Post by Ed on Nov 7, 2005 21:11:18 GMT 3
How our country’s wealth is shared
By John Oyuke and Gordon oloo
Nyanza is the poorest province in the country, according to a report on poverty launched yesterday. The Central Bureau of Statistics report indicates that the gap between Kenya’s rich and poor constituencies has widened.
Kabete constituency is the richest in the country with a poverty incidence (percentage of the residents living below the poverty line) of 17 per cent. Ganze Constituency is the poorest with 84 per cent of the residents living below the poverty line.
Nine of the richest ten constituencies are in Central Kenya while five out of the poorest ten are from Nyanza Province.
Nyanza Province is the poorest with a poverty incidence of 65 per cent, followed by North Eastern 64 per cent. Next is Western with 61 per cent, Eastern 58 per cent and Coast 57.6 per cent. The richest province is Central with 31 per cent, followed by Nairobi (44 per cent) and Rift Valley 48 per cent.
Nineteen of the top 23 districts in the richest category, with a poverty incidence of less than 35 per cent are in Central Province. The report,‘Geographic Dimensions of Well-being in Kenya: Volume II – Who and Where are the Poor? A Constituency Level Profile, provides a geographic profile of poverty and inequality in Kenya at the constituency level.
The report also presents preliminary estimates profiling poverty incidence within constituencies by gender and the level of educational achievement of the households.
For instance, it found that households headed by individuals with educational attainment at the secondary level or above have less poverty compared to those headed by individuals with the primary level of education.
Within each constituency, households headed by individuals with no education depict the highest poverty incidence. The pattern holds generally among urban and rural residents across all 210 constituencies in Kenya.
On incidence of poverty, the poorest category with 64 per cent or more residents living below the poverty line is dominated with constituencies from North Eastern, Nyanza and the Coast. In this category, five constituencies are from North Eastern representing half of all constituencies in the province. Seventeen out of Nyanza’s 31 constituencies fall in this category too while Eastern has seven out of its 17 constituencies in the list of the poorest.
Mr Duncan Okello, the Regional Director for Society for International Development (SID), Eastern Africa Regional Office, says the report presents "a picture that this nation cannot be proud of 40 years after independence. "It paints a picture of a nation in ‘welfare distress’, apparently permanently scarred by the experiences by poverty from corner to corner," he said during the launch.
Okello added that the report graphically demonstrated acute regional inequalities that directly affect the country’s politics. "For a nation that has never been at war, to what development need – in a fiscal and expenditure sense – has the state been responding? Or, how have we been responding?" he asked.
In general the report shows that the living standards for Kenyans have been declining steadily in the last 14 years, a global record for a country that has never been at war.
With a population of 30 million people and a per capita income of US$260, Kenya is currently categorised the 20th poorest country in the world by the United Nations Capital Development Fund.
Disparities in income, abilities to meet basic needs and access to both health and education continue to be the hallmarks of life for the poor in most parts of the country.
The UN agency indicates that currently about 47 per cent of the Kenya’s rural population and 29 per cent of the urban population live under conditions of absolute poverty, where malnutrition and seasonal famine are not just a consistent fear, but also a frequent reality in their lives.
The country’s development partners, Sweden and World Bank, yesterday raised concern over the persistently low per capita income and called for concerted efforts to change the trend.
Swedish ambassador to Kenya, Mr Bo Goransson said the country’s income per head had been on the decline for a straight 13 to 14 years and described the decline as a world record for a country that has not been at war.
He said although Kenya achieved an economic growth of 4.3 per cent last year, this was not enough to reduce the entrenched poverty in the country.
The envoy said that a sustained growth of six to eight per cent and a radical redistribution of resources, are what would be required to have an impact on the standard of living of a significant part of the population.
Goransson who was speaking after the launch of the poverty and inequality noted that despite improvements in poverty targeting in the country, said distribution of resources was still skewed towards the rich and not to the poor and particularly to women’s development issues.
He attributed absence of sustained increase in per capita income growth to low investment, due to poor infrastructure including roads and power supply, bureaucracy and an inefficient parastatal sector.
World Bank Country Director, Collins Bruce also decried reduced living standards in the country and offered the bank’s support to accelerating efforts to change this trend.
He said that Kenya was capable of achieving an economic growth of between seven and eight per cent and improve living standards of majority of its population.
He offered the bank’s support in strengthening the Government’s statistics gathering mechanisms, data production, dissemination and access.
Bruce emphasised the need to use quality statistics as a vehicle of not only addressing issues of poverty in the country but also to enrich accountability within the Government.
Reacting to the regional inequalities, Mandera Central Member of Parliament Billow Kerrow said the politics of patronage was to blame. He cited the budgetary allocation for water resource development where areas in Turkana were getting Sh5 million as Nyeri got more than Sh400 million.
Constitutional review Commissioner Mutakha Kangu said the massive inequality stems from deliberate government policies that can be traced to the colonial days.
Kangu said Kenya missed the mark as soon as the first Government decided to inherit the structures of governance that were established by the colonialists.
"The colonial government divided the country into high potential and low potential areas for the single purpose of generating raw materials for their industries. They did not care about the welfare of the areas generally reserved for Africans," he says.
He said that the Kenyatta government continued with the policy of developing the high potential areas and neglecting the low potential areas. According to Kangu, the worst mistake as far as equitable development of the economy was the adoption of the Sessional Paper No. 10 of 1965.
The document indicated that the government would not spare resources for the marginalised areas of the country.
Kangu said the policy essentially meant that most of the Government resources would be directed to former white highlands, most of them in the central part of the country.
According to him, the best way out of the present crisis is to adopt a type of governance that would ensure that national resources are directed to areas that have the greatest need of development
By John Oyuke and Gordon oloo
Nyanza is the poorest province in the country, according to a report on poverty launched yesterday. The Central Bureau of Statistics report indicates that the gap between Kenya’s rich and poor constituencies has widened.
Kabete constituency is the richest in the country with a poverty incidence (percentage of the residents living below the poverty line) of 17 per cent. Ganze Constituency is the poorest with 84 per cent of the residents living below the poverty line.
Nine of the richest ten constituencies are in Central Kenya while five out of the poorest ten are from Nyanza Province.
Nyanza Province is the poorest with a poverty incidence of 65 per cent, followed by North Eastern 64 per cent. Next is Western with 61 per cent, Eastern 58 per cent and Coast 57.6 per cent. The richest province is Central with 31 per cent, followed by Nairobi (44 per cent) and Rift Valley 48 per cent.
Nineteen of the top 23 districts in the richest category, with a poverty incidence of less than 35 per cent are in Central Province. The report,‘Geographic Dimensions of Well-being in Kenya: Volume II – Who and Where are the Poor? A Constituency Level Profile, provides a geographic profile of poverty and inequality in Kenya at the constituency level.
The report also presents preliminary estimates profiling poverty incidence within constituencies by gender and the level of educational achievement of the households.
For instance, it found that households headed by individuals with educational attainment at the secondary level or above have less poverty compared to those headed by individuals with the primary level of education.
Within each constituency, households headed by individuals with no education depict the highest poverty incidence. The pattern holds generally among urban and rural residents across all 210 constituencies in Kenya.
On incidence of poverty, the poorest category with 64 per cent or more residents living below the poverty line is dominated with constituencies from North Eastern, Nyanza and the Coast. In this category, five constituencies are from North Eastern representing half of all constituencies in the province. Seventeen out of Nyanza’s 31 constituencies fall in this category too while Eastern has seven out of its 17 constituencies in the list of the poorest.
Mr Duncan Okello, the Regional Director for Society for International Development (SID), Eastern Africa Regional Office, says the report presents "a picture that this nation cannot be proud of 40 years after independence. "It paints a picture of a nation in ‘welfare distress’, apparently permanently scarred by the experiences by poverty from corner to corner," he said during the launch.
Okello added that the report graphically demonstrated acute regional inequalities that directly affect the country’s politics. "For a nation that has never been at war, to what development need – in a fiscal and expenditure sense – has the state been responding? Or, how have we been responding?" he asked.
In general the report shows that the living standards for Kenyans have been declining steadily in the last 14 years, a global record for a country that has never been at war.
With a population of 30 million people and a per capita income of US$260, Kenya is currently categorised the 20th poorest country in the world by the United Nations Capital Development Fund.
Disparities in income, abilities to meet basic needs and access to both health and education continue to be the hallmarks of life for the poor in most parts of the country.
The UN agency indicates that currently about 47 per cent of the Kenya’s rural population and 29 per cent of the urban population live under conditions of absolute poverty, where malnutrition and seasonal famine are not just a consistent fear, but also a frequent reality in their lives.
The country’s development partners, Sweden and World Bank, yesterday raised concern over the persistently low per capita income and called for concerted efforts to change the trend.
Swedish ambassador to Kenya, Mr Bo Goransson said the country’s income per head had been on the decline for a straight 13 to 14 years and described the decline as a world record for a country that has not been at war.
He said although Kenya achieved an economic growth of 4.3 per cent last year, this was not enough to reduce the entrenched poverty in the country.
The envoy said that a sustained growth of six to eight per cent and a radical redistribution of resources, are what would be required to have an impact on the standard of living of a significant part of the population.
Goransson who was speaking after the launch of the poverty and inequality noted that despite improvements in poverty targeting in the country, said distribution of resources was still skewed towards the rich and not to the poor and particularly to women’s development issues.
He attributed absence of sustained increase in per capita income growth to low investment, due to poor infrastructure including roads and power supply, bureaucracy and an inefficient parastatal sector.
World Bank Country Director, Collins Bruce also decried reduced living standards in the country and offered the bank’s support to accelerating efforts to change this trend.
He said that Kenya was capable of achieving an economic growth of between seven and eight per cent and improve living standards of majority of its population.
He offered the bank’s support in strengthening the Government’s statistics gathering mechanisms, data production, dissemination and access.
Bruce emphasised the need to use quality statistics as a vehicle of not only addressing issues of poverty in the country but also to enrich accountability within the Government.
Reacting to the regional inequalities, Mandera Central Member of Parliament Billow Kerrow said the politics of patronage was to blame. He cited the budgetary allocation for water resource development where areas in Turkana were getting Sh5 million as Nyeri got more than Sh400 million.
Constitutional review Commissioner Mutakha Kangu said the massive inequality stems from deliberate government policies that can be traced to the colonial days.
Kangu said Kenya missed the mark as soon as the first Government decided to inherit the structures of governance that were established by the colonialists.
"The colonial government divided the country into high potential and low potential areas for the single purpose of generating raw materials for their industries. They did not care about the welfare of the areas generally reserved for Africans," he says.
He said that the Kenyatta government continued with the policy of developing the high potential areas and neglecting the low potential areas. According to Kangu, the worst mistake as far as equitable development of the economy was the adoption of the Sessional Paper No. 10 of 1965.
The document indicated that the government would not spare resources for the marginalised areas of the country.
Kangu said the policy essentially meant that most of the Government resources would be directed to former white highlands, most of them in the central part of the country.
According to him, the best way out of the present crisis is to adopt a type of governance that would ensure that national resources are directed to areas that have the greatest need of development