development. Indeed, development happens through jobs. People work their way out of poverty and hardship through better livelihoods. Economies grow as people get better at what they do, as they move from farms to farms, and as more productive jobs are created and less productive ones disappear. Societies flourish as jobs bring together people from different ethnic and social backgrounds and nurture a sense of opportunity. Jobs are thus transformational – they can transform what we earn, what we do, and even who we are. But almost half of all workers in developing countries are engaged in small-scale farming or self employment, jobs that typically do not come with a steady pay-check and benefits. The problem for most poor people in these countries is not lack of a job or too few hours of work, many hold more than one job and work long hours. Yet, too often, they are not earning enough to secure a better future for themselves and their children, and at times they are working in unsafe conditions and without the protection of their basic rights.³⁴

Escaping the poverty of the rural areas, many people head toward the cities in their own and in foreign countries to find jobs. But in most countries, there aren’t enough decent jobs the kind that pays a living wage to go around. Poor people then tend to try to eke out a living at the margins in what has become known as the informal sector. The pressure on this sector is heightened with labour displacing technical change, declining growth of the economy and formal sectors, and by budget cuts. However, people in the informal sector barely scrape by, and enjoy little or no social protection.

Globally, it is estimated that of a workforce of a three billion people, 140 million are unemployed, and between a quarter and a third are under-employed. The effectiveness of growth in reducing poverty partly depends on the extent of growth and employment opportunities created, and whether it takes place in areas and sectors where the poor are located. Unfortunately, there has not been sufficient employment generation in the formal sector of the economy. Attention now needs to be paid to the informal sector of the economy. However, prospects for growth in the world economy currently are rather bleak. The world economy appears to be growing too slowly to create enough jobs or to make a real impact on poverty. Even the industrialized countries appear to be stuck with high unemployment, a major cause of poverty. This suggests that economies cannot rely on growth to pull them out of poverty, but must take specific steps to target poverty reduction directly.

The gross disparities of wealth in today’s world, the miserable conditions in which well over a billion people live, the prevalence of endemic conflict in some regions, and the rapid degradation of the natural environment combine to make the present model of development unsustainable. Humanity stands at a defining moment in history. We are confronted with a perpetuation of disparities between and within nations, a worsening of poverty, hunger, ill-health and illiteracy and the continuing deterioration of the ecosystems on which we depend for our well-being. However, integration of environment and development concerns and greater attention to them will lead to the fulfilment of basic needs, improved living standards for all, better protected and managed ecosystems and a safer, more prosperous future. No nation can achieve these on its own, but together we can – in a global partnership for sustainable development.³⁵ For there can be no development worth environmental depletion.

People all over the world have high hopes that new technology will lead to healthier lives, greater social freedoms, increased knowledge and more productive livelihoods. There is a great rush to be part of the network age the combined result of the technological revolutions and globalization that are integrating markets and linking people across all kinds of traditional boundaries.

Technology is a tool, not just a reward, for growth and development. In fact, the 20th century’s unprecedented gains in advancing human development and eradicating poverty came largely from technological breakthroughs. Technology can cause discontinuous change: a single innovation can quickly and significantly change the course of an entire society. (Consider what an affordable vaccine or cure for AIDS could do for Sub-Saharan Africa.) Moreover, technology-supported advances in health, nutrition, crop yields and employment are usually not just one-time gains. They typically have a multiplier effect which increases people’s knowledge, health and productivity, and raising incomes and building capacity for future innovation; all feeding back into human development. All this is just the beginning as much more can be expected as more technologies are adapted to the needs of developing countries.³⁶

Widespread hunger, thirst and poverty are a result of inequitable resource distribution, non-accountability of the government, lack of proper infrastructure, corruption, illiteracy and above all lack of political will. The existing policies in Kenya do not provide a specific plan of action on how poverty, food security and safe drinking water will be progressively realized. The Constitution is yet to be fully operationalised for Kenyans to take full advantage of it, there are no proper legislative measures to ensure delivery of the above provision under the Constitution making it very difficult to achieve, making the promise absurd. It’s already 2105 and Kenya is yet to achieve its Millennium Development Goals creating scepticism about the success or otherwise of Vision 2030.

The right based approach in the development discourse is no doubt a positive indication for the realization of the democratic socialisation process. But the great solution lies in the people’s participation and self determination in the democratic process of policy formation and implementation. The poor and marginalised are neither mere passive beneficiaries of government programmes nor private charities. Good governance is essential to poverty reduction policies by improving accountability, transparency, people’s participation and decentralisation.

Improving methods of production, consumption and distribution of food and safe drinking water, disseminating knowledge of the principles of nutrition and developing or reforming agrarian systems are all steps in the right direction. Agricultural policy should be conducive to small rural farmers and rural development by adopting a system of farm subsidies and cheap credit system to support small farmers particularly because small scale agriculture is an important source of employment and livelihood in the developing world retaining enormous social and cultural importance as more than half of the country’s poor live in rural areas, and while subsistence agriculture alone cannot support them, it is still an important component of household income.

The belief that there is a technological silver bullet that can “solve” illiteracy, ill health or economic failure reflects scant understanding of real poverty. Yet, if the development community turns its back on the explosion of technological innovation in food, medicine and information, it risks marginalizing itself and denying developing countries opportunities that, if harnessed effectively, could transform the lives of poor people and offer breakthrough development opportunities to poor countries.
Often those with the least have least to fear from the future, and certainly their governments are less encumbered by special interests committed to yesterday’s technology. These countries are more willing to embrace innovations of modern day technology from the internet to new crops without any entrenched, subsidized agricultural system holding them back. So with the Internet, agricultural biotechnology advances and new generations of pharmaceuticals reaching the market, it is time for a new partnership between technology and development that can change the living standards and lives of millions under poverty.

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