Kenya

Putting young people in the driving seat of development

Dec 13th, 2011 3:50 PM UTC
By Edith Jibunoh

The Africa Youth Trust (AYT) is the last of our five finalists to reveal before we announce the winner of the 2011 ONE Africa Award!

AYT was founded by a group of five young people in 2005, all working in different sectors, but with a common interest to profile the youth agenda. They recognized that scattered initiatives, which they were all individually involved in, were not going to be powerful enough to bring about change. With this understanding, they combined their efforts and today their model promotes partnerships between the younger and older generation with a focus on economic empowerment and governance. Three of the original founders are still involved with AYT today.

AYT staff and Network Members

The bulk of their programs are carried out by young people and builds in a research component, in order to assess change and impact, capacity building for sustainability, as well as an advocacy component, driven by youth and targeting policy-makers. They have produced a guide to youth action against corruption and have used this guide to train 96 young people to date. AYT is also involved in employment training as a way to engage young people in entrepreneurship. African youth are very active users of twitter and facebook, and especially in Kenya, and this medium has allowed AYT to more effectively engage young people and encourage discourse.

At the onset of AYT’s activities, they found that so many of the youth population were involved in corrupt activities without realizing they were complicit in corruption, simply because of their lack of knowledge. In order to address this they collaborated with the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC) to train youth about what corruption meant and organized them to monitor and report acts of corruption. With the support of a USAID funded program, AYT also organized young people to conduct audits of Constituency Development Funds, which are designed to channel resources to youth programs. These funds have been notorious for the misappropriation of funds, but with the AYT’s organizing capacity, young people started to ask questions about the funds that were meant to aid their development and monitor their disbursement.

Beneficiaries of AYT’s empowerment programme

While there are other youth organizations in Kenya, very few are engaged in the promotion of an inter-generational discussion that allows a platform for young people to engage in policy. The culture of civil society in Kenya is known to be primarily confrontational, a defensive reaction to the previous governments hostility to civil society. But since 2002, the new government has been much more receptive to civil society. So rather than become a watchdog of the Kenyan government, AYT’s approach has been to promote dialogue between policy makers and young people. Their non-confrontational approach is really one of the key strategies that have enabled them to be successful. In adopting such an approach they are also cautious to safe guard against becoming “yes-men” and instead demonstrate value to the government by proposing alternatives to perceived systemic problems that promote corruption.

The Africa Youth Trust has been doing amazing work! We commend their efforts and congratulate them for joining the list of 2011 ONE Africa Award finalists!

The forgotten children – Vaccinating refugee camps in the developing world

Oct 7th, 2011 12:43 PM UTC
By Lord Avebury

In my capacity as Co-Chair of the UK All Party parliamentary Group for Global Action against Childhood Pneumonia (APPG) I have worked for many years to encourage greater roll out of vaccines globally. This work has seen some great successes, such as the work of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI), who have rolled out a number of important vaccines, including the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine. This has helped to save millions of lives and will save millions more in the future.

But through the work I have undertaken and meetings I have held, there have always seemed to be one significant population ignored – refugees. Due to the displacement suffered by refugees they fall between the vaccination programmes of different countries and the disorganised and overcrowded situation in most refugee camps makes coordinated vaccine rollout extremely difficult.

One camp in particular that I have recently been investigating is the infamous Dadaab refugee camp. Located in the North Eastern Province of Kenya, on the Kenya-Somalia border, the Dadaab camp is the world’s largest refugee complex. Established in 1991 as a temporary measure to help refugees fleeing conflict in Somalia, it is now home to around 430,000 inhabitants and is estimated to grow at a rate of 1,200 new arrivals every day. The Dadaab complex now ranks as the third largest population centre in Kenya after the capital Nairobi and the city of Mombasa.

It is estimated that around forty percent of children entering the Dadaab camp have received no vaccinations at all and, despite the efforts of a range of NGOs, malnutrition, diarrhoea and respiratory tract infections remain widespread in the complex. With such a high concentration of people, hygiene standards are extremely low and the complex suffers from a critical shortage of clean water.

But there is hope for the forgotten children of these camps as UNICEF are providing the latest vaccines against some of the biggest killers for children in the developing world. UNICEF are supplying vaccinations against pneumococcal disease, the leading killer of children under 5, and also against rotavirus, the second biggest killer of small children.

This is reassuring, but is by no means enough. We must develop a coordinated response to protect other refugee children in Africa, such as those in new camps for the 35,000 in Ethiopia fleeing the attacks on civilians in Sudan’s disputed Blue Nile state.

Many of the illnesses that spread through refugee camps are preventable through simple vaccines and with the continuing displacement of peoples globally it is time that a body was established with responsibility for rolling out vaccines to refugees. This is something the APPG will be looking into going forward – giving a voice to the unfortunate children who end up in these camps.

Lord Avebury is Co-Chair of the UK All Party Parliamentary Group for Global Action Against Childhood Pneumonia.

‘A poor man shames us all’

Aug 25th, 2011 2:23 PM UTC
By ONE Partners

Elizabeth Wright of Concern Worldwide explains the way of life of pastoralist communities living in northern Kenya — and how they have been affected by the drought.

For pastoralist communities of Northern Kenya such as the Borana tribe, cattle and rain are as vital to human life as air. Their herds are not only their primary source of food, but also inseparable from centuries-old cultural traditions linked to marriage, health and the naming of children. Cattle are at the heart of their way of living, and each are highly valued.

Pastoralists in the arid and semi-arid lands of Marsabit, northern Kenya, move from place to place about four times a year to find water and rangelands for the herds.

Men care for the animals, and the women build and pack portable, round huts made from grass and branches when the community moves from place to place with their herds to find water and pasture. They depend on two rainy seasons a year to provide the minimal resources they need to keep their livestock and families alive.

For the past two years in a row, the rains have totally failed in Northern Kenya — and the lives of pastoralists have been violently disrupted. In fact, rains have either failed or been insufficient for five of the past seven years. In 2011, the worst drought in six decades in East Africa has created the world’s worst food crisis, endangering the survival — and way of life ― of millions of pastoralists.

Buke Pulacha is feeling the pain. She is a Borana, living in the arid and semi-arid lands of Marsabit. Her husband left her many years ago to manage on her own with five children. She became one of the poorest in her community.

Buke Pulacha’s entire herd of cattle and goats was stolen by rustlers from a neighboring tribe, leaving her with no source of food or income.

But Buke says that the Borana have a saying: “A poor man shames us all.” The tribe will not let anyone go hungry or live without animals to tend. In fact, this culture of sharing is so strong in some communities that a person who refuses to help someone in need among them is stigmatized, along with their family, sometimes for generations. Buke’s brother gave her animals, and taught her sons to tend them.

Resources in Marsabit are always scarce — and cattle theft along borders of tribal lands is not uncommon.

Drought has killed the majority of cattle in Marsabit, and people are desperate. There is very little water or food, and this has intensified violence and cattle rustling among tribes.

A few weeks ago, as Buke’s brother and sons were returning home with their animals after grazing, rustlers from the neighboring Gabbra tribe ambushed them, armed with guns. They shot her brother in the arm, and stole most of the livestock, including all of Buke’s animals.

Buke Pulacha at the site where she buried her five-year-old son, Wario, who died from causes related to malnutrition

From one day to the next, Buke does not know where she will find food.

She says, “To get by, I am begging. I have received food from the Borana Area Chief, but he is also taking care of other families who have lost everything.” Her community is devastated, and no one has much to spare.

Buke has lost weight, and says that she fears for herself and her children. She walks a few dozen yards from her home to a pile of rocks surrounded by branches. This is where she buried her five-year-old son Wario. He died recently from causes related to malnutrition.

Buke says help must come soon. “I fear that my other children will suffer. I am putting all my hopes in the rains, but I pray that help will come before that.”

Indeed, if help does not arrive soon for drought-stricken communities in Kenya, it will be the shame of us all.

Concern is launching an emergency nutrition program and an emergency livelihoods program in the remote arid and semi-arid lands of Marsabit to provide lifesaving assistance to pastoralist communities devastated by drought.

-Elizabeth Wright, Concern Worldwide

A crisis with a female face

Aug 16th, 2011 10:00 AM UTC
By ONE Partners

Sinead Murray of the International Rescue Committee sheds light on a hidden side of the Horn of Africa crisis: gender-based violence.

Dadaab, Kenya — On the outskirts of Hagadera, a refugee camp near the town of Dadaab, Somali women and their families are gathered, desperately seeking assistance after fleeing a famine and the worst drought to hit the Horn of Africa region in six decades.

Newly arriving refugees from Somalia are housed in the outskirts of Dadaab. Photo credit: Edward Macharia/ IRC.
I have been working with the International Rescue Committee (IRC) here for nearly a year. Looking around this arid, desolate corner of northwestern Kenya — barely 50 miles from the Somali border — it is hard to imagine that this is where more than 1,000 people a day come to look for help.

Famine has gripped headlines in recent weeks. Yet the story you might not have heard is what I consider the hidden side of this crisis –- violence against women and girls.

Two weeks ago, I sat in a thatch-roofed hut outside Hagadera speaking with a group of Somali women who had just crossed one of the most dangerous borders in the world. Their stories were alarming and disturbingly similar: Women and girls were taken from overcrowded vehicles, then robbed and raped by men with guns. Many were raped by multiple attackers, sometimes in front of their own families. Some “came to the camp naked,” one woman confided.

Each day, my IRC colleagues see a growing number of women and girls seeking help for the attacks they encountered on the road. But there are many more that don’t come forward, either out of shame and fear –- or simply because by the time they reach Dadaab, they are so exhausted and hungry that what happened to them along the way is one of many urgent concerns.

Sadly, Dadaab has not proven to be the safe haven that many women and girls had hoped for. The camps here are buckling under the pressure of a steadily increasing stream of refugees. New arrivals must wait on the outskirts, where aid agencies are trying to stretch their limited funding to meet the enormous needs all around. The result is that Dadaab simply isn’t safe for women and girls. They must walk far to get firewood and water, risking attack just to cook food for their families.

While the famine has been portrayed as a natural disaster, this crisis is not so simple. There is a complex web of conflict and insecurity in the region that has not only subjected millions of people to hunger and disease, but also to violence. And women and girls are facing the biggest risks.

This crisis couldn’t have hit at a worse time. As the US Congress spent the summer trying to make deeper cuts in spending, there is little funding available to go to an emergency like this. This is unfortunate because we know that with the right attention and resources, easy solutions can be put in place. Aid groups like the IRC can scale up services that help survivors recover and heal. We can construct more water points and latrines so that women and girls don’t need to risk attack in the forest. We can create safe spaces so that women and girls have a place to go for assistance and support.

The United States has been a leader in investing in women and girls, stating loudly and clearly that their needs are of primary importance to our country’s development and security goals. If there is one place where such leadership is needed today, it is in the Horn of Africa. Somali women and girls are counting on it.

For more information about the International Rescue Committee’s work in the Horn of Africa go to our Famine and Drought in the Horn website.

Sinead Murray is the International Rescue Committee’s gender-based violence program manager based in Dadaab, Kenya.

Crisis in the Horn of Africa

Jul 19th, 2011 5:22 PM UTC
By Stuart McWilliam

You may have seen the pictures of starving people in the Horn of Africa on your TV screens. We are all asking: how can this be happening again? Parts of Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia are facing one of the worst droughts for 60 years, and around 10 million people are desperately in need of food, clean water and basic sanitation. But something can be done. You can add your voice to help make a difference.

Despite the urgency of the situation, most world leaders are responding too slowly. Immediate aid is essential. Yet at the same time we must not let them drop the ball on long term solutions as has too often happened in the past.

Dear World Leaders,

Please urgently provide the full funding that the UN has identified as necessary to help people in the Horn of Africa, and please keep your promises to deliver the long term solutions which could prevent crises like this happening again.

Some people look back to previous droughts and question whether things will ever change. But because of the smart aid that is supporting African leadership, progress really is being made. For example, 87% of people in the world today have enough food to eat and lead healthy lives – up from just 76% in 1970.  And in Ethiopia the number of people malnourished has fallen from 71% in 1992 to 46% now.

But we know how to change things even more: we can help stop starvation now – and stop the causes of starvation.  Firstly, we need to make sure funding is provided to pay for urgent help that will prevent people from dying. Secondly, the promises that world leaders made to invest in long term solutions must be kept, so that the people of this region can feed themselves and will not need food aid in the future.

Thanks for helping us to pressure our governments to save millions of lives – today and tomorrow.

Information is Power: Kenya leads the way on open data

Jul 12th, 2011 10:35 AM UTC
By Alan Hudson

Last Friday, Kenya’s President Mwai Kibaki launched the Kenya Open Data Initiative. Developed under the leadership of Dr. Bitange Ndemo, the permanent secretary of information and communications — with support from Google, the World Bank’s Mapping for Results team, Socrata, Nairobi’s iHub, Ushahidi and others — the Open Data Initiative makes available a large number of data-sets about population, poverty, education, energy, health and water and sanitation.

Screenshot of a water and sanitation map on the Kenya Open Data website

A user-friendly interface enables citizens to analyze the data, create maps and graphs, and –- perhaps most importantly -– to see how their county or constituency fares in comparison with others. So, for instance, a user can go here to find information about where health facilities are, what the level of health spending is in each county, what the relationship is between illness rates and health spending, and what the relationship is between health spending and poverty. By providing the users of services with this information, the open data initiative empowers those users –- who are also voters -– to demand accountability from service providers and politicians, asking “how come health services are so much worse here?” As Dr. Bitange Ndemo put it: “Information is power and we are aiming to empower citizens by enhancing their access to usable data that was not accessible easily to the public.”

The Government of Kenya has –- through the Kenya ICT Board — launched a competition to stimulate ideas about how to make use of the data made available, but already a number of exciting ideas are coming on stream through the Community Applications section of the Initiative. Ushahidi has mashed up the data with information on service delivery. Virtual Kenya has mapped the location of MPs who refuse to pay their taxes. And the iHub Community has developed an application which will track the use of Constituency Development Funds and enable citizens to report about whether funds have been used effectively, using an application called “Msema Kweli” (Tell the Truth).

Open data is a key step on the road to open, increasingly democratic, development. As Kenya’s experiment with open data proceeds, we at ONE will be watching enthusiastically, hoping to see the country’s draft Freedom of Information Bill become law, and encouraging other countries to follow Kenya’s lead, empowering people with the information they need to hold their governments to account.

For great reporting of the launch of the Kenya Open Data Initiative see here (White African’s blog) and here (Daily Nation). And see here for a video interview on the initiative with Dr. Bitange Ndemo.

Follow Alan on Twitter at @alanhudson1

A Small Act

Mar 11th, 2011 10:45 AM UTC
By Michael Healy

A Small Act is a new documentary , which tells the story of a young Kenyan whose life changed when his education was sponsored by a Swedish stranger. Christopher Mburu, now a human rights lawyer for the UN, decides to find the woman that changed his life and name a new scholarship programme after her. The film follows Chris’s efforts in setting up his new fund with the support of his onetime sponsor, Hilde Back, while exploring the hopes and dreams of the Kenyan children in-line for a potentially life-changing scholarship.

Set against the backdrop of the 2008 Kenyan elections and the ensuing violence A Small Act interweaves seemingly separate lives into an inspiring and uplifting story.

A Small Act will be in UK cinemas from 15 April with two advance showings at Ritzy Picturehouse in Brixton, London on 29 and 30 March. These advance showings also include a Q&A session with Director Jennifer Arnold.

The film’s UK distributor, Dogwoof, also runs an Ambassadors programme, which allows individuals to host their own regional premieres of new films, and ambassadors can screen A Small Act from 8th April, before its official release date. Find out more about the programme and how to apply by visiting the Ambassadors website.

To find out more visit the A Small Act website.

Big deal? You bet

Jan 21st, 2011 2:24 PM UTC
By Ginny Wolfe

This week I was lucky enough to visit the Langata Health Centre in Nairobi to find out more about the new pneumococcal vaccine now being given there.

Here’s why this new vaccine is so important: In the developing world, pneumonia kills in the neighborhood of 1.4 million kids every year. Pneumococcal, the deadliest strain of that illness (and a major cause of what we might call “regular” pneumonia), kills 800,000. Call me crazy, but this new vaccine to prevent pneumococcal is a really big deal.

Babies at Langata Health Facility in Nairobi receive the pneumococcal vaccine

ONE was interested in seeing the operation of delivering a new vaccination in a single health facility so the good folks at GAVI made our arrangements. (Pardon while I digress for a moment to praise GAVI for what it is doing to help keep the poorest children on the planet alive and healthy. And let me say thanks to those who help make their work possible.)

There weren’t many people here when we arrived around 9 a.m. But, before long, mothers with small babies were streaming in, signing in, weighing their babies and getting in the vaccine “bench line.” (They sit in order on long benches and slide over each time the next client is admitted to the vaccination room).

Mothers wait in line for their children to receive the pneumococcal vaccine

The cold storage repository for the pneumococcal vaccine

Some have come for their babies’ regular vaccinations and only learn of the new pneumococcal vaccine when they arrive. Others had heard of the vaccine through community health workers deployed to spread the news and, even though up-to-date with their babies’ regular shots have brought them in for the pneumococcal.

This health centre is the Langata (sometimes called Kibera) District’s regional distribution centre for the 36 clinics within the district. They collect all of the vaccines from the Regional Disbursement Centre and, since they must maintain the cold chain to ensure the efficacy and safety of the vaccine, haul them back to Langata in well-used, white Styrofoam coolers. There, they are stored in an upright, avocado green refrigerator that looks older than I am –- which is pretty old. But, it works and that’s what counts. They are then divided up and dispersed to the 27 clinics in the District that have trained personnel to give the vaccines.

Eunice, head nurse at Lagata Health Facility in Kenya, prepares a pneumococcal vaccine

The vaccine is in a clear bottle with a red top and is given in the child’s right leg. Some are quite stoic with these multiple sticks with long needles. Others are indignant, outraged, and generally unhappy. Can’t say as I blame them.

Lavendar and Valum are just receiving their vaccines and happen to be two of the stoic. Their mothers hold the ubiquitous purple-pink booklets that contain their babies’ medical history and vaccinations.

While all of this may seem routine and boring, believe me when I tell you that for these mothers and babies this new vaccine is anything but. It has the potential to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of children under the age of five. Actually, there’s no way that’s routine and boring.

Valum’s mother, Sarah, tells me that she didn’t know about the new vaccine but is very happy to have it because pneumonia is a dangerous illness for children. Metrine, mother of Lavandar, agrees. Some of the women I speak to know families who have lost a child to pneumonia.

Sarah and Metrine understand that without support from developed countries this vaccine would probably not be available to their babies. I asked them if there is anything they would like to say directly to the decision-makers in capitals around the world. Yes, they say. Please tell them again thank you, their help is very much appreciated and their support is paramount for the health of our children.

John Githongo: “Dignity comes before development”

Mar 22nd, 2010 10:12 AM UTC
By Virginia Simmons

We wanted to share this video taken in Kenya last week of anti-corruption campaign and ONE advisor John Githongo. I found his words moving, and tried my best to transcribe them below.

“Hi, I’m John Githongo. I’m Chief Executive of Inuka Kenya. Also head of Twaweza Kenya.

When people ask me what we’re doing, at the end of day, I mean there’s lots of stuff we’re doing, but at the end of the day what we’re creating is a social movement of people, especially young people, who believe in the concept of “ni sissy.”

Ni sisi is the Swahili words for “it is us.”

It is us who owns our problems and it is us who will come up with the solutions.

There are many ways of doing that. We have culture platforms. We partner with the private sector. We use media, information technology. There are a whole range of ways this can be applied.

But at the end of the day the critical element is people. That is the most valuable asset that we have in a country like Kenya. Despite the difficulties that we had in 2007 2008 after the elections.

A network that brings people together for themselves to improve their own conditions and their own relationships with each other.

Dignity comes before development — and that’s about relationships.

Therefor you may find a situation where people seem to be poor, who are living under challenging circumstances, but they are comfortable in their own skin.

And it is in that kind of context that development, in the traditional sense, happens most easily.”

More about John Githongo, written by my colleague Morgana, below:

In 2002 the newly appointed President Kibaki appointed John Githongo as Permanent Secretary for Ethics and Governance in the Office of the President, where he was known as the “anti-corruption czar.” Eighteen months after Githongo entered office, he began to discover considerable instances of corruption. As Githongo tried to probe further, government ministers prevented his investigations. Without support from the President and his administration, Githongo resigned from his post in 2005. He then went into self-imposed exile in the UK, without any explanation for his abrupt departure. When he left, he took with him potentially explosive documents that revealed the corruption schemes in the government. Githongo compiled the documents into a dossier which was leaked to the press in early 2006. This dossier contained evidence of a series of government procurement deals with non-existent companies, which effectively robbed Kenya of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Michela Wrong, a British author and former foreign correspondent who housed Githongo during part of his exile, chronicled Githongo’s fight against corruption in her book, It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower. Githongo, who is on ONE’s Advisory Board, has since returned from exile, but travels extensively to continue to monitor, investigate, and spread awareness about government corruption.

Mr. Githongo’s new organization, Inuka (“get up” in Swahili) Trust, aims to recapture the powerful moment of hope felt by all Kenyans in 2003 and convert it into lasting change created by and for Kenyans. Inuka works to affirm individuals as African and global citizens and empower Kenyans to use information, express their views and – importantly – take initiative aimed at improving their lives and holding governments accountable.

On Wednesday, March 17th, Githongo took us to visit Nyawira Kazi — a self-organized local community group of 20 people who have come together to help the vulnerable in their community. Led by charismatic leadership with no external help, Nyawira Kazi finds the gaps that exist in their local community and work towards closing them. Right now this means their focus is on caring for the orphans left behind by the political violence by providing a nursery and feeding program for children who would otherwise go without meals.

Kenya: Still on the brink?

Jan 12th, 2010 3:46 PM UTC
By Helen Palmer

It’s now two years since post-election violence in Kenya killed 1,500 people and drove 250,000 from their homes.

Last night the Royal African Society hosted a packed event in the Houses of Parliament in London looking at what has happened since and the chances for Kenya to avoid future bloodshed.

The speakers were Maina Kiai, the eminent Kenyan human rights champion, and Michela Wrong, author of “It’s Our Turn to Eat”, the story of John Githongo, Kenya’s corruption whistle-blower (and ONE Policy Advisory Board member).

“Right now Kenya is calm but it is not peaceful,” said Kiai. “The tension in the country is palpable.. and there is still this ethnic unease… We are not out of the woods. We have postponed a crisis but it could still happen.”

Both speakers laid the blame squarely on Kenya’s corrupt politicians. “Corruption is the one ideology that Kenyan politicians believe in,” Kiai said. “The coalition is united in corruption.”

A major topic of debate was the question of bringing to justice those political figures responsible for promoting the violence, and still reportedly arming militias. The role of the International Criminal Court was hotly debated. Kiai said 62% of Kenyans wanted it to act to bring the perpetrators to justice. But, he argued, it was critical that the ICC took a completely even-handed approach to all sides, to state sponsored violence, attacks by Kalenjin against Kikuyu, and by Kikuyu against Luo and other tribes.

“If it was done properly we could see a cooling down.. it could be almost indispensable,” he said.

But Michela Wrong was less upbeat about the criminal court’s chances. “The ICC process and the drive to end impunity could trigger the next conflict,” she said. “Can you expect justice so soon after such violence?”

Both speakers thought the next flash point might come sooner rather than later – with the Referendum on the Constitution which is due in May or June. They argued for the British Government to take a “tough love” approach, extending visa and travel bans to all alleged perpetrators and their families, and prosecuting British citizens found to be colluding in corruption. “Every Kenyan scandal has a British connection,” said Kiai. He also urged a “bottom up” approach to development aid, arguing that donors should channel it to boost citizens’ groups in Kenya rather than giving it to the Government.