As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to spread rapidly across the world, Sub-Sahara Africa is still recording a relatively low number of coronavirus cases. However, the situation in the coming days remained uncertain and many countries in the region are considering urgent action to contain the spread of the virus. At this writing, World Health Organization (WHO) statistics updates indicates that there are 512,701 confirmed cases worldwide while WHO Africa recorded 2,652 cases with 81 recovered and 50 deaths.

Racing Against the Coronavirus Clock

African countries like South Africa, Rwanda and Uganda are now racing against the speedy spread of the virus by bringing in new measures, among them recently-imposed lockdown in South Africa and a 7 pm to dawn curfew in Kenya that was announced by President Uhuru Kenyatta a few days ago as a preventive measure.

The existing situation is already extremely difficult. Millions of low income earners accounting 82% of people in rural areas in Africa are in extreme poverty earning little or no income according to World Bank. These low income earners will be heavily affected by Covid-19 countermeasures as countries begin to place restrictions on travel, impose lockdowns, set curfews and encourage social distancing that will weaken the ability of many businesses to operate.

Kenyan Construction Worker: ‘I Don’t Know How I Will Survive’

Joseph Mwangi 38, a father of three working in a construction sites in the outskirts of Nairobi Kenya’s capital fears that Covid-19 restrictions will hurt his operations and fears that he might soon lose his job and will not be able to provide for his family.

“Government directives are good but for people like me I don’t know how I will survive,” Mwangi said, adding that: “Construction work, you can’t do it in the house.”

However, it’s a relief for many like Mwangi when the government announces 7pm to dawn curfew instead of a full lockdown which still offers an opportunity for them to work.

“Yes that’s better, I can work for those hours as I adhere to the guidelines given by the ministry of health, which is good,” Mwangi said to InsideOver as he prepared to leave his work place much earlier in order to start working again in the early hours.

According to Alexander G. Owino, Consultant and Financial Sector Specialist based in Nairobi, Covid-19 will have a serious impact on the lives and livelihoods of Kenya’s low income earners. Owino added that the livelihoods, jobs or daily hustles of low income earners will experience a supply-side shock. “Covid-19 will severely disrupt transportation, supply chains and supplies of nearly all inputs, good or services, impairing the ability of informal sector producers to work or serve their customers,” Owino explained.

Sub-Saharan African GDP Set For Major Decrease

The Brookings Institute projected that the Covid-19 related economic disruptions emanating from emergency response will lower sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP growth in 2020 to between 1.5 per cent and 2.5 per cent, down from the projected 3.6 per cent before the outbreak of the virus.

The repercussion from disease outbreak and the rapid measures employed by the African governments has rippling effects on low income wage people like faith Anyango, a mother of two children working in one of Nairobi’s many restaurants. She is already bearing the brunt of the economic downturn as her work place has been temporarily closed and now she is jobless. “I left my two children at home with my mother, they rely on me to buy them food and other essentials,” Anyango said regretfully, speaking to InsideOver. “Now I don’t have a job, the business is low and we were told to go home. What can I do now?”

The Coming Hospital and Healthcare Overload

Owino also noted that the pandemic will likely place a heavy demands on hospitals and health facilities, further raising healthcare costs for those least able to bear them. In addition to raising the costs of living and at the same time reducing the incomes of the poor due to near-collapse of purchases from customers restricted by curfews and social distancing measures or ordered to quarantine and stay at home.

“The low income earners will face rising costs of essential household needs, particularly food and health,” Owino said.

UNESCO estimates that more than 120 countries have already introduced nation-wide school and university closures affecting 1.2 billion learners nearly three-quarters of the world’s student population and the number is expected to rise as the coronavirus looks set to spread further. Save the Children projected that risk goes beyond disruption to education – they also carry other risks to marginalized children and children from low-income households, because many may rely on school meals to support their daily nutrition.

As a result, it overstretches the already fragile household’s budgets. Gabriella Waajiman, Save the Children’s Global Humanitarian Director, says that current situation is unprecedented and the number of children suddenly out of school or university is equivalent to the entire population of India.

“As pressures mount on low income families, children may need to work to bolster family incomes, and girls especially may also face a disproportionate burden of caring for family members who contract the virus or taking care of younger children. If plans are not put in place urgently, some children run the risk of never returning to school at all,” Waajiman explained.

Africa’s Fight Against Covid-19

Meanwhile, the fight against the COVID-19 is gaining momentum in Africa, the continent receives major boost with Alibaba’s donation of 1.5 million test kits and 100 tons of supplies for infection prevention and control which arrived in Addis Ababa on March 22.

“This is a great honor and initiative and a great sign of the solidarity that the world needs at this critical time. The test kits and other materials will support African countries in their fight against this outbreak,” said Dr. Kohn Nkengasong, Director of Africa’s CDC. “We are facing a humanitarian situation, an economic situation and a security situation in the continent and Africa CDC clearly applauds the initiative of the Prime Minister and the Jack Ma and Alabama Foundation,” he added.

L'articolo African Low Income Earners Bear the Brunt of Strict Covid-19 Measures proviene da InsideOver.

Twenty-one Kenyans have been killed by the Al-Shabaab terrorist group since December last year, a telling indication that the Somali-based criminally inclined group has rebooted its murderous streak, leading the Administration of President Uhuru Kenyatta to change track in countering the insurgents.

This January 17, the Kenyan President announced security officers will begin mounting sting operations to flush out Al Shabaab operatives in the North Eastern and Southern regions of Kenya which have witnessed a spike in terrorist attacks since December.

“We will respond robustly by mounting the operation against the operatives and sleeper cells especially in the North Eastern and Coastal regions. I also expect the officers to use proactive measures in dealing with the attackers,” said Kenyatta during a meeting with security bosses in Mombasa, the capital of the country’s southern region.

The president said key financiers would be called out and would be listed nationally and internationally in a bid to cripple their operations. “Illegal deals fund Al Shabaab. I also expect more on dealing with the sponsors and the recruiters,” he added while singling out trade in contraband as a direct contributor to the Somalia-based terror group.

He also directed the administration officers including regional and county commissioners to engage politicians and religious leaders within communities to ensure that terrorists do not get space to make inroads with locals.

“Government administrators and police are to engage local politicians, religious and opinion leaders within vulnerable communities as a proactive strategy to deny terrorism entry points into radicalization, especially of our youth.”

Arguably, Kenya is frequently attacked by Al-Shabaab militants because it hosts several UN agencies and is a regional economic powerhouse that once attacked draws international media attention, experts say.
“Kenya has many foreign diplomatic missions and is the wealthiest in the region, so an attack creates global attention,” Yusuf Serunkuma, a research fellow at Uganda-based Makerere University says.

He said Kenya has many media houses with foreign journalists located in its capital Nairobi, so an attack on the country receives wide media coverage, which Al-Shabaab exploits to spread its propaganda. “Frequent attacks on Kenya also confirm that al-Shabaab still can strike beyond its borders in Somalia,” he says.

The Somali-based Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group has previously stated that it attacks Kenya in retaliation for its contribution to peacekeeping in Somalia. Kenya initially sent its troops to Somalia in October 2011 after Al-Shabaab terrorists reportedly abducted aid workers in the country. But it later decided to contribute troops to the African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia (AMISOM) to help bring peace to its northern neighbour.

Other regional experts say the frequent attacks on Kenya are aimed at shaping public opinion in the country so that citizens pressure their government to withdraw troops from Somalia.

Andrews Atta-Asamoah, a security expert on the Horn of Africa, believes that withdrawing Kenyan troops from Somalia will not stop Al-Shabaab from continuously attacking its neighbour.

“Kenya is a major tourist destination and an attack on the country affects different nationalities that frequent is what Al-Shabaab wants,” he says. He also believes that high unemployment among Kenyan youths makes them vulnerable to extremist groups.

“The presence of sleeper cells and sympathizers of Al-Shabaab among radicalized Kenyans also makes it easier for the group to launch attacks in Kenya,’’ he says.

The recent increase in attacks by Al-Shabaab in northern Kenya has raised concern that the Somali terror group may be weakened but is not yet defeated and is still working hard to raise its profile in global jihadi circles.

Many analysts say different factions within the group have different objectives, though Al-Shabab as a whole continues to pursue its broad aim of establishing an Islamic state in Somalia. A major cleavage among the group’s leaders divides those known as nationalists, who largely seek to oust the central government, from militants with transnational aims.

Ms. Bronwyn Bruton, an expert on Al-Shabaab at the Atlantic Council, an NGO based in the US that galvanizes US global leadership and engagement in partnership with allies and partners, says hard-liners within the group have gained prominence in recent years.

“People who are still calling themselves Al-Shabaab are more and more committed to the idea of sharia law,” she says “The unifying idea of Al-Shabaab is opposition to the Western-backed government.”

In areas it controls, Al-Shabaab enforces its own harsh interpretation of sharia, prohibiting various types of entertainment, such as movies and music; the sale of khat, a narcotic plant that is often chewed; smoking; and the shaving of beards. Stoning’s and amputations have been meted out to suspected adulterers and thieves. The group bans cooperation with humanitarian agencies, blocking aid deliveries as famine loomed in 2017. This forced some eight hundred thousand to flee their homes, according to the United Nations.

Counterterrorism experts say Al-Shabaab has benefited from several sources of income over the years, including other terrorist groups; piracy; kidnapping; and extortion of local businesses, farmers, and aid groups, among others. The Eritrean government has in the past been accused of financing the group but it denied these claims.

Presently Al-Shabaab has built up an extensive racketeering operation, with checkpoint taxation on illicitly traded charcoal bringing in upward of US $7.5 million annually despite a UN ban on Somali charcoal exports in place since 2012.

In recent years, Al-Shabaab has increased its reliance on smuggling contraband sugar across the border into Kenya, bringing in millions of dollars annually. Kenyan forces have been accused of involvement in the scheme since 2015.

The UN Security Council authorized the African Union to lead a peacekeeping force in Somalia, which is known by its acronym, AMISOM, in early 2007. Its primary mandate was to protect the country’s transitional government, which was set up in 2004 but had just returned to power in Mogadishu.

Neighbouring Uganda was the first nation to send forces into Somalia under AMISOM, and it maintains the largest contingent in the regional force, at more than six thousand troops. Other military forces come from Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Djibouti. In total, AMISOM comprises around twenty thousand troops.

It remains to be seen whether the current strategy by the Kenyan government will cripple the operations of Al-Shabaab within East Africa’s largest economy.

L'articolo Kenyan Government to Use Sting Operations to counter Al-Shabaab Terrorist Group proviene da InsideOver.

Having served a maximum of two-five year terms, President Uhuru Kenyatta, on paper is expected to exit from Kenya’s top seat in 2022. But a fledgeling campaign seeking to have him back on the ballot, this time, as Prime Minister has understandably opened up political fissures that are threatening to upend the government.

But these are early days and the future is fraught with eerie possibilities.

In big measures, the forces seeking Kenyatta, 58, to arguably circumvent the constitution are drawn from a faction of the ruling political party, including ironically the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), the country’s biggest opposition party.

Turns out the ruling Jubilee Party is currently divided with a subtle supremacy war pitting two antagonistic wings – one coalescing around Kenyatta while the other owes its allegiance to Deputy President, William Ruto, 53, who publicly has made it known that he will be on the presidential ballot in 2022.

The origin of the resolution is traceable to March 2018 when Kenyatta struck a public rapprochement with Raila Odinga, 73, the de facto leader of the opposition and head of the ODM party that caught the nation by surprise.

Famously referred to here as “the handshake”, the peace accord is widely credited with bringing closure to post-election violence that had threatened to push East Africa’s biggest economy down the precipice after hotly contested elections in 2017 that saw Kenyatta controversially installed as President in repeat elections that Odinga and a sizable part of the electorate boycotted.

“Our differences are not that big. What is bringing all this problem is political competition our opinions are not that different. We decided to sit and even look beyond 2017 election. Why is it after every five years Kenyans must fight each other? Why must we shed blood and destroy properties? Why do business come to a halt and fear engulfs our people? These questions were the beginning of building bridges initiative idea,” said Kenyatta during the initial introduction of “the handshake”.

A spin-off of “the handshake” saw the formation of what is referred to as the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI). This incorporated a selected team of imminent Kenyans drawn from across the political aisle mandated with canvassing the country to curate views from the citizenry on how and what needs to be done for the country to avoid civil instances of violence that have been witnessed after every cycle of an election since the country embraced plural democracy in 1990.

Unequivocally, the feuding parties agreed also to rewrite the country’s constitution. The putative 156-page report unveiled this past December indicated that the BBI had reached a consensus that the nation was craving for the creation of a prime minister’s position among a raft of other options as a relief to the routine violence occurring in the country after every election.

In retrospective it’s observably clear the BBI move is old hat.

In early 2008, in the aftermath of another presidential election gone awry that ignited widespread bloodletting, then-President Mwai Kibaki and his rival, Odinga, shook hands on what came to be known as the Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation (KNDR) agreement.

The KNDR had four components including overcoming the immediate crisis, ending the violence, dealing with the humanitarian crisis it had occasioned and dealing with the political crisis occasioned by the electoral crisis.

With hindsight, its’ apparent the KNDR initiative was simply snake oil.

Meanwhile, it has not been lost to close Nairobi watchers that the two competing leaders deliberately blackballed the deputy president from the March 2018 accords, emboldening a belief that an irreparable fallout had taken place at State House, the official address of the President.

Understandably, the Deputy President’s wing has not hidden its mistrust of the BBI initiative, alleging its purpose is simply to stop its candidate from running for the country’s top seat.

Also, the group is carrying a narrative that categorises Kenyatta and Odinga as belonging to a lineage of the country’s dynasty families. While Ruto traces his ancestral roots to a life of peasantry like a disproportionate size of the country’s population,  it is likely he would empathize with the daily struggles of the electorate compared with the competition.

However the Kenyatta-Odinga group, the Achilles heel of Ruto’s candidature is a public perception that paints him as the godfather of graft in Kenya, as evidenced in reports in the local daily papers’ and therefore should be barred from running, they say.

For Kenyatta to become a Prime Minister his political party must muster a majority of seats in parliament, leading a President to tap him for the premier position and he must be the head of the party at the time, according to the BBI arrangement.

For now, Kenyatta has said he would not mind playing the role of a premier. It would not be a wonder if it were to happen, for extreme acts have taken place elsewhere in Africa.

In neighbouring states of Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda, for example, current leaders have arm twisted and cajoled their respective Parliaments to extend their reigns by simply amending their country’s constitution. Proponents supporting Kenyatta’s bid to become a prime minister have a myriad of reasons as to why they think the move is unstoppable.

The Secretary-General of the Central Organization of Trade Unions (COTU), the premier labour organization in the country, Francis Atwoli was the first person to forward the idea of Kenyatta morphing into a prime minister after leaving the presidency.

“I said about three years ago that this country needs a constitutional amendment because those in leadership are still young to retire and a new law will accommodate them in leadership,” adding, “President Kenyatta is not leaving office as his predecessors Mwai Kibaki and Daniel Arap Moi. He is young and the country should not mind his staying around as long as it guarantees stability.”

While David Murathe, former Vice Chairman of the Jubilee Party says Kenyatta will remain in power as a prime minister after the 2022 General Election.

In an interview with the local Daily Nation, Murathe said that once a new political dispensation envisaged in BBI report comes into fruition, Kenyatta will have the right to vie for any post since he will remain the de facto leader of Jubilee Party, and could even claim the proposed post of Prime Minister.

He argues that the political alignments that will arise once the BBI proposals are implemented will see the leader of the majority party in the National Assembly form the government, in a coalition with other parties, and that this has the potential of ensuring President Kenyatta does not disappear from the radar after the 2022 polls.

While Moses Kuria, an MP allied to Ruto and conspicuously better known as the legislator representing Kenyatta’s ancestral home says those pushing Kenyatta to consider the premiership position are “talking on behalf of dark forces that have captured the state apparatus but not the President himself. I’m certain the President will not want to suffer the ignominy of sacrificing his legacy at the altar of such transient goals and I believe he will follow the footpath of Mr. Kibaki,”

All the while Ruto says rumors are behind the push to have Kenyatta fill the prime minister slot.

“It is brokers and political merchants who are peddling that rumor across the country,” he said. “We are progressives. President Kenyatta has a rich legacy that cannot be stained by the push for constitutional changes.” Ruto says.

Indeed the days ahead will tell who will blink first between the President and his ambitious Deputy.

L'articolo President Kenyatta Angling for Premiership After Term Ends proviene da InsideOver.

Female politicians in Kenya are playing servile to their male counterparts by avoiding to run for the country’s top seat as they are presently rooting for putative candidates, who exclusively happen to be male, eroding a momentum of empowerment for women that began 30 years ago.

With elections scheduled for 2022, when current President Uhuru Kenyatta is expected to exit after serving a maximum constitutionally mandated two-five year terms, the emerging political realignment points to an all-male contest for the top seat, for now.

Martha Karua, 62, who contested for the presidential sweepstakes in 2013, emerged sixth in a field of eight candidates, after attracting 0.36% of the popular vote understandably throwing shade at the stance taken by the local women politicos.

As the current leader of the National Rainbow Coalition-Kenya (NARC-K) party which has three out of 349 members in parliament, Karua thinks the current crop of women politicians are stiffing Kenya’s women folks.

“The most unfortunate thing happening now in the Kenyan political space is that women parliamentarians are agreeing to become praise choirs for male politicians angling to succeed the current president,” says Karua, one of the few female politicians with an illustrious career that has also seen her work as the Cabinet Secretary in charge of Justice.

Beginning early this year, two disparate groups drawing in female politicians from across the country were unveiled, all beholden to two political camps. One coalesces around Deputy President William Ruto, going by the moniker name of Inua Mama – Kiswahili term meaning ‘uplift the livelihood of women’ – while the other calls itself ‘Team Embrace’ and is batting for a former Prime Minister and the country’s de facto leader of the opposition, Raila Odinga.

Despite the presidential elections being three years away from taking place, the country is oddly in a campaign mood.

This is after President Kenyatta and Odinga, 74, formerly bitter foes in the most recent elections held in October 2017, that almost pushed East Africa’s biggest economy down the precipice, publicly shook hands on March 2018. This historical gesture signalled a rapprochement between bitter political protagonists but it left the Deputy President’s political base feeling jittery.

“Everything was going well for him, and it was just a matter of counting the years. His chances at a shot at the top job were 100 per cent, now it has been reduced to 50-50,” says Dr Herman Manyora a political science lecturer at the University of Nairobi, the premier public institution of higher learning, referring to the Deputy President.

When Kenyatta ran for the presidency in 2013, he tapped Ruto as his running mate, publicly stating he would support his deputy in elections scheduled for 2022 after serving two terms. But after the 2017 elections, the president has been sending mixed signals.

“On his own Odinga is not a threat to Ruto. But backed by Kenyatta, who has the real power to thwart his chances, Ruto has a real reason to worry. Kenyatta and Odinga have become joined at the hip after the handshake, and together, they are a real threat, “says Dr.Manyora.

Currently, out of the 349 seats in parliament, only 76 members are female representing one-fifth of the total number.

According to Kenya’s 2010 constitution, women must have at least a third of seats in parliament and a third of appointed positions.

The constitution states that no more than two-thirds of an elected or appointed body can be of one gender, but does not set out a mechanism for attaining that goal.

Court rulings since 2012 have directed parliament to pass legislation to enforce the gender rule or risk dissolution – but previous attempts have failed, largely due to quorum hitches.

There are 76 female MPs in the current parliament, equivalent to just over a fifth of the 349 seats.

This underlines gender inequality in Kenya’s political system compared to neighbouring states.

Rwanda leads with 61%, followed by Tanzania at 36%, Burundi at 36%, Uganda and 34% and South Sudan at 28.5%.  Except Rwanda, none of these countries have attained the African Union standard of 50/50 representation of women in all leadership positions including political leadership.

In the absences of affirmative action, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf would not have become the first woman in Africa to become president when in 2016 she ascended to the top seat in the West African state of Sierra Leone. Journalist Monique Ohsan Bellepeau, later on, pulled off a similar stunt in the southeastern state of Mauritius in 2012. While in the South African republic of Malawi, Joyce Hilda Banda became president in 2012.

In Uganda, two women have vied for president; first was Miria Obote, wife of former president Milton Obote, who ran in the 2006 election, but only managed to garner 0.08% of the vote.

In elections held in 2011, Beti Kamya gave it a go, but only managed 0.06% of the vote.

In Rwanda, two women have tried to vie for the presidency including Alvera Mukabaramba, who made a stab in 2003 but withdrew from the race on the eve of the election, handing President Paul Kagame a landslide victory. She tried again in 2010, but only got 0.04% of the vote

This is a telling indication that despite the patriarchal nature of African politics, woman are increasingly daring to run for the top seat.

When in 1997, a woman sensationally ran for presidency for the first time in Kenya’s 34-year-old history since gaining independence from British rule in 1963, this nation of 47 million people was under the heel of an intransigent regime that brooked no challenges to its hold on power.

And understandably the autocratic President Daniel Arap Moi, pulled out all the stops, cruising to victory with 40.4 % of the vote in elections held in that year.

Two women were on the presidential ballot that year. They included Charity Ngilu, 67, now one among five female governors in a landscape with 47 governors and Prof. Wangari Maathai who succumbed to cancer in September 2011 seven years after winning the Nobel Prize in 2004, verifiably, the icons who blazed the path for local women.

Fielding questions from the Los Angeles Times newspaper Ngilu had this to say:

“I cannot sit back and watch and wait and say, ‘Who can do this?’ I must do this. I am qualified because I am what Kenyans are looking for – a committed, dedicated, honest person who can lead them through the problems they have.”

In the elections, 15 candidates sought to dislodge Moi but floundered.

Ngilu emerged fifth with 7.8% of the vote while Prof. Maathai with 0.07% vote managed 13 position after the president exploited existing ethnic fissures that remain a feature in Kenya’s politics to his advantage.

The next time a woman ran for the top seat would be in 2007 when 40-year-old Nazlin Omar emerged sixth in a field of nine candidates after attracting 0.09% of the vote.

According to Nanjala Nyabola, a Kenyan writer, humanitarian advocate and political analyst, Kenyan politics, she says “will hold up women as emblems but denies them full participation in the highest levels of government, instead publicly referring to female politicians as “flower girls” and creating a political ghetto in the women’s representative positions that effectively writes women out of mainstream politics.

L'articolo Kenyan Women Reduced to Flower Girls in the Presidential Sweepstakes proviene da InsideOver.

When Kenya’s cabinet secretary for Finance, Henry Rotich, was arrested and put on the dock on July 22 for alleged corruption, it somewhat marked a watershed period for the jaded Administration of President Uhuru Kenyatta, which is widely considered to be hemorrhaging from this seemingly intractable vice.

But with no top fish convicted since the swearing in of Kenyatta, 58, in April 2013 on graft charges, the outcome of these recent arrests, which included 27 other mandarins, will be a pointer on whether East Africa’s biggest economy is trudging towards the road to Damascus or is simply an inveterate double-dealer.

Expected back in court this August 8, after securing a 15 million KSH (roughly $145,000 USD) bond, the Rotich saga, in the eyes of a cynical public, remains a touchstone experience.

Nic Cheeseman, a professor of democracy and international development at the University of Birmingham, UK, and a founding editor of the Oxford Encyclopedia of African Politics, says that it’s too early to tell whether these latest developments represent a serious and sustained attempt to reduce corruption.

“We have seen senior politicians resign or be arrested before, only to later be reinstated once charges have fallen away. At present, there are many rumours that suggest recent developments have been driven in part by a desire to weaken the Deputy President and slow down the momentum behind his drive to succeed President Kenyatta at the next election. We will not be able to evaluate the interpretation until we see whether other senior figures close to Kenyatta’s camp are also arrested. Until this happens, it remains possible that anti-corruption allegations are being used to settle political scores rather than reduce graft,” says Cheeseman.

What is at play in Kenya is ‘state capture’, defined as a political project in which a well-organised elite network constructs a symbiotic relationship between the constitutional state and a parallel shadow state for its own benefit, says Wachira Maina, a leading local constitutionalist

Presently, this country, whose economy, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is projected to grow by 5.83 percent, attaining a Ksh 10.1 trillion mark this year compared to Ksh nine trillion in 2018, is presently enchanted with a subtle mode of early electioneering for the Presidential sweepstakes in polls scheduled for 2022.

Driving the growth are massive investments by the government, including the private sector in the infrastructure space, coupled with an auspicious macroeconomic environment, featuring low inflation and controlled interest rates. This August, the country became Africa’s latest oil exporter, a phenomenon that could very well drive the development agenda of the country, which is largely agrarian, if handled circumspectly.

According to the local unit of Transparency International, a global anti-corruption organization, the arraignment of the Cabinet Secretary and his attendant colleagues from the treasury only confirms that corruption in Kenya is hatched from the highest echelons of government.

“This is just a further confirmation of what Kenyans have known all along. Corruption is conceived and executed at high levels in government. That has been the anatomy of corruption for many years. These suspects may be innocent, but the entire scandal is symptomatic of the way scandals are hatched and executed at the highest levels,” says Samuel Kimeu, the Executive Director of Transparency International Kenya.

Also presently playing out as a cynosure is a subtle battle of wits involving William Ruto, 53, the country’s deputy president, a deeply polarizing figure, whose source of wealth routinely has attracted a big measure of punditry within this country of 43 million people, and a coterie of politicos widely thought to be identical to Kenyatta.

The political bloodletting has morphed into faint electioneering for the presidential sweepstakes where Ruto is considered a front runner, a fixture now threatening to compromise the fight against corruption as the continent’s old-age fissure of negative ethnicity gradually rears its ugly head.

Mr. Kenyatta will be expected to bow out of the contest after having completed two constitutionally mandated, five year terms.

Coincidentally, the besieged Cabinet secretary hails from the Kalenjin community, which accounts for 12% of the nations’ population, making it the fourth largest ethnic group in a country with 42 disparate communities. Their ancestral home counts the deputy president as one of its indigenes and, in the recent past, was considered a flashpoint, having witnessed some of the worst intra-ethnic violence after the contentious 2007 elections, in which 1,200 people reportedly died.

Verifiably, the warring combatants were disproportionately drawn from both the Gikuyu and Kalenjin communities, who existentially neighbour each other in the North Rift region of the country.

And beginning in 1963, when the country forcibly unshackled itself from 68-years of British colonial rule, Kenya has had four official occupants of State house, the official residence of the president. Three, including Kenyatta, trace their roots to the door step of the Gikuyu community, the country’s largest ethnic community, which cobbles up 22 percent of the country’s population. The one remaining president was drawn from the Kalenjin ethnic group.

Mr. John Githongo, widely touted to being Kenya’s preeminent whistle blower, believes that corruption in the country, particularly during the reign of Kenyatta, is singularly ethicized.

“The logic of the looting since 2013 has been… driven by a Faustian pact between the Kikuyu elite led by Uhuru Kenyatta and the Kalenjin elite organised around Deputy President (DP) William Ruto. It was a pact forged out of the 2007/8 Post-Election Violence and the subsequent International Criminal Court (ICC) indictments. It has turned out to be the most expensive political coalition in Kenya’s history, and one that has liberalised corrupt activity to an extent that, for a generation of millennials, it has been normalized,” he says.

Mr. Rotich, 50, a Harvard educated mandarin who at some stage in his otherwise exemplary career stretching 25-years worked at the local office of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), together with 27 others, stands accused of inflating the cost of building two dams in the west of the country – his ancestral home base – to 63 billion shillings (US$608 million) from an original cost of Ksh 46 billion (US$ 445 million)

Involved in the dealing was CMC Di Ravenna, an Italian firm, which the Kenya Government contracted in April 2017 and whose work is yet to commence. Last December, the firm was declared insolvent by an Italian court, hamstringing its ability to complete large infrastructure projects.

“They broke the law on public finance management under the guise of carrying out legitimate commercial transactions. Colossal amounts were unjustifiably and illegally paid out through a well-choreographed scheme by government officers in collusion with private individuals and institutions,” Mr. Noordin Haji, the Director Public Prosecutions told a news conference in Nairobi on July 22.

Intermittently, the Deputy President has rejected any suggestion that money was lost in the project, even after it emerged that a company associated with Mr. Ken Osinde, his Chief of Staff, was a beneficiary of the alleged malfeasance rocking the dam projects.

The DP’s political flunkies are pulling no punches, saying that the on-going campaign geared at weeding out corruption is basically an ostensible stratagem by Kenyatta, singularly targeting their men.

“This is politics and we won’t entertain tricks. If Uhuru does not want Ruto, let him not sacrifice Kalenjins. Let him engage Ruto on his own,” Mr. Kangogo Bowen, a local MP drawn from the Kalenjin community, is reported as saying this March.

Kenya’s government loses as much as $5bn – or at least half of its annual budget – to corruption a year, according to the country’s auditor-general.

Meanwhile, Dr. David Ndii, an economic activist, recently observed that “the Uhuruto kleptocracy has plundered Ksh 350 billion (roughly US $3.4 billion) since 2013, ranking it fifth in the world kleptocracy league table, right behind Mobutu and Abacha (US $5 billion), Ferdinand Marcos (US $10 billion) and Indonesia’s Suharto at US $35 billion”.

“Corruption is driven both from above and below. From above, there are multinational companies that offer bribes, as well as senior political figures who lend money to others in order to build their networks. From below, citizens often make impossible demands of MPs, encouraging them to look for new sources of revenue. This combination of bottom-up and top-down pressures makes it particularly difficult to deal with corruption,” says Prof Cheeseman.

Bemoaning a lack of convictions for graft related crimes, Kimeu says that the country will remain in suspended paralysis unless criminals are jailed.

“Corruption in high places has gone on for too long without consequences. A basic motivation for high office, whether elected or appointed, has become the opportunity it provides for corrupt enrichment individually or for a section of economic and political elite. Unless this trend changes, and our politics is cleaned, we will never break away from the manacles of graft. Jail and recover what is stolen,” says the Executive Director of Transparency International.

L'articolo No End for Corruption in Kenya proviene da InsideOver.