Kenya Suffers Increased Poverty

from OHMY News

Report reveals disparities in wealth, education, and life expectancy

Zachary Ochieng

Despite an economic growth rate of 5.8 percent, 50 percent of Kenyans are living below the poverty line. This is according to a new United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report on Kenya.

"Compared to the year 2004, human poverty has increased marginally in all provinces except Nyanza, Western and Coast," says the Kenya National Human Development Report 2006 released in Nairobi yesterday. The highest increase in poverty levels, according to the report, was recorded in the arid North-Eastern province, whose human poverty index rose from 43 to 50.5 percent. The report notes that one in every two Kenyans live below the poverty line, with the number of those living in abject poverty having gone up. They include Kenyans with no access to healthcare, water and proper nutrition and sanitation.

According to the report, the gap between the rich and the poor also continues to widen. It notes that 10 percent of the richest households control more than 42 percent of the incomes, while the poorest 10 percent control only 0.76 percent. Accordingly, poorer people have little or no hope of bringing up a child to the age where they can benefit from the free primary education introduced by the government in 2003, let alone take them to a secondary school.

According to the report a person born in Nyanza province can expect to live 16 years less than his counterpart in Central. Life expectancy in the coastal city of Mombasa is only 33.1 years! Central province, which has had two presidents since independence, is also well covered healthwise. Whereas it has 20,000 people to every one doctor, North-Eastern province has 120,000 people for one doctor. Again, every child in Central province attends primary school as opposed to one out of three in North-Eastern province. Ironically, life expectancy is highest in North-Eastern province at 62.2 years.

High quality life is generally found in urban centers, high potential agricultural areas and industrial concentrations. These include, Mt Elgon in Western province, Tharaka Nithi in Eastern province, Nyeri in Central province, Embu in Eastern, Moyale in Eastern and Koibatek in Rift Valley province. On the other hand, chronic poverty is to be found in North-Eastern, Coast, Western and Nyanza provinces.

According to the report, the proportion of households with piped water in their homes in urban areas is five times higher than in rural areas. The report therefore calls for fairer distribution of resources, equal opportunities, improved security and greater investment in technology. "The country has to institutionalize income protective mechanisms, among them the minimum wage, wage indexation and progressive taxation," the report recommends.

The report blames the high incidence of insecurity on the small number of police officers. Security has thus continued to deteriorate in the areas including international borders and pastoral regions, as well as slums and urban dwellings. "The low number of officers makes it difficult to respond to expanding police needs," says the report.

It does not help matters that a number of police officers continue to die as a result of HIV/AIDS. "Seventy-five per cent of all the deaths in 1999 were attributed to HIV/AIDS," notes the report. The report also blames insecurity on politicians, who have used militia to carry out violent attacks on rivals.

The report also notes that Kenya must change its style of managing natural resources if it is to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). According to UNDP's Assistant Country Representative, Elly Oduol, who spoke during the launch, the management remains poor. "That is why it is difficult to solve the problem of flooding which is a result of increased surface runoff," observed Oduol.

Since 1990, UNDP has published the annual global Human Development Report (HDR), which focuses on the human dimensions of development and present new approaches, definitions and methods of its measurement. On a regular basis, the UNDP office in Kenya, as an offshoot to the global report, has been producing the National Human Development Report.

The 2006 National Human Development Report, whose theme is "Human Security and Human Development," clusters human security into seven factors. These include economic security, food security, health security and personal security. Others are community security, environmental security and political security. It says security concerns in Kenya are a resultant effect of poverty and poor economic growth, and links the upsurge of crime to the quest for livelihood. Poverty and human insecurity are connected in a circular manner and each leads to the other. To address this situation, the report says that Kenya needs effective interventions, adequate institutional cooperation and committed inclusive partnerships. The document gives an interesting analogy of the relationship between poverty in Kenya and insecurity. It acknowledges the growth of the Kenyan economy in the last two years, but says more needs to be done to alleviate poverty.