Inflation-hit Kenyan farmers want food where their mouths are

from the Gulf Times


This article show how high inflation has effected farmers in Kenya. - Kale

KAGIO, Kenya: Twenty years ago, Benson staked all his assets to venture into lucrative export crops and started growing the French beans so prized by European consumers.

But with rampant inflation pushing up his costs and a slumping market for French beans, the ageing Kenyan farmer decided to revert to subsistence crops and “plant for his stomach”.

“When prices were good, I was able to build a house, I got a wife and I was able to raise my family,” says Benson Murimi Munga.

“Then, the buyers started dropping prices... I was facing losses in terms of what I had invested in the farm in buying fertilizers, pesticides, seeds and labour, I could not recover.”

Now the 49-year-old has stopped growing French beans and his modest plot in Kagio, a village nestled in the heart of Kenya’s central breadbasket, is planted with rice, bananas and maize.

French beans are Kenya’s top vegetable export but are not consumed locally and a growing number of farmers are opting for crops that will at least feed the family when times get hard.

French beans, seasonal in Europe, were introduced in Kenya and championed as a miracle crop for local farmers since the richer soil and climate here allow for all-year harvests.

“In those days, French beans would give you a good pay, people were planting French beans all over,” says Peter Mwangi, a buyer in the Kagio region who remembers how the farmers’ standard of living improved at the time.

“But the prices are preventing us from farming French beans, they are getting lower and lower. Farmers are running into debt,” he explains.

“Prices were bad the whole of last year, 60% of our production was not bought and we fed the cows with it.”

Kenya’s flagship vegetable export crop has recently suffered from a campaign by European green activists critical of the carbon footprint generated by air freighting goods that are also grown locally.

Kenya’s farmers have also felt the squeeze of increasing competition from countries such as Morocco, Egypt and Senegal and suffered from the soaring cost of chemicals and fertilizers.

“It has become more and more of a challenge to address all this: the fuel prices, the cost of inputs has gone up... and at the same time there is a lot of competition from other countries,” says Shamit Shah, founder and director of Sunripe, one of Kenya’s largest French beans exporters.

Kenya was badly hit by the global food crisis and skyrocketing inflation, heightening fears of food shortages following the disruption to farming caused by the violence that swept the country after the disputed December elections.

“Kenya strayed from sustainable farming and followed the temptation of exporting, when it’s clearly preferable to produce and consume locally,” says Claude-Marie Vadrot, an ecology expert with French weekly Politis.

“With subsistence farming, there’s more or less always a market for your products, but when French or European retailers no longer want beans, then Kenya will be left with nothing,” he explains.

“Kenya can try to cash in on exports to neighbouring countries, but exports to Europe are a lost cause due to the soaring cost of transport, the issue of carbon emissions. Farmers should not waste time in shifting the focus back to indigenous crops,” he says.

But Vadrot’s view is not shared by all in Kenya.

“Encouraging subsistence farming is another way of taking Kenyan farmers out of the international market chain and confining them to poverty,” retorts Stephen Mbithi, the chief executive of the Fresh Produce Exporters Association of Kenya.

“African countries will not become food secure by having enough food in their granary, but by having enough disposable income in their pockets to buy the food they need,” he argues.

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Teamwork helps Kenyan village to arise from abyss

from the Courier Post

This story profiles a mission called the Rabuor Village Project, that has targeted a specific community in Kenya that has gone without international aid for years. - Kale

By BARBARA BORST

Loyce Mbewa-Ong'udi was late. Family and friends milled around her parents' house in the green hills overlooking Lake Victoria, waiting for the daughter from America to return home.

At last the taxi bounced over the ruts and made a sharp turn into the compound of small brick and stucco houses. Loyce sprang out to a shower of greetings in the Luo language, hugs, helping hands for 12 enormous suitcases crammed with anti-AIDS medicines, asthma inhalers, storybooks, pencils and sharpeners, recycled eyeglasses.

The supplies were for the Rabuor Village Project, which Loyce runs. In the crowd, she sought the woman who started it all: her mother, Rosemell Ong'udi.

This is the story of a village, spurred by two extraordinary women, rising from the depths of the AIDS epidemic to build a future for itself. In 10 years, with hardly any international aid, this poor farming community has founded a nursery school and feeding program, a pharmacy, a youth group and income-generating projects. The work touches more than 10,000 people in 10 villages and keeps growing.

But it's not just a list of projects; it's a change of heart. Rabuor's work embodies what experts consider the most effective approach to development: "community-owned" programs in which residents, not just donors, set the priorities, and change comes from the bottom up.

District Commissioner Godfrey Kigochi, senior Kenya government official for Kisumu West, says he wishes he had a project like this in every village. Organizations that give money or lend expertise to the Rabuor project -- Slum Doctors, Lift Kids, Pangea, Architects Without Borders -- say the group is unique for its pragmatism and deep community roots. The Rev. Charles Ong'injo, who blessed the work from the start, is helping other congregations launch similar projects.

Kenya's AIDS rate has fallen since the 1990s, and far more people today are willing to go for testing and treatment. Still, about 14 percent of the district's 160,000 people are infected, double the national rate.

The Rabuor project is about a lot more than AIDS prevention: It's about people learning that they can better their own lives. Loyce, 52, bounds into a meeting and revs up the team, with the energy of the field hockey and track competitor she used to be.

Rosemell, 69, tall and sturdy, brings a quiet wisdom instead. She speaks in a girlish voice, and her laugh is soft and low.

She began back in the 1990s, when AIDS was ripping the heart out of almost every family here. Yet people barely whispered about it because prostitutes and truckers were the early conduits of the disease.

Rosemell didn't talk about AIDS either, but she talked about the orphans it left behind. She recalls that the children were "very bad in their bodies" because they didn't have enough food.

She grew up without a father, helped raise her siblings, sometimes went without food herself. In 1998 she began giving the kids food from her own home. Then she turned to a women's group she had founded to see "what we can do for these children, now we are their mothers and fathers."

Worried about the orphans, Rosemell cut short a visit in 2001 to Loyce in Seattle. On her return, she asked Ong'injo if the women could use a room at the Rabuor church. She asked her husband, Wesley, a retired school headmaster, for money to hire a teacher. The women launched a nursery school.

When Loyce visited her childhood home months later, she saw how much had changed. "I had a first-class community and village to bring me up. Everything a child could dream of, I had it," she says. "People rarely died. The first one I knew, I was 18."

So many were dying that villagers spent much of their time and resources on funerals. Loyce, who once worked for the World Bank and the Gates Foundation, looked for a way to help.

She sent her salary. She asked people in her Seattle church to contribute. Then she and supporters founded Rabuor Village Project in 2003 as a nonprofit under U.S. law. The money trickling in helped buy land, build classrooms and hire teachers.

AIDS hit the Ong'udi family directly. Rosemell and Wesley -- parents of 10, grandparents of 19 -- buried two of their children, in 2004 and 2007, AIDS victims who each left behind a healthy child. Another of their children is HIV-positive but taking AIDS drugs.

But people were not ready to discuss AIDS; their focus was on feeding their families.

The first step was to increase crops, starting with corn. Next came projects to earn income, keep children in school and train adults in agriculture, nutrition, vocational skills. Conditions still remain basic: no running water, no electrical service, no cars, but a few cell phones.

Loyce, who calls her mother the Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King Jr. of Rabuor, credits Rosemell's political savvy for finding patrons. Ong'injo says the church's backing shields the work from corrupt politicians. Rosemell's son Kennedy helps navigate bureaucracy and politics as assistant chief.

Rosemell is stepping back, because she doesn't want the work to be seen just as "Ong'udi's thing." The new "chair lady" of the 100-member Karateng Rabuor Women's Group is Yuanita Ong'udi (not a relative). Projects include sunflowers for cooking oil, goats whose milk feeds the children, a donated truck they rent out and, always, help for the poorest.

The nursery school serves two hot meals and a hearty snack every day to 160 students. The Rabuor project pays 25 salaries, including four teachers, four cooks, a nurse and two pharmacists -- people who volunteered before there was money for salaries. Community health workers survey 10 villages.

The youth group was born out of a meeting between Loyce and 150 angry youths in 2005, who felt the Rabuor project wasn't helping them. The group now runs a beekeeping project, raises chickens and makes bricks. In a cultural breakthrough, young men and women teach school and adult groups about HIV prevention, AIDS testing and treatment, including condom use, abstinence and responsible sexuality.

Dawnson Owuor, project manager, says the projects interconnect. For example, the youths rent land from the women's group for their brickwork; when the women's group builds a classroom, it buys bricks from the youths. The projects also help many of the 60 families who fled here during the violence after Kenya's disputed presidential elections in December.

In Seattle, Loyce is the only person the project pays; the team relies on volunteers, including Carol Kinney, a nutritionist who conducted a feeding survey in Rabuor. Treasurer David Anstine, another volunteer, says money sent to Kenya rose from about $39,000 in 2005 to $165,000 in 2007.

Loyce is driven and admits to driving others. Early on, she chided people for wallowing in misery, as if they were saying, "I love the face of poverty. Darling poverty, live with me forever."

But Loyce doesn't own land or live here, and she recognizes the project can only succeed if villagers are involved. Kigochi, the district commissioner, says too many anti-AIDS groups offer training in hotels, at high cost; the Rabuor group works in the villages and "everyone appreciates it."

In May, Rabuor registered an organization called Village by Village to link existing groups and expand into other communities. In June, Loyce launched a project, with Rotary Clubs, to pump drinking water to the village and for a vocational training center to teach tailoring, metalwork and computer skills.

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Kenya to produce diesel fuel from jatropha tree

from St Petersburg News

I thought this was pretty interesting even though it's a little off topic. This could help development in Kenya, as the country will begin to develop bio-diesel. A tree from South America will be grown in the country that can be used for fuel. - Kale

The jatropha plant can grow more than three meters high and produce golf ball-sized fruit. The fruit's poisonous seeds have been mainly used for medicinal purposes, but in recent years, researchers have discovered that the oil in the seeds can be processed into high-quality diesel fuel.

A senior official at Kenya's Ministry of Energy, Faith Odongo, tells VOA that preliminary tests have shown that the jatropha tree can be successfully grown in Kenya.

She says about 5,000 hectares of land are being set aside for cultivation amid growing expectations that the plant could help the country reduce its fossil fuel imports by five percent in the next four years.

A hectare of jatropha can produce as much as 1,900 liters of fuel, which is several times more than can be produced from a hectare of traditional bio-fuel products such as soybeans and corn.

'We expect it will make a big impact particularly in rural development and in the transport industry,' said Odongo.

Odongo says the government's objective in rural areas is to promote the replacement of kerosene and gasoline with bio-diesel. She says jatropha oil is just as effective as kerosene for lighting lamps and is ideal for fueling bio-diesel electricity generators.

Because the tree is drought-resistant and can be grown on soil that is not suitable for food crops, Odongo says jatropha would not have to compete for land and resources in food-producing areas.

Jatropha production, she adds, may even help alleviate poverty in some rural communities.

'That is why we are trying to promote the plant, so that those who do not have a cash-crop can rely on that as their cash-crop,' she said.

Another benefit for Kenya is that the cultivation of jatropha could significantly counter the effects of deforestation in other parts of the country.

Developed in India for assignments.neb-wire fuel oil, jatropha has been attracting international attention in recent years as a new bio-fuel source.

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In Kenya, HIV Orphans and Grandparents Live in Special Village

from the Voice of America

A village in eastern Kenya is home to children orphaned by AIDS and the grandparents who now have to take care of them. The village contains services like a school and medical clinic. - Kale

By Cathy Majtenyi, Nyumbani Village, Kenya

It is lunchtime for the Kametis. Agnes Nzembi and her four grandchildren exchange stories of the day.

They live in Nyumbani Village near the eastern Kenyan town of Kitui. But this is a different kind of village.

The Kametis and 28 other households are run by an elderly grandparent. The grandparent takes care of up to 11 children. Some of the youngsters are their biological grandchildren. The rest are children from other families.

Kavata Kameti says she enjoys living with her grandmother, "She tells me about our forefathers and things that happened in the past. Also she tells me about how to live a good life," she said.

All the young people in the village have one thing in common. Their low-income parents died of HIV/AIDS, turning them destitute and into orphans.

Sister Mary Owens, co-founder of Nyumbani Village, says the village grew out of a concern for the welfare of AIDS orphans and their elderly caregivers.

"These are two lost generations, because the grandparents have been left behind by their children, and the children have been left behind by their parents," she said."So there is a need to reach out to these grandparents. Secondly, this idea of trying to give these children as close experience of family as possible, we thought that the grandparents could do that, because they can hand out the values, they can share the culture, and they can guide."

During the day, the children attend primary school in the village.

When they are not studying, they work in the garden, cook, and do other chores.

Sister Owens says Nyumbani Village aims to be self-sustaining by growing its own food, cultivating income-generating plants such as castor and jatropha, creating its own water supply, and providing services to its residents.

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Women's plight in Kenya

from the Standard

Women have better saving habits, and run small businesses. But a new survey says many remain in poverty in Kenya. This story explains that the poverty continues despite policy changes to try to help. - Kale

By Macharia Kamau

The survey, Profile of Women’s Socio-Economic Status in Kenya, done by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) reveals that women operate 54 per cent of all enterprises and more women tend to save compared to men.

Poverty, however, is higher among women, with 50 per cent of them in rural and 46 per cent in urban areas being poor. IEA attributed their plight to poor enrolment of girls in secondary schools and higher institutions of learning.

"Poor participation in higher education leaves women in low paying jobs where they cannot move up the corporate ladder to decision making positions," said Mr Kwame Owino of IEA during the launch of the report.

According to the report, women’s enrolment in universities stood at 39 per cent in 2006.

"There are considerable disparities among universities depending on programmes offered. Arts-based courses attract high participation," says the report.

The effects of low representation in education are evident in the labour market structure, where women are under-represented in most of the sectors.

Domestic roles

Other than limited access to education, the report attributes low participation of women in the labour market to their demanding domestic and reproductive roles.

This locks them out of high level economic activities, leaving them to operate small enterprises, which are relatively flexible and allow them time for conflicting domestic roles.

"Although women operate 54 per cent of the total enterprises in the country, they dominate wholesale and retail, rural manufacturing and urban agriculture sectors while men are well represented in such sectors as urban manufacturing, financial services and transport," said Ms Eldah Onsomu, a researcher with IEA.

Those operating small enterprises have difficulty accessing credit especially from mainstream financial institutions. Onsomu said although 49.9 per cent of those with access to credit are women, much of the advances came from micro-finance institutions and informal mechanisms. Women are still disadvantaged as most of the financial institutions are located in urban areas and do not assist them expand beyond the micro-level.

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Insecurity heightens in northwest Kenya

from IRIN News

This profiles a growing lawlessness in northwest Kenya. - Kale

LODWAR - John Lochimoe used to own several heads of cattle that his grandfather left him, until raiders from the neighbouring Pokot District of northwestern Kenya took the animals.

"All the cows my grandfather left me have been stolen, driving me deeper into poverty," he said. Today, Lochimoe, a single parent of two, who also cares for his mother and mother-in-law, can hardly cope thanks to the insecurity that has robbed him of his livelihood.

"At night the dogs bark all the time and people are always on the look-out. It seems as if the peace and reconciliation efforts do not work," Lochimoe, a former teacher living in Oropoi village, Turkana North District, said.

Like Oropoi, many areas of the mainly arid northern Kenya experience resource-based conflicts, livestock theft and a lack of access to infrastructure such as roads, schools, communication and health facilities.

The situation has particularly affected the pastoralist communities that dominate the region. The major causes of conflict include cattle-rustling, proliferation of illicit arms, inadequate policing, and competition over control and access to natural resources, according to a report by the NGO Practical Action Eastern Africa report. The NGO implements peace programmes in northern Kenya.

"The pastoralists cannot access water and pasture because of the insecurity," Turkana Central District Commissioner George Ayonga said. Residents rely on seasonal rivers and water pans, and rising fuel costs have also reduced access to motorised water schemes.

The insecurity, he added, had caused population displacement, especially in areas such as Lokori and Lomelo, south of the main town of Lodwar.

To cope, residents often have to rely on police reservists and have organised local security to safeguard their livestock. Boys, some as young as 14, carry guns while herding livestock.

According to a drought bulletin for Turkana, June was particularly bad for conflicts in all cross-border zones of Turkana North, Central and South districts.

The problem was attributed to resource-based battles after the failure of the long rains. The region borders Ethiopia, Sudan, Uganda and the areas of Baringo, Marsabit, Samburu and West Pokot in Kenya.

The bulletin recommended strengthening early warning and rapid response systems, in addition to holding peace meetings and encouraging dialogue.

Health issues

According to Sarah Wanaswa of the Oropoi dispensary, many cases of assault and gunshot wounds were reported during the months of peak conflict. "When there are no peace and reconciliation efforts, there are also many raids," Wanaswa said. "We get targeted more when the herds move."

Apart from insecurity, the region experiences other health problems. Low awareness of personal hygiene, she added, had also often led residents to suffer preventable diseases such as diarrhoea, skin and eye infections. The dispensary, which treats between seven and 10 people each day, relies on supplies flown in by the government and NGOs.

The other problem was low latrine coverage. "Most people use the 'cat method'," she said. "Those [residents] who are mobile see no value in erecting latrines which they will not use for long.

"Some say the soil is rocky and are therefore reluctant to dig latrines," she said. "Waste disposal depends on personal knowledge."

Wanaswa said community health workers were conducting outreach services. "We are educating the people on the consequences of not having a toilet."

The dispensary at Oropoi also lacks HIV prevention services while most women deliver at home, seeking medical help only in case of complications. At the same time, the population movements had also contributed to low immunisation coverage of childhood diseases such as measles.

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NGOs Tell of Japan Aid Inadequacy

from All Africa

The Nation (Nairobi)

By Godffrey Olali
Nairobi

Civil society groups have observed critical gaps in some key deliberations made at the recently concluded Fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD).

The meeting which took place in Yokohama, Japan, between May 28 and 30, has met stiff criticism from key players, who are afraid that Tokyo might not be at a vantage position to present Africa's problems during next month's G8 summit in Japan.

"Japanese and African civil society have noted with disappointment the omission of civil society as participants in the proposal for the follow -up mechanism," observes Ms Sue Mbaya, an Advocacy director with World Vision, African region.

She cited the trade agenda as a key issue which was not properly tackled during the summit which she attended.

"We did not hear any substantial deliberation or progress on the trade agenda save for few African leaders who insisted on the importance of revisiting the global trade platform," she said.

She urged the organisers to make the necessary amendments and confirm civil society's participation in the follow-up mechanism, adding that lack of address to trade was a major oversight.

Ms Mbaya added that re-distribution of resources was another key aspect which was not given prominence at the summit which was attended African heads of state, including Kenya's President Mwai Kibaki.

"We cannot talk about economic growth without addressing the distribution variable while taking into account the fact that there is already insufficient commitment to make sure the poor are benefiting from growth," she said.

Ms Mbaya observed that until Africa tackles this phenomenon, it will experience increased poverty and unequal levels of development in terms of economic growth.

She added that inequality is on the increase in the continent with countries like Botswana, Namibia and South Africa topping the list of the five most unequal economies in the world, with their economies doing well but the poor not benefiting.

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Bad governance, poverty fuelling displacement - UNHCR official

from Afriquenligne

Nairobi, Kenya - Apart from conflict, other key factors fuelling displace ment of people in the world are poverty, bad governance and scarce resources, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, said here Friday.

Guterres, in Kenya on a tour that has seen him meet refugees and Kenyan Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), says the UN refugee agency, formed in 1951, has see n changes in factors contributing to displacement of persons.

The agency was with the specific mandate of protecting and finding solutions for Europeans uprooted in the aftermath of the Second World War.

That was then, but in a message to the world as the globe marked the World Refugee Day, Guterres said new challenges such as the recent fuel and food shortages, have had an immediate and dramatic effect on the poor and dispossessed.

"Conflict today may be motivated by politics, but looking deeper, it can also be about climate change leading to competition for scarce resources," he said.

He said extreme price increases had generated instability and conflict in many places, with the very real potential of triggering more displacements.

"These new challenges make it all the more important that we find ways to address the increasingly complex root causes of displacement," he said.

At the UN refugee agency, the focus is on protecting the rights and well-being of refugees.

"This includes ensuring that those fleeing violence and persecution are given access to safety and life-saving assistance, as well as long-term support during exile and eventual durable solutions for them to be able to rebuild their lives," he said.

But the UN refugee chief was rather disturbed to note that the agency's work was becoming increasingly difficult in many parts of the world.

He said "In some countries, efforts to control illegal migration are failing to make a proper distinction between those who choose to move and those who are forced to flee because of persecution and violence.

"And too often, refugees are turned away at the borders of countries where they had hoped to find safety and asylum."

He noted that asylum and immigration issues were not always addressed in a rational, equitable or effective manner.

"And people in wealthy countries should be aware that most of the world's refugees are found in the developing world, and some of the largest migratory movement stake place within the South," he said.

Many developing countries, more so in Africa which is home to many refugees, have shown enormous generosity in accepting refugees and deserve much more support a nd solidarity.

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How a Kenyan village tripled its corn harvest

from the Christian Science Monitor

The Millennium Villages Project is pricey. But it may hold answers to tackling the global food crisis.

By Eliza Barclay

Sauri, Kenya - The dry months of April, May, and June were once equated with hunger for Agre Ranyondo and his neighbors in this community of 55,000 people.

Mr. Ranyondo, a farmer, waited for the rains to come before he could plant corn on his six-acre plot. Often the 10 bags of corn he harvested through two planting seasons weren't enough to feed his family of eight.

But the cycle of hunger was broken last year.

The change began in 2005, when Ranyondo met with agricultural extension workers dispatched by the Millennium Villages Project (MVP), an international organization conceived by economist Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University's Earth Institute. He was given seeds better suited to the region, fertilizers, and was taught how to use them.

By 2007, Ranyondo had quintupled his annual output to 50 bags of corn, 20 of which he sold for cash and the other 30 he used to feed his family.

"We used to starve for these months, but now we are through starving," Ranyondo says. "The technical know-how in our farming is much improved."

Sauri is one of 80 Millennium Villages in 10 countries in Africa, where proven technologies, funded by donors, governments, and the community itself, are deployed to lift villagers in "hunger hot spots" out of poverty.

The project is not cheap. Each village operates on a budget of $110 per person per year over five years. The total cost: at least $1.5 million, a higher expenditure of aid than most development projects.

But increasingly these villages look to be oases of food security in Africa within the larger context of the global food crisis, which is hitting developing countries hard. Increasingly, the strategy for dealing with this crisis is to help small-scale farmers.

"No one is arguing anymore whether you can double production through input subsidies to small-holder farmers in most agricultural environments across Africa," says Glenn Denning, director of the Millennium Development Goals Center in Kenya. "We now have the evidence from the Millennium Villages that Africa holds tremendous potential to actually be the supply response to the global food crisis."

Since 2005, the prices of staples such corn, rice, and wheat have jumped 80 percent around the world. Yet, per capita food production has declined in Africa for the past 30 years and farm productivity is just one-quarter the global average, according to the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. Here in Kenya, corn production dropped by 6.1 percent from 2006 to 2007, according to Kenya's 2008 Economic Survey. This year, experts predict a shortfall of 10 million bags – about a third of the country's consumption.

In Sauri, however, a cereal bank that offers its 3,800 members a place to sell and store surplus grain has a warehouse stacked high with bags of corn, emblematic of the region's high levels of production and opportunity for profit from current high prices for farmers like Ranyondo. "As the whole of Kenya is pressing towards hunger, this place is different," says Willis Ombai, a program coordinator with the Sauri MVP.

The Millennium Villages are still small examples and face significant challenges in scaling up to district or provincial levels. But throughout the network of 11 villages that make up the Sauri community, corn production has on average more than tripled. The core of the strategy is a short-term provision of improved seeds suited to the local environment and fertilizers like Di-Ammonium Phosphate (DAP) and urea accompanied by advice on how to use them.

After two years, the subsidy ends. Farmers can get a loan from the cereal bank if they do not have the cash to buy the fertilizer and better seeds. In Ranyondo's case, he made enough profit on the sale of his corn to pay for seeds and other inputs.

But many obstacles remain in applying the model on a larger scale. The Sauri project, for example, has not yet found enough support in Kenya to scale up to the district level. Meanwhile, the price of petrochemical fertilizers, closely tied to the price of oil, is expected to climb by 70 percent.

Sam Rich, a consultant who criticized the Sauri project in the Wilson Quarterly magazine last year, noted that farmers in Kenya don't buy fertilizer because it costs three times as much as it does in Europe. They could boost productivity by simply easing taxes and import duties on fertilizer, he added.

But the food crisis has put a fresh spotlight on the MVP strategy, and proponents point to Malawi as an example of it working on a larger scale. Malawi has doubled its annual corn production since 2004, allowing for self-sufficiency and some surplus for sale to other nations.

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Residents battle disease as taps remain dry for months

from The Nation

Story by KITAVI MUTUA

A complex sanitation problem, which claims dozens of lives every year in Kitui Town is likely to get out of hand if not urgently dealt with.

The area is synonymous with severe and frequent water shortages, which also threaten to halt the operations of colleges, schools, hospitals and prisons.

And even though local residents have a fallback plan, it is as hazardous as they come — they resort to drinking water from wells, which health authorities warn is heavily contaminated.

The shortages are partly occasioned by a long standing dispute between the Kitui Water and Sanitation Company and Kenya Power and Lighting Company, over a power bill of Sh15 million.

In April, the power company disconnected supply to the Masinga water station, which serves the town and areas around it, leading to some schools closing earlier than scheduled.

District medical officer of health John Logedi says the frequent water shortages were a major concern to health authorities and should be addressed urgently before the situation gets out of hand.

“We are living under serious threat of outbreak of water-borne diseases,” the medic says, adding that at one time when the taps ran dry, the Kitui General Hospital resorted to buying water from far to sustain its operations, including feeding patients.

Dr Logedi condemns well water as being unfit for human consumption. The wells are shallow and their close proximity to pit latrines are a danger.

Domestic use

Human waste from the latrines easily seeps into the shallow wells, which provide water for domestic use, he says.

Residents are getting impatient with the many unfulfilled promises by Ministry of Water officials to ensure supply of clean water.

Kitui mayor Patrick Makasi says officials of the Kitui water company should explain how the company ran up such a huge bill, which it has failed to settle and yet they were prompt in paying their monthly water bills.

“This is clearly a case of mismanagement of public funds whose mess the board of this water company should be held accountable for,” the mayor told journalists in his office.

He said the board should have warned consumers, including key public institutions, on impending shortages and the duration it would take to sort out the matter.

Year-in year-out, health authorities face an uphill task of containing persistent malaria outbreaks in the area, specifically within the town.

As a result, health and sanitation has become a headache for the town’s authorities because the waste, generated by more than 20,000 people cannot be disposed of easily.

One of the town’s residential estates is infamously named Mosquito, due to the high population of the malaria-causing insects, which breed in stagnant water.

Notwithstanding the link between the estate and its odd name, the mosquitoes cause hundreds of deaths across the district annually.

District public health officer Johnstone Muinde says consumption of the underground water is among the leading causes of water-related diseases in the town.

“We have over the years waged a relentless public health campaign warning residents to boil all water before consumption as a way of addressing this sanitation challenge,” Mr Muinde told the Nation in an interview.

According to the mayor, at least Sh600 million is required to fund the construction of a modern sewerage that can cater for a growing population.

Four years ago, the Kitui municipal council funded a feasibility study by experts from the Urban Development Department in the Ministry of Local Government on how the sewerage and drainage system can be built but lacked funds to implement the crucial plans.

“Through public meetings, the council has embarked on educating the town residents on simple, short term waste disposal measures to cope with the sanitation challenge,” says the mayor.

Contrary to wide expectations, the completion of Masinga-Kitui water pipeline five years ago failed to ease water problems in Kitui Town and areas around it.

District water engineer Kyuu Kangee says the Masinga water supply held at the Kitui reservoir can not be entirely released to consumers because it will flood the town due to the absence of the sewerage system.

“Our hands as the ministry are tied and we can only release to the public 15 per cent of the capacity while the rest lies idle,” he said.

Mr Denge Lugayu, the regional manager of the Africa Medical Research Foundation (Amref) says the complex sanitation problems in the district can be easily overcome if the Government committed more funding to the problem.

Amref has been helping to drill boreholes and building wells and dams in the arid region.

Mr Lugayu says 70 per cent of the diseases affecting the residents are hygiene-related and can be eradicated if relevant authorities focused on finding lasting solutions.

In the neighbouring Mutomo District, residents spend a huge portion of their monthly earnings in buying water for domestic use. Women and children in the vast and dry area undergo a great deal of difficulty to get a single jerrican of water in their homes.

“Women trek long distance and for hours in search of water but even worse, the water is not by any standards safe for human consumption,” says Mr Isaac Muoki, the area MP.

Mr Muoki confirmed that some of his poor constituents drink dirty water, putting their health at risk.

“Throughout the year, outbreaks of water-borne diseases like typhoid, dysentery, malaria, intestinal worms and amoebiosis are a regular phenomenon because the water they consume is obviously contaminated,” he says.

Water scarcity in the area is so severe that, on average a 20-litre container of water sells for Sh20 throughout the year, a situation which further aggravates the area’s high poverty levels.

Locals rely on a few water pans and earth dams scattered far apart, which dry up soon after the rains.

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Kenya should follow a policy of debt rejection, not cancellation

from The Daily Nation

Story by OMTATAH OKOITI

Planning minister Wycliffe Oparanya’s recent call for debt cancellation calls for more serious analysis than many have accorded it.

Although there are compelling moral arguments to cancel the crippling the developing world’s debt, they don’t amount to much when the countries appeal to pity and not to enforceable law. Further, debt relief will not solve the problem of the poor world’s poverty if it does not also address the root causes.

It has rightly been argued by many that if industrialised countries really wish to eliminate poverty in the rest of the world they must, among other things, reform oppressive world trade laws skewed in their favour, drop subsidies that insulate and distort world markets, strengthen their efforts to curb graft and help poor countries to crack down on corruption and recoup their stolen assets stashed in their banks.

Some of the “poorest” indebted nations are also those richest in natural resources. They experience poverty because their governments abuse their resources, not because they are indebted to the West.

Hence, cancelling the debt will not automatically improve their situation. It might even give bandit governments the funds they need to maintain illicit power.

Poor economic policies

Debt cancellation might even encourage poor economic policies by letting irresponsible lender and borrower governments off the hook, conferring a type of legitimacy upon corrupt regimes and their financiers.

For most of these debts are no more than an international fix in which developed nations parcelled out poor world’s resources to themselves, to corrupt among the developing world’s elites, or propped corrupt governments to further their “strategic” interests.

Writing off questionable debts without determining their legitimacy will allow corrupt creditors to shrewdly conceal their complicity in the misuse of public funds by despotic rulers then pause to be lauded as having contributed to the elimination of poverty through debt cancellation.

Blanket cancellation also means a country is not creditworthy. Even if the debts are written off today, poor countries still must borrow some more. Their inability to service their obligations today will affect the cost of their borrowing in the future.

To avoid this, the poor world should stop seeking mercy from people who fixed them in the first place, and demand justice, holding both creditors and corrupt local officials to account.

There is nothing to be forgiven: looters on both sides just have to pay. Graft is a two-way street and the complicity of industrialised nations in the developing world’s corruption – the greatest underwriter of poverty – is well documented and must be punished.

Under international law countries have a right to repudiate odious debts that were contracted without the consent of the people, were not spent in their interests and the creditors were aware of the fact.

For example, demands that the Congolese repay Americans and others who helped Mobutu oppress them have no basis in law under the Doctrine of Odious Debts, created to further international finance by limiting the ability of governments to repudiate debts.

In 1927, Alexander Sack, the Paris-based Russian legal scholar on public debts, wrote: “If a despotic power incurs a debt not for the needs or in the interest of the State, but to strengthen its despotic regime, to repress the population… this debt is odious for the population of all the State...

“This debt is not an obligation for the nation; it is a regime’s debt, a personal debt of the power that has incurred it, consequently it falls with the fall of this power.”
Odious debts

Most countries take on odious debts from former regimes due to political pressure or the fear of being penalised by creditors in the future, and the fact that translating a clear moral issue into a technically sound case in international law is a complex process.

But there are clear precedents for odious debts being repudiated, such as Mexico (1867), Cuba (1898) and Poland (1919).

The US repudiated Cuban debts that consisted of Spanish government loans secured on the island’s revenue. The Spanish asserted a principle of international law: that state obligations belong to a land and its people, not to a regime.

The Americans replied that the debt was “imposed upon the people of Cuba without their consent… was expended in a manner contrary to Cuba’s interests… (Since) Cuba had no voice, from the moral point of view; the proposal to impose them upon Cuba is equally untenable.”

As such, the Americans argued, these debts could not be considered Cuban debts, nor could they be binding on a successor state. As for the lenders, the Americans replied that “the creditors, from the beginning, took the chances of the investment.”

Since under international law citizens need not repay those who financed their oppression, the Kenya government should stop sleeping on the job and take the bull by the horns.

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Poverty eradication a priority for the Grand Coalition Govt

from the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation

President Mwai Kibaki at his Harambee House Office met and updated Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, the Special Advisor to UN Secretary General, on the steps the Grand Coalition Government was taking to attain the millennium development goals.

President Kibaki said despite the heavy investments required, the Government was giving priority to Health and Education sectors which were key to poverty reduction in the country.

The President Thursday outlined achievements in the five-year-old free primary education programme and the progress so far made in implementing phase one of the free secondary education that was introduced in January this year.

The Head of State outlined the measures being taken to boost food production including resettling the internally displaced persons back to their farms.

"The Government fully appreciates the challenges posed by the rising international food and oil prices which may seriously compromise food sufficiency goals," President Kibaki said.

He thanked Prof. Sachs for rolling out the millennium villages round the world including Kenya and urged him to consider inaugurating more villages around the country.

In response, Prof. Sachs commended President Kibaki for his decision to form a Grand coalition Government with Prime Minister Raila Odinga noting that the unity of purpose among the coalition partners would assist the country in overcoming some of the challenges hindering attainment of the millennium development goals.

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On the road to fight looming hunger

from The Nation

Story by OLIVER MATHENGE

Even as poverty tightens its grip on Africa, a group of eight young people have cycled through half the continent, starting from the north, raising awareness — and money — to help the poor.

For them, the Millennium Development Goals are achievable by 2015 and they will stop at nothing to play their role.

The five men and one woman left Kenya in April for Tanzania where they were joined by two more cyclists after covering 790 kilometres.


In Kenya the group cycled through Moyale, Marsabit, Isiolo, Nanyuki and then Nairobi. From Tanzania the cyclists moved to Malawi and are currently in Zambia. Their cycles will then take them to Botswana and eventually to South Africa.

“We have covered a good portion of our journey, which began on January 5 in Cairo. We will cover a total of 12,500km,” one of the cyclists, Mr Gareth Brauteseth, told the Nation in Kenya.

Social network

South Africans Gareth, Didi Francis (the only woman) and Grant McDermott have teamed up with their Irish friends Niall Treacy, Oliver Fegan and Denis Dwyer for the six-month journey that will take them through nine countries along Africa’s east coast.

The other two, Richard Conyngham and Matt Eb, who joined them in Arusha, are also South Africans. Interestingly, the eight cyclists, all in their 20s and whose background is finance, linked up through the ever-growing social network portal, Facebook.

The fact that their feat is extraordinary and they are all taking such a challenge for the first time, is in the least of their concerns. According to Gareth, Millennium Cycle for Change aims at creating awareness about the work of the Millennium Promise Fund, an organisation that works with impoverished communities to help fight poverty in Africa.

The fund, established by renowned economist and founder of the Earth Institute Jeffrey Sachs, works with the communities, governments, NGOs and corporations. Mr Sachs was an economic adviser to former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

“That is one of the unique aspects of this fund, it is not about handing out money to people. It is about empowering the community through investing in them in partnership with their governments,” Gareth adds.

The overall goal of the Cycle is to raise $300,000 (approximately Sh18.6 million). The funds will go towards the 80 Millennium villages established by the Millennium Promise Fund in 10 countries in Africa.

Twelve of the villages are in Siaya District in Kenya’s Nyanza Province. They include Sauri near Gem constituency, which the team failed to visit due to the post-election violence.

In Tanzania, the team visited the Mbola Millennium village according to an email update from Gareth. The Mbola cluster is composed of six villages with a population of approximately 30,000.

Denis says that they support the Millennium Promise because the Sauri Village had shown remarkable progress and potential. He says that the beneficiaries have managed to improve their output, and reduced malaria prevalence.

“The number of pupils who benefit from the school feeding programme under the fund has increased tremendously in Sauri,” adds Denis noting that 17,514 pupils have been provided with lunch in 28 primary schools in the area.

According to the cyclists, the Millennium villages address all the poverty-related problems, including absence of essential infrastructure to assist communities on their way to self-sustainable development.

“Our aim is to see the millennium development goals achieved where we will have all people being self-reliant,” Gareth says.

According to the cyclist, maize production in Sauri, established in 2004, has more than tripled through the help of inputs such as fertilisers and improved seeds. He also notes that malaria prevalence in the area has gone down from 55 per cent to 13 per cent.

The Millenium Cycle route runs from Egypt along the Nile until Lake Aswan. At that point, the cyclists took a ferry into northern Sudan and continued through the country and into Ethiopia. From there, it was on to Kenya, and then central Tanzania and into Lilongwe on the western side of Lake Malawi.

They will then continue down Livingstone’s way into Victoria Falls, exiting Zambia into Botswana and then into South Africa, where the ‘Garden Route’ will lead them to Cape Town.

“We are hoping to get into Cape Town on July 15,” says Gareth.

Nubian desert

Denis adds that the most challenging parts so far have been in Sudan and Ethiopia.

“It was very hard to cycle though the Nubian desert in Sudan, which took us six days to cover. The other was the Ethiopian Highlands, which has a very tough terrain,” Denis says.

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Food crisis increasing poverty

from the Nation

Story by JEFF OTIENO

The rising price of food is sending shivers down the spines of many world leaders who are aware that the skyrocketing prices have the potential effect of causing a “real economic and humanitarian tsunami in developing countries”.

The World Bank estimates that food prices have increased by 83 per cent in the last three years, presenting a real risk of starvation to an estimated 100 million poor people who will be unable to afford food.

And with Africa being one of the world’s poorest continents, it is most likely to feel the pinch more and on a wider scale. Already, there have been food riots in Egypt, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Ethiopia and Burkina Faso. To underline the seriousness of the food crisis, African Finance ministers said in a statement that the rise in the cost of food threatened the continent’s growth, peace and security.

However, the shortage is not peculiar to African nations. There have been food riots in Indonesia, the Philippines and Haiti. In Haiti, the riots led to the death of five people and the prime minister’s resignation.

The food shortage has become such a weighty issue that United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has termed it a global crisis. UN Food and Agricultural Organisation chief Jacques Diouf says immediate efforts to cushion the blow should focus on helping farmers in developing countries grow more crops. Josette Sheeran, the World Food Program’s executive director, has said that requests for food aid are already coming in from countries unable to cope with the rising prices.

But why is the world facing a food shortage?

Global population growth is one of the factors being blamed for the high food prices. Food production used to increase at a higher rate than population growth thanks to research in crop and animal production and modern methods of farming.

However, some scientists feel that the population growth rate has caught up and could even surpass food production rates if urgent measures are not taken.

Prices of the most basic foodstuffs traded on international commodity markets are increasing sharply as their demand continues to increase against declining supplies. And this is a trend expected to continue. In 2000, the world’s population was 6.1 billion and the UN estimates that by 2050, the world’s population will be at 9.8 billion.

The price of wheat, for example, has doubled in less than a year, while other staples such as corn, maize and soya are trading at well above their averages in the 1990s. Rice and coffee prices are at a 10-year high, and in some countries, milk and meat prices have more than doubled.

FAO and World Bank also cite the emerging economies of the highly populated countries such as India and China as playing a major role in pushing up prices. The economic growth is pushing more and more people into the middle class translating in increased demand for meat, dairy products and processed foods.

FAO research shows that in China, for example, meat consumption per capita in 1980 was 20kg. In 2007, this increased to 50kg. The increased consumption rate is pushing up prices beyond the reach of the poor.

Studies done by the United Nations Environment Programme, the world’s leading environment organisation, provides a third reason for the crisis: misuse of resources is turning more acres of land which would have hitherto been used for food production into deserts.

As a result, UNEP says, irregular rainfall patterns and flooding are becoming a common feature in the world’s major food producers, including developing countries in Africa, thus affecting agricultural production.

Climate change and its impact on general livelihood in the world has forced developed countries to look for alternative sources of clean energy. The shift from agricultural production to the lucrative business of biofuels has seen food literally being used to fuel industry and automobiles. Biofuels such as ethanol are produced from renewable biological resources like corn.

In addition to trying to reduce pollution, developed nations sought biofuels to counter high oil prices. Oil prices are being driven up by increased demand from industrialised and industrialising countries, against declining supply caused mainly by resource depletion and political instability in source markets.

These high prices are mostly felt in developing countries where the system of food production and distribution is heavily dependent on oil and other fossil fuels for processing, packaging, storing and transportation.

However, not everybody in the world is complaining. The Bretton Woods Institute says the main beneficiaries of the current situation are farmers in rich and emerging market nations like the US, Brazil, Argentina, Canada and Australia, who are making record profits for their harvests.

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[Comment] How to Tackle Poverty After Chaos

from All Africa

Business Daily (Nairobi)

By M. J Gitau

Until very recently, it was hard for economists to admit or recognise the role of politics in the economic process. That was partly because of the specialisation the profession has undergone in the last few years, and how difficult it was, and probably is, for economists to pay respect to anything immeasurable.

But look at the damage politics has had on the economy in just a span of months. From rosy growth projections of seven per cent for this year, the forecast today is too weak.

Today, Treasury and the Central Bank have downgraded that to about four per cent, and last week, AIG, an investment firm, gave a three per cent forecast, while it is reported that the IMF figure is about 2.5 per cent. These grim figures were seen about five years ago.

But underlying the slow down that the economy will suffer this year is the fact that it will hit varied groups differently. Without doubt, big and middle-business have suffered, and will take sometime to recover.

The country's poor are perhaps the hardest hit. If the economy continued with its growth path, and the process benefited lower income groups much faster than others, then perhaps Kenya would have reached the development level giving the majority the capacity to absorb shocks occasioned by the post-election violence. Painfully, this is not the case.

Inflation witnessed today is astonishing. At 21.8 per cent, inflation in March compares badly with the 5.9 per cent in March last year. Almost all basic commodities that determine the life of the poor man have gone up in prices, which, for the most part, is a result of post-election chaos.

Looking at the overall inflation can conceal the entire picture. While 21.8 per cent was the overall inflation for all income groups, that of lower income groups, in say Nairobi, was as high 23.2 per cent, the price index for food and non-alcoholic drinks for lower income groups in Nairobi jumped 28.5 per cent.

All this shows the larger segment of the population which is unemployed, possesses few assets to cushion against inflation, and have fixed wages, are hurting badly.

However, there are sectors in the economy that are still burgeoning. The real estate market has over-pricing, the oil market continues to hike prices while all factors point toward lower prices.

This is the kind of crisis the economy suffers today, and presents the long-term, structural challenge. In short, how will prosperity that we had started to witness, and which we shall continue to record once we are past the crisis, be designed to allow a more cohesive society?

This is the structural and long-term challenge to the economy. It would be prudent to say the enormous task ahead will not be left to the 'economic technicians' alone but will need collaboration from the political class.

Reform, whether economic or political, always starts with a small group that provides leadership.

Appreciating this point shall be the starting point of providing a meaningful chance for the poor and the rich to co-exist.

It should also be the opportune time to debate the plight of the majority who lack sources of decent income, assets and skills for meaningful employment.

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Korea's CEO President Who Rose From From Deep Poverty

from All Africa

By Godffrey Olali
Nairobi

At the height of cold war in 1964, a group of students from Korea University held a demonstration following the conclusion of a treaty normalising relations between South Korea and Japan, a treaty many Koreans considered unfair.

When a crackdown was done, Mr Lee Myung-bak, a fourth semester student and the president of the student body, was arrested for leading the demonstrations. Convicted of leading anti-government movement, Mr Lee, who would later rise to stardom and become Korea's 17th President several years later, was sentenced to two years in jail. He was freed after six months, but used his jail term to study, with his eyes firmly fixed on entering the lucrative business world.

Convicted of anti-government activity and on a government blacklist, Mr Lee found few companies willing to hire him. One day, he wrote a letter to then president Park Chung-hee, who was later moved by a small quote in Mr Lee's letter saying: "If a nation blocks a man from standing on his own two feet, the nation will forever owe him." The letter, appeared to make an impression, after which, President Chung sent one of his aides on the government's decision not to block Mr Lee from obtaining employment.

It was in 1965 and Korea's GDP per capita was no more than 80 US dollars. The country was in the midst of revolutionary change, with military regime in charge, determined to bring rapid development to the poor and the war - scarred region. One day, Mr Lee was scanning through classified pages of the classified section. In one corner, he spied on an advertisement of then little known company, Hyundai Construction.

"Lee knew little about the company other than it was mid-sized and apparently on the rise. He knew even less about the construction business, yet here was a company looking for employees to work on an oversees construction project in Thailand. It looked like a promising opportunity, and he jumped at it," says the recently launched biography titled; Korea's CEO President.

It adds: "And when the interview came, Mr Lee went to the Hyundai Construction headquarters in downtown Seoul, where five executives interviewed him including the legendary Hyundai Group founder, Chung Ju-yung."

The interviewers looked at Mr Lee's curriculum vitae and asked: "What do you think construction is?" Without even thinking Mr Lee responded, "I think construction is creation, because it creates something from nothing." His response reportedly made an impression, and a week later, he was notified that he had got the job. That, would mark a landmark career in the company which Mr Lee came to head years later as its chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

According to the book, Mr Lee's humble background and poverty, was the major driving force to stardom.

The President says in the biography that poverty was his best teacher. "Up to the age of twenty, poverty was my permanent companion. It was struck to my family like a shell to an oyster," he says.

Due to the 1945 Pacific War, Mr Lee's father lost his livelihood and the family had to move to a home in the mountains, situated on the site of an abandoned temple from Japanese colonial period. Lee's home, a one -room house, lacked even the most basic facilities.

"Not a single day went without the sounds of poverty - people fighting, stomachs growling and sick people dying."

Mr Lee as the youngest son, ran errands for a local brewery, and could purchase the cheapest meals to feed his family. At school, he would only drink water on an empty stomach, just to quell his hunger at lunchtime.

"Before I was conceived, my mother dreamed of a full moon that had climbed up her skirt. So she coined the name 'Myung,' meaning 'bright,' and 'Bak,' meaning 'wide,' " says the President who was born in Osaka Japan in the late 1941 at a time when Korea was in the grip of colonial control by imperial Japan.

"Even if I had to drop out due to lack of fees, I figured it would be better to be a college dropout than a high school graduate," he said. At the university, he was elected the student body President, a post he later used to mobilise students and led an anti-government protest in 1964.

After joining the Hyundai Construction as a mere entry - level employee in 1965, he rose to become its director five years later at 29.

Mr Lee goes into the books of history as Korea's youngest CEO at 35. Between 1977 and 1992, Lee served as CEO of ten different Hyundai affiliates, including Hyundai Construction. In 1988, he was named the chairman of Hyundai Construction at 47.

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Setting up markets for the poor will not ease poverty

from Business Daily Africa

The poor are bearing the heaviest brunt of inflation. Business Daily spoke to CBK governor Prof Njuguna Ndung’u on what could be done to improve their lot


Q) Do you consider the setting up of market outlets for Kenyans in poverty, a good idea?

Setting up market outlets sounds like a good idea, but it is not readily workable. Markets are for everybody, a market develops where there is demand for a good or service, the only filtering mechanisms for particular segments of the market is using prices and sometimes quality. If one identifies market for the poor, socially it will be unacceptable.

Second, it may be misconstrued to mean a subsidy is being provided, it becomes then a public good issue, with all the accompanying problems for allocation, efficiency, etc.

Q) Is it a viable venture that can be applied?

At a practical level setting up market outlets for the poor is not workable for a number of reasons. The exclusivity of the market outlets to the poor is not assured and there will always be the problem of joy-riders when it comes to supplying public goods.

Such an isolationist market will exacerbate the poors’ sense of deprivation as it means tagging people as poor and therefore undermining people’s sense of confidence and this is a dimension of poverty.

The best alternative is to empower the poor to increase their real incomes and this can be done.

Firstly, by establishing public works programmes to absorb them into meaningful employment thereby providing them with a source of livelihood. Those with viable self-employment business opportunities should be assisted with seed capital for business start-ups.

Meanwhile, production and distributive efficiency of goods and services in the formal sectors should be fostered to avail affordable commodities. On its part, the Central Bank will ensure low stable inflation by eliminating money based inflation.

Second, the provision of infrastructure to open up the potential in poverty prone areas is still the win-win formula for poverty reduction. This opens market channels for the poor to participate in the market place, depending on the relative endowments.

Third, it is an institutional failure problem. Institutions should help mitigate risks and prevent vulnerable groups from slipping into poverty through provision of social services that are required by the poor.

It is also important that we continue fostering social responsibility roles that entrench minding our neighbours through social support systems like freedom from hunger walks and food donations under the auspices of such institutions as the Red Cross, SOS.

Q) What are the challenges facing our country in dealing with food balance vis-à-vis population?

As the population increases demand for basic needs including food increases. It is argued that population is the embodiment of labour and human capital development.

Technological developments provide us with the answer to cope with population pressure and food production at the same time. But technology and land ownership pattern move hand in hand. If property rights are not well defined on land, then investment on land and taking advantage technological developments will be constrained.

Q) Is the population the reason why Kenyans could be living below poverty line?

The population is not the reason why Kenyans could be living below the poverty line. The above arguments have answered this question, but some emphasis may be laid on it. Studies on poverty have identified the factors that lead to poverty and the characteristic of the poor.

The level of education, lack of assets etc are higher in ranking than dependency problems that come with high population growth.

Q) What will happen to our economy if we don’t address the high cost of living?

It is important to understand what is cost of living and contributing factors, to the extent that the cost of living is associated with inflation, then we can break down the sources of inflation. CBK is committed to low stable inflation by ensuring optimal money supply.

But prices do rise due to supply problems and distributional channels, in our case due to political activities of January and February that have increased insecurity.

But these price increases are never ratified by money supply growth, so the effect usually dissipates over time. But cost of living also emanates from transactions costs. We need to invest in public infrastructure to reduce them.

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FAO Urges Growing of Potatoes to Check Poverty

from All Africa

By Dominique Patton

Growing more potatoes could help countries like Kenya to improve their food security at a time of high cereal prices, an agricultural expert said.

Potatoes are a more efficient food source than maize or rice, requiring less land and water than the cereals.

About 80 per cent of the potato crop can be used for human consumption, significantly more than for cereals.

It is estimated that tropical farmers can produce about 20-25 tonnes of potatoes per hectare within 50-90 days of planting, said NeBambi Lutaladio, in charge of tuber crops at the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation.

"The same area would yield only 10 tonnes of cereal after a longer period of time," he told Business Daily.

FAO is organising a series of events and conferences this year, which it has designated the International Year of the Potato, to boost research on more productive varieties of potatoes and ways of incorporating them into the food chain.

High cereal prices have already triggered government initiatives to substitute cereal-based foods with potato products.

In Peru, consumers are being urged to eat bread made with potato flour in a bid to reduce food price inflation driven by expensive wheat imports.

Production of potatoes is also growing faster than grains. By 2020, the average annual growth rate of potatoes will be 2.7 per cent, predicts the FAO, compared with 1.8 per cent for corn, 1.5 per cent for wheat and 1.3 per cent for rice.

The growth is particularly strong in developing countries. These accounted for half of the global crop - 320 million tonnes - in 2007, compared with a mere third in 1990.

China has become the world's biggest potato producer, doubling its output in the last 10 years to 72 million tonnes last year.

But although the potato is easy to grow, making it a valuable cash crop for many farmers, getting access to added value sectors remains challenging. The knowledge on incorporating potato flour into foods is clearly far behind that of wheat flour, said Mr Lutaladio.

More work also needs to be done on linking small-scale sub-Saharan growers to domestic and regional commodity markets and improving the planting material available to farmers.

"We're encouraging developing economies to create committees to discuss what needs to be done to make the crop more sustainable," said Mr Lutaladio.

Kenya is the fifth biggest potato producer in Sub-Saharan Africa, with an output of 790,000 tonnes in 2006, according to FAO.

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Joint Efforts Bring Hope to Thousands of Slum Dwellers

from All Africa

The Nation (Nairobi)

By Walter Menya
Nairobi

The new sparkling and spacious blocks of new classrooms and toilets at Kudho Primary school in Kisumu East district, justifies the 26 years that pupils and teachers have had to wait for better learning facilities.

Since the school was established in 1982, pupils have been learning in dilapidated and crammed classrooms, coupled with a problem of few or no desks at all.

"It was a tattered school with more pupils than the classrooms could carry," says Mrs Benter Nyapuoth, the headteacher.

But recently, the school that serves a pupil population of over 1,000 mainly from the sprawling Obunga slums, has emerged from the jammed classrooms to more spacious ones, thanks to the Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme (KENSUP).

In addition, a modern early childhood development unit with a capacity of 60 pupils, has also been completed under the programme.

She adds that the school has also recorded an upsurge in enrolment of pupils, who previously walked to far off schools in other estates in the town.

Fast track the achievement

When the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Housing that runs Kensup, Mr Tirop Kosgey, visited the school last month, the joy was there for all to see, as the pupils composed songs in his honour and the team that accompanied him.

Kensup began in early 2004 through a partnership between the government and the UN-Habitat, to improve the social and physical infrastructure in the informal settlements within Kisumu, Nairobi, Mavoko and Mombasa, in its first phase, but was expected to cover other towns in the latter stages.

The purpose for starting Kensup, says Mr Kosgey, was to fasttrack the achievement of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), of poverty alleviation and improved access to basic services by the year 2020.

During the inauguration of Kensup, President Kibaki said the programme was meant to improve access to shelter, water and sanitation, education, health, security and employment to an estimated population of over six million who live in the informal settlements.

It is this programme that the Kisumu Town Clerk, Rashid Mwakiwiwi, says has placed the town on the firm path to development and provision of thousands of job opportunities to the over 5000 unemployed youths.

At the Airport Community Dispensary, in Kogony ward of Kisumu Town Constituency, a short distance off Kisumu-Busia highway, Mr Kosgey was taken around a modern health facility built by funds from Kensup, through the Kisumu municipal council.

The facility is now in its second phase, that has seen a perimeter fence put up round it. Before Kensup came in, the facility had a single building and patients were forced to sit outside in the open, as they waited for their turns.

This is now set to change, following the construction of a new building with separate paediatrics and maternity wings. In addition, the dispensary has also benefited from new toilets from the programme.

Additional medical staff

At the moment, the facility serves only sections of Kisumu Town West constituency, but will be able to serve a larger part of the town upon the completion of the new building and additional medical staff.

In the Manyatta slums, Magadi Primary School has also received a boost of more classrooms. The school is now able to accommodate the surging pupil population since the introduction of Free Primary Education (FPE) programme.

In the same estate, a new market is under construction. According to Mr Kosgey, the completion of Manyatta market was slowed down by the political unrest that hit the lakeside town recently.

Documents from Kisumu municipal council, the implementing agency of Kensup projects, indicate that the market is 80 per cent complete and traders, who were relocated from the site to pave way for the construction, will be back soon.

"When completed, the facility will boost the livelihoods of people living and working in the informal settlements," said the PS during the tour.

In the expansive Nyalenda slums, an access road is under construction. Sections of the slum, that become impassable when it rains, have been targeted by the upgrade.

The national coordinator of Kensup, Ms Leah Muraguri, said that 12 projects have been earmarked in the informal settlements of Kisumu Town.

"The Government has allocated Sh49 million during the 2007/08 financial year to improve social and physical amenities in Kisumu Town," said Ms Muraguri.

Three projects have so far been completed, while five are at various stages, said Mr Kosgey. The remaining four projects have been delayed by "tendering technicalities".

At the moment, 60 per cent of Kisumu's population lives in the informal settlements, with a prevalence of absolute poverty standing at 48 per cent.

Mr Mwakiwiwi and Ms Muraguri, however, said that this is set to change before the year 2020, when Kensup winds up its operations.

Adequate social amenities

"We have a duty as a partner of Kensup to rid the town of slums through the provision of adequate social amenities and infrastructure," Mr Mwakiwiwi said.

"The 12 projects in the first phase will be completed by the end of the current financial year," said Ms Muraguri.

She, at the same time, assured the residents of the town that they will not be moved to new areas, to pave way for construction of new houses in the coming phases.

"Construction of critical infrastructure is vital in Kisumu, but we have no plans for a decanting site because there is enough land to develop better housing for Kisumu residents," she said.

Ms Muraguri says she is so far satisfied with the work "except that the projects were delayed by the post-election violence."

In addition, Mr Mwakiwiwi says that the hawkers' menace within the town centre, will soon be a thing of the past, after the completion of Manyatta market among others, that are in the offing with support from Kensup.

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African Examples Doctor’s vital duty to save Africa

from the Standard

Harold Ayodo

The unprecedented violence that rocked parts of the country after last year’s General Election had one man worried.

Prof Dan Kaseje knew if the skirmishes escalated, many people would suffer, especially the rural poor.

During the period, many health centres remained inaccessible, especially in rural areas where the poor live.

"I kept praying that the unfolding of events would not reach alarming levels," he says.

Kaseje, a doctor, who played a pivotal role in reviving collapsed health services in war-torn countries around the world, was speaking from experience.

He knew the painful effects of war and that women and children were always the worst affected.

At 62, Kaseje has spent more than 30 years developing health programmes in Rwanda, Angola, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan, the former Zaire and Afghanistan.

"I have worked with communities in countries where health structures were destroyed and it took years to rebuild them," says Kaseje.

The professor went to Rwanda immediately after the 1994 genocide, which claimed 800,000 lives.

Kaseje was also instrumental in the healing of Angola after 27 years of civil war that left more than 500,000 people dead mostly in the 1990s.

The story was the same in Sierra Leone, that experienced 11 years of civil war. About 150,000 people died and more than half the citizens were rendered homeless.

About 600,000 refugees — 12 per cent of the population — fled to neighbouring countries. More than 200,000 were women raped, and about 1,000 civilians had their limbs amputated by rebels.

"It was difficult to work in war torn countries as survivors suffered trauma and needed counselling," says Kaseje.