WHY BBI MUST ADDRESS DISPARITIES IN KENYA

By Oduor Ong'wen

The Building Bridges Initiative, Kenya’s latest attempt at nationmaking is in the final stretch. While many Kenyans have welcomed it, a number of them led, by the Deputy President William Ruto, have dismissed it with contempt. The refrain for those contemptuous of the initiative is that it is about creating political positions for bigwigs on the backs of Mama Mboga. It could as well turn out to be if we just focus on political settlement but ignore three of the most important issues in the nine-issue initiative. The three are Shared Prosperity, Ethnic Competition; and Inclusivity. The remaining six issues including the lack of national ethos, runaway corruption, divisive elections, safety and security as well as responsibilities and rights depend on how we tackle these three.

Extreme inequality and skewed access to opportunities in both public and private sectors is out of control in Kenya. Despite impressive economic growth numbers we have been fed with annually since 2005, poverty still affects millions of people’s lives. It appears that a minority of wealthy individuals and investors are creaming off the yields of the country’s economic performance. While this minority of super-rich Kenyans is accumulating wealth and income, the fruits of economic growth are failing to trickle down to the poorest. The rich are capturing the lion’s share of the benefits, while millions of people at the bottom are being left behind. 

The gap between the richest and poorest has reached extreme levels in Kenya. Less than 0.1per cent of the population (8,300 people) own more wealth than the bottom 99.9 per cent (more than 46 million people). The richest 10 per cent of people in Kenya earned on average 23 times more than the poorest 10 per cent.

The poverty in Kenya has a face, gender and address.  The top 10 per cent richest households in Kenya control more than 40 per cent of the country's income. The poorest 10 per cent control less than one per cent. Currently, less than 10,000 people control 6 per cent of the Kenya’s national wealth. Poverty has the face of a young female Kenyan. For instance, in the 20-24 years age group, there are 274,000 unemployed women compared to 73,000 unemployed men. Nearly every child in the former Central province is enrolled in primary school. One out of three children in the North Eastern region go to school.

According to Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), the northern part of the country has lowest income inequality. For instance, Turkana has 0.28 per cent, Wajir 0.321 per cent and Mandera 0.332 per cent. The coastal regions especially Tana River, Kilifi and Kwale have the highest income inequality in the country at 0.617 per cent, 0.597 per cent and 0.565 per cent respectively using the Gini coefficient. Income inequality in the coastal region is linked to historical injustices where large tracts of land were allocated to nonresidents, leaving the locals as squatters. This inequality has led to severe poverty in the region leading the squatters to live impoverished lifestyles with minimal access to basic amenities such as schools and healthcare facilities.  This has also led to increased levels of insecurity in those areas due to high unemployment rates especially in urban areas. In the former Nyanza province, twice as many children die before their first birthday than children living in the Rift Valley – that's 133 to 61 deaths per 1,000 live births, respectively.

Poverty levels in different regions vary greatly. The percentage of people living below the poverty line in Nairobi is 44 per cent. However, only eight per cent of the population living in Woodley, Kibera Subcounty, live under the poverty line while 87 per cent of the population in Laini Saba in the same sub-county live under the line.

In a country where employment in the public sector is key, the bias in hiring of those who work in the civil service and other state agencies is mirrored in poverty profiles. In its report published in 2012, the National Cohesion and Integration Commission, brought out the glaring disparities in access to government employment opportunities. More than half of Kenya’s ethnic groups are only marginally represented in the Civil Service – the country’s largest employer, where only 20 out of over 43 listed Kenyan communities are statistically visible. Some 23 communities have less than 1 per cent presence in the Civil Service 

The report shows that only seven communities – the Kikuyu, Kalenjin, Luhya, Kamba, Luo, Kisii and Meru – have a representation above 5 per cent in the Civil Service. All the other communities’ representation is below 5 per cent. Five of these communities – the Kikuyu, Kalenjin, Luhya, Kamba and Luo – occupy nearly 70 per cent of Civil Service employment. Although they are the most populous, their numbers in the Civil Service are at variance with their population size. 

But the above global figures still hide the disparities. A keener look reveals that there is a variance between a community’s share of population and share of civil service posts. Where some communities have a greater share of civil service jobs than their population, others have a lesser one. The Kikuyu and the Kalenjin have a disproportionate share of civil service posts compared to their population. Their proportion in the Civil Service exceeds the size of their share in the national population. The Kikuyu, who account for 17 per cent of Kenya’s population holds 22.3 per cent of civil service jobs – giving a variance +5 per cent. They are followed by the Kalenjin at 13 per cent but comprising 17 per cent of civil service (+4 per cent variance); the Meru at 4.4 per cent constituting 5.9 per cent of the civil service (+1.5 per cent); and the Embu, who are 0.9 per cent of the national population but hog 2 per cent of civil service jobs, giving a variance of +1.1 per cent. 

This contrasts with communities whose presence in the civil service is lower than their share of the population. These are the Luhyia, comprising 14.2 per cent but holding 11.3 per cent of civil service jobs, giving a variance of – 2.9 per cent; Luo, at 11 per cent but constituting 9 per cent of the government workforce (-2 per cent);  Somali, Kamba, Turkana and Maasai. 

There are many explanations for these variances, including disparities in access to education, proximity to the location of Government offices as well as willingness to seek employment in the public service. Be that as it may, it is remarkable that a service once dominated by Europeans and Asians has so dramatically changed in its composition over 40 years. The emerging patterns of staffing suggest that power and leadership influenced the ethnic composition of the public service. 

The Kikuyu constitute the largest single dominant ethnic group in all ministries and departments, except in the Prisons Department and the Kenya Police. The Kalenjin are the second largest group in the Civil Service. They are also the most dominant group in the Prisons Department, and the Police Force. These two groups alone make up close to 40 per cent of the entire Civil Service. Their numbers in the Civil Service suggest a direct relationship with the tenure of the presidency, in that they have both had a member as President for over 20 years. 

Lack of access to education has been cited as undermining equitable hiring for the Civil Service across communities. Yet, the skewed recruitment into the Civil Service cuts across all job groups, including those that do not require high educational qualifications. In the lowest job groups – ABCD – the same seven major communities account for over 80 per cent of Civil Service jobs. Again, the number of those hired from each community is at variance with their population size. The communities that statistically insignificant remain outside this civil service group. 

The Constitution calls for ethnic diversity in the Civil Service. Article 232 (1) (h) requires ‘representation of Kenya’s diverse communities’ as one of the values and principles of the public service. 

Article 232 (1) (i)(ii) requires “affording adequate and equal opportunities for appointment, training, advancement, at all levels of the public service of the members of all ethnic groups.” 

A recruitment policy based purely on merit or competition may not give Kenyans a public service that represents the face of the country. Disparities in education infrastructure and imbalances in development generally mean that some communities are more likely to produce highly skilled people than others. It is these disparities in regional development and basic services that the country should have addressed in the past 50 years of independence. 

The disparities noted point to the country’s failure to identify ethnic inequalities as a challenge to national cohesion. There is a need to develop and implement policies that can reduce these inequalities. 

At the core of the BBI recommendations to enhance inclusivity are proposals that recognize that different regions of the country present different economic and cultural opportunities. It further proposes gender-sensitive budgeting as an essential component in eliminating obstacles that marginalise women in key spheres of development. While this is welcome, it merely scratches the surface of the problem, especially as far as skewed ethnic employment in the civil service is concerned. Countries that have experienced similar challenges of ethnic/racial exclusion like ours have resorted to constitutional instruments. This is what Singapore did. 

Singapore’s model of managing ethnic relations has been described as interactionist, rather than integrationist or assimilationist. This model acknowledges social heterogeneity and views the population to be composed of separate, distinct "races". In public policies, education, employment, housing, immigration, defence and national security policies are designed to ensure that each race retains and perpetuates its distinctiveness within a general framework of national interest.  The abortive OKOA Kenya constitutional amendment bill had proposed two amendments to cure ethnic exclusion: to ensure that each ethnic community does not exceed its share of national population in every cadre of the public service; and to ensure that at least 30 per cent of all civil service jobs are taken by ethnic minorities. In its referendum bill, the BBI steering Committee is advised to look at this proposal.

On shared prosperity, the report proposes a raft of measures that would promote entrepreneurship and put good cash in the pockets of young people, women and other groups surviving on the margins of the economy. The most outstanding include granting a 7-year tax holiday to start-up businesses by the youth. While this is welcome, there are hurdles faced by the young entrepreneurs that if not addressed will see many young people still unable to avail themselves of the incentives. One of these hurdles is lack of skills and mentorship. The other is pressure for loan repayment. For us to help our youth, the first intervention should be training and skills development; the second should be start-up grants to those who have acquired such skills as they are mentored in the world of business; and finally, those who have been successfully weaned from the foregoing interventions given credit facilities to expand their chosen lines of business. This would minimise the rate of failure of these enterprises and defaulting on loans even if the rates were concessional. 

Biashara Mashinani policies and incentives, which are aimed at promoting village-level businesses, are a welcome proposal. However, the challenges faced by the youth similarly apply and should be address through both policy and administrative interventions so that Mama Mboga, persons with disabilities and village artisans and urban hawkers may benefit.

Regarding lending to priority sectors, the government would provide legal and regulatory guidelines for banks to lend a part of their portfolio to priority sectors. These are micro, small and medium businesses, export credit, manufacturing, housing, education, health and renewable energy. It also includes sanitation and waste management, and agriculture including livestock and fishing.

In a very timid manner, the report proposes that the State be held accountable on opening markets for labour-intensive manufactured Kenyan goods in EAC countries. This would result to more business opportunities for women and youth, taking into account the government’s support of women and youth-led enterprises through Uwezo Fund and Women Enterprise Fund. This matter needs to be given prominence and call for the fast-tracking on East African regional integration, including exploring “federation of the willing” option.

The taskforce has also suggested a Kubadili Plan intended to lift marginalised wards out of underdevelopment. It would identify the wards and establish a framework of building the social and economic infrastructure to facilitate development. This should not wait for the anticipated referendum.

Finally, the BBI report proposed making Kenya a 100 per cent e-service nation by digitising government services, processes, payment systems, and record keeping. While this is welcome, the danger lacks in “communicative capitalism.” This refers to a phase of knowledge- and technology-based commodity production in which information on a massive scale is produced, gathered, and sold for profit. What we now call the “information society” or “knowledge economy” sees the large-scale proletarianization of often highly-educated people in low-paying (often low-skilled) jobs, precariously scraping by to pay student loans, and living pay cheque to pay cheque.

Another more insidious feature of communicative capitalism is the role of technology companies in exploiting the participatory features of the knowledge economy (especially social media, digitized personal information archives, search engines, and online shopping) to harvest, store, organize, and sell consumer information to other companies. We all know something happens to the information we share on Facebook, input into Amazon or Google when we search, and are rarely surprised anymore when we see ads in our feeds and email for commodities that are similar to what we’ve searched for.

This aspect of the knowledge economy as free labor producing commoditized data for technological capital. Whenever we participate by watching the latest hit on Netflix, buy something from our favorite online store, or add information to our LinkedIn account, we are producing bits and pieces of our lives and interests that are transformed into products by technology companies. We do it for free and spend hours and hours on it. Technology companies are able to construct significant digital images and profiles of consumers, their needs and desires, their work and habits, their movements, alignments, and affiliations. I know it sounds like a scary science fiction movie, but it is true. 

The “knowledge economy” is most effective at using our desire for connection, for collectivity to promote the commodities that we help to build back onto us in ways that promise, but fail, to make up for the lack we experience under alienating capitalism. It successfully tweaks our desires and needs to negate our yearning for collectivity and convince us that our individuality is most important for a healthy life. It uses this false belief to divide us one from another and to absorb our dissent or criticisms or desire for political actions into its commodity-building software.

One dimension of this commodity-producing information behemoth is higher education. Once the domain of elites who transmitted the culture and civilization of the wealthy, higher education, by the mid-twentieth century had become a domain of working-class struggle and class mobility.

Nairobi, 18 March 2020