World Affairs
World view - Michela Wrong sees Kenya running of the rails
Published 25 April 2005
Kenya is showing every sign of running off the rails over "governance" issues, which means corruption. But donor nations, Britain included, can't admit it
''The issue of good governance lies at the core of all of Africa's problems," the Commission for Africa's report told the world in March. As generalisations go, this one is hard to fault, though the growing habit of using "governance" to discuss what ordinary mortals know as "kickbacks", "palm-greasing", "sweeteners" and "slush funds" - yes, we're talking plain old-fashioned sleaze - grates on the nerves.
So, it was such a pity that when an opportunity to put this precious insight to effective use presented itself in Nairobi this month, the collection of international lenders that supports the Kenyan government fluffed it. Long regarded as holding the key to a stable and prosperous East Africa, Kenya is showing every sign of running off the rails over - ahem - "governance" issues. But the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and donor nations, Britain included, cannot bear to admit it.
When President Mwai Kibaki took the reins at the head of the National Rainbow Coalition two and a half years ago, Kenya's economy was in crisis, bled dry by the corruption that had proliferated under Daniel arap Moi. Kibaki's team promised not only to clean out Augean stables encrusted with a quarter-century of dirty dealings, but to police itself with unprecedented rigour.
That anti-graft message was so heartily endorsed by an angry public that, in the weeks after the election, operators of the private matatu buses who automatically reached for the "little something" demanded by Kenya's policemen were howled down by irate passengers.
Disillusionment has set in more quickly than anyone thought possible. It has become clear that members of Kibaki's administration, nervous about their chances of winning the 2007 elections, are resorting to every trick in the book both to build up a campaign war chest and to salt away personal fortunes.
The Anglo Leasing scandal, in which vastly inflated sums got paid to a shadowy British company and the kickbacks then returned to Kenya, was initially stopped in its tracks by the governance and ethics department, an anti-corruption unit whose creation had been announced with much fanfare by Kibaki. But, in February this year, John Githongo, the respected head of the unit, resigned while travelling in Europe, saying only that he was "unable" to continue. He has remained abroad ever since.
Coming soon after the combative British high commissioner, Sir Edward Clay, revealed that he had supplied Kibaki with a list of 20 cases of major corruption worth investigating, the departure spoke volumes about the Kenyan government's waning enthusiasm for the task. Sir Edward says looting of public funds under Kibaki has cost the economy hundreds of millions of dollars: his US counterpart calculates that the sums could have paid for every HIV-positive Kenyan to go on antiretroviral treatment for a decade.
Reason enough, you would have thought, for donors to act tough when they met this month with key Kenyan ministers. Not at all. The donors patted the government on the back for a hastily drafted action plan that was a mishmash of old promises and familiar ideas. "It was a very successful meeting," the European Union representative told journalists, as jaws hit tables across the land.
Why the fudge? When quizzed, foreign diplomats will tell you that aid cannot be stopped and started like a car engine; that the poorest will suffer the most if donors pull out; that compromised engagement is better than none; that this administration is still a huge improvement on what went before.
When I hear this, my mind drifts back to the late Erwin Blumenthal, a German banker unfortunate enough to be assigned by the IMF to the Central Bank of Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, in the late 1970s. Sent to investigate the mysterious leakages draining donor attempts to revive Zaire's failing economy, Blumenthal reached a simple conclusion: "There has been - and there still is - one single major obstacle wiping out all prospects: the corruption of the team in power." His advice to cut aid was ignored, and donors continued funding Zaire for another decade.
I forecast some truly remarkable financial acrobatics in Kenya as the 2007 poll approaches. Experience suggests that once a recipient African government has registered a donor failure of nerve in the face of overwhelming evidence of graft, the gloves come off. In the wake of the donors' meeting, the outspoken head of Kenya's branch of the anti-corruption group Transparency International was forced to resign by her own, politically well-connected board.
The 15 million Kenyans who live in abject poverty - nearly half the population - can be forgiven for thinking that little has changed since Moi except the faces of those roaring by in their gleaming new Mercedes. And in Nairobi, the tubby policemen are back at work.
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