Medeshi Sept 5, 2008Six months after its bloody election crisis, the country is still struggling to recover
Reuters
IN THE past few weeks, Kenyans have been celebrating. They were delighted when their athletes came back from the Olympics in China with 14 medals, five of them gold, whereas South Africa, often the continent’s sporting giant, got just one silver. A buoyant president, Mwai Kibaki, handed bonus cheques to the medallists on their return. And then Kenyans had the pleasure, early one morning on television, of watching Barack Obama, the son of a Kenyan civil servant, accept the Democratic nomination to be president of the United States.
But despite such good cheer it is evident that east Africa’s leading country has yet to recover fully from the post-election violence that ravaged it earlier in the year, when some 1,700 people were killed and 300,000 displaced. Its fragile coalition government is struggling to take the necessary decisions to tackle the country’s manifold problems. With Mr Kibaki as president and the opposition leader, Raila Odinga, as prime minister, the mere fact that their cumbrous joint administration has hung together is an achievement. But beyond that, six months into its existence, it has little else to celebrate.
Since the bloodshed of January and February, the economy’s progress has been jerky. Take tourism, the country’s biggest foreign-currency earner. “It’s a wonderful, wonderful world,” purred Mr Kibaki on a recent trip to the Masai Mara game reserve, as he looked out on a muddy swollen river with crossing wildebeest and snapping crocodiles. Yet the Kenya Tourism Board says the country lost $191m in revenue in the first half of the year, with visitors down 36% to 561,000 compared with the first six months of 2007. Safari firms say bookings are still sparse; they hope a government marketing campaign will give them a high-season Christmas boost and that the American State Department’s recent lifting of its advice not to travel to Kenya will encourage more Americans to fly in.
Agriculture is struggling too. Poor rains, a tripling in the cost of fertiliser and pesticide, and land disputes linked to the election crisis have wrecked this year’s maize harvest. The Kenya Cereal Growers’ Association says production will slump from 34m bags of maize to 24m. To make up the shortfall, the government has had to import maize from South Africa at inflated prices. Exports of high-value vegetables and fruit to the European Union, on which entrepreneurial farmers have staked their future, have been hit by high fuel prices and a trend towards buying food more locally and seasonally.
Flower farms say that demand in Europe for Kenyan roses and other cut flowers is saturated; exports may dip slightly next year. Tea production lost ground to India and Sri Lanka during the crisis and has since been hit by pay demands and by the loss of some British “fair trade” licences. Only coffee, another big export earner, was unaffected; brokers in Nairobi, the capital, say production and prices are steady.
The country’s stock exchange has weathered the storm, though recent trading has been flat. A public offering of 25% of the largest mobile-phone provider, Safaricom, boosted state coffers by $833m. Trade with China is still rising, and may top $1 billion this year. The African Development Bank reckons Kenya could grow by 7% this year and says a government target of 10% by 2010 is attainable. But the World Bank is less confident, pointing out that few economies, particularly ones like Kenya’s that are rural-based and lack fossil fuels, have achieved double-digit growth.
Whatever the growth rate, the prevailing mistrust between Mr Kibaki’s Party of National Unity (PNU) and Mr Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement is denting investor confidence. The Oranges still believe Mr Kibaki stole the election. A comprehensive exit poll on election day, paid for in part by the American government, was recently released after being suppressed since the crisis. It suggests that Mr Odinga won 46% of the vote against 40% for Mr Kibaki, with a margin of error of 1.3%. Such findings are not definitive, and suggest the Oranges pilfered votes as well as the PNU, but they continue to undermine Mr Kibaki’s legitimacy as president.
Mr Odinga is credited by some with sharpening government performance by introducing contracts that are meant to make ministers and senior civil servants work harder. But despite Mr Odinga’s claims to enjoy a “warm, respectful friendship” with the president, the truth is that the two barely co-operate, leaving a vacuum of leadership at the top. Mr Odinga may have drawn some waverers onto his side, including some ministers previously loyal to Mr Kibaki. But his office is understaffed and his powers fettered. Mr Kibaki, for instance, still appoints top civil servants. A recent sympathetic visitor described Mr Odinga’s office as a “shell”.
The result is a palpable sense of drift. Any vestige of the previous government’s anti-corruption drive, for example, has been abandoned. This was made plain during a recent brief return visit by John Githongo, Kenya’s former anti-corruption chief, who had been forced to flee Kenya three years ago after blowing the whistle on ministers in the previous government. His movements were kept secret for fear he might be murdered; he met Mr Odinga but Mr Kibaki was disinclined to see him. Corruption remains “out of control”, says Mr Githongo, and is now not even a priority.
The drift cannot be allowed to extend to the big infrastructure projects that Kenya must complete if it is to start moving again. Several are pending: a cement factory at Athi River, south-east of Nairobi; a tarmac road of 530km (329 miles) to link Kenya to Ethiopia; a broadband internet connection via an undersea cable; a new terminal for Nairobi’s airport; the overhaul of Kenya’s port at Mombasa; and a plan to double energy production and slash prices by tapping the Rift Valley’s geothermal potential.
A divided government may not be able to push these through. With water and land, energy has become a make-or-break issue. The cost of electricity has risen 51% this year, with demand growing and climate change lowering the levels of hydroelectric dams. Kenya’s fractured, ethnically divided politics has failed to deliver much in such fields in the past. Yet no one seems enough in charge at the top to get things moving now.
Reuters
IN THE past few weeks, Kenyans have been celebrating. They were delighted when their athletes came back from the Olympics in China with 14 medals, five of them gold, whereas South Africa, often the continent’s sporting giant, got just one silver. A buoyant president, Mwai Kibaki, handed bonus cheques to the medallists on their return. And then Kenyans had the pleasure, early one morning on television, of watching Barack Obama, the son of a Kenyan civil servant, accept the Democratic nomination to be president of the United States.
But despite such good cheer it is evident that east Africa’s leading country has yet to recover fully from the post-election violence that ravaged it earlier in the year, when some 1,700 people were killed and 300,000 displaced. Its fragile coalition government is struggling to take the necessary decisions to tackle the country’s manifold problems. With Mr Kibaki as president and the opposition leader, Raila Odinga, as prime minister, the mere fact that their cumbrous joint administration has hung together is an achievement. But beyond that, six months into its existence, it has little else to celebrate.
Since the bloodshed of January and February, the economy’s progress has been jerky. Take tourism, the country’s biggest foreign-currency earner. “It’s a wonderful, wonderful world,” purred Mr Kibaki on a recent trip to the Masai Mara game reserve, as he looked out on a muddy swollen river with crossing wildebeest and snapping crocodiles. Yet the Kenya Tourism Board says the country lost $191m in revenue in the first half of the year, with visitors down 36% to 561,000 compared with the first six months of 2007. Safari firms say bookings are still sparse; they hope a government marketing campaign will give them a high-season Christmas boost and that the American State Department’s recent lifting of its advice not to travel to Kenya will encourage more Americans to fly in.
Agriculture is struggling too. Poor rains, a tripling in the cost of fertiliser and pesticide, and land disputes linked to the election crisis have wrecked this year’s maize harvest. The Kenya Cereal Growers’ Association says production will slump from 34m bags of maize to 24m. To make up the shortfall, the government has had to import maize from South Africa at inflated prices. Exports of high-value vegetables and fruit to the European Union, on which entrepreneurial farmers have staked their future, have been hit by high fuel prices and a trend towards buying food more locally and seasonally.
Flower farms say that demand in Europe for Kenyan roses and other cut flowers is saturated; exports may dip slightly next year. Tea production lost ground to India and Sri Lanka during the crisis and has since been hit by pay demands and by the loss of some British “fair trade” licences. Only coffee, another big export earner, was unaffected; brokers in Nairobi, the capital, say production and prices are steady.
The country’s stock exchange has weathered the storm, though recent trading has been flat. A public offering of 25% of the largest mobile-phone provider, Safaricom, boosted state coffers by $833m. Trade with China is still rising, and may top $1 billion this year. The African Development Bank reckons Kenya could grow by 7% this year and says a government target of 10% by 2010 is attainable. But the World Bank is less confident, pointing out that few economies, particularly ones like Kenya’s that are rural-based and lack fossil fuels, have achieved double-digit growth.
Whatever the growth rate, the prevailing mistrust between Mr Kibaki’s Party of National Unity (PNU) and Mr Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement is denting investor confidence. The Oranges still believe Mr Kibaki stole the election. A comprehensive exit poll on election day, paid for in part by the American government, was recently released after being suppressed since the crisis. It suggests that Mr Odinga won 46% of the vote against 40% for Mr Kibaki, with a margin of error of 1.3%. Such findings are not definitive, and suggest the Oranges pilfered votes as well as the PNU, but they continue to undermine Mr Kibaki’s legitimacy as president.
Mr Odinga is credited by some with sharpening government performance by introducing contracts that are meant to make ministers and senior civil servants work harder. But despite Mr Odinga’s claims to enjoy a “warm, respectful friendship” with the president, the truth is that the two barely co-operate, leaving a vacuum of leadership at the top. Mr Odinga may have drawn some waverers onto his side, including some ministers previously loyal to Mr Kibaki. But his office is understaffed and his powers fettered. Mr Kibaki, for instance, still appoints top civil servants. A recent sympathetic visitor described Mr Odinga’s office as a “shell”.
The result is a palpable sense of drift. Any vestige of the previous government’s anti-corruption drive, for example, has been abandoned. This was made plain during a recent brief return visit by John Githongo, Kenya’s former anti-corruption chief, who had been forced to flee Kenya three years ago after blowing the whistle on ministers in the previous government. His movements were kept secret for fear he might be murdered; he met Mr Odinga but Mr Kibaki was disinclined to see him. Corruption remains “out of control”, says Mr Githongo, and is now not even a priority.
The drift cannot be allowed to extend to the big infrastructure projects that Kenya must complete if it is to start moving again. Several are pending: a cement factory at Athi River, south-east of Nairobi; a tarmac road of 530km (329 miles) to link Kenya to Ethiopia; a broadband internet connection via an undersea cable; a new terminal for Nairobi’s airport; the overhaul of Kenya’s port at Mombasa; and a plan to double energy production and slash prices by tapping the Rift Valley’s geothermal potential.
A divided government may not be able to push these through. With water and land, energy has become a make-or-break issue. The cost of electricity has risen 51% this year, with demand growing and climate change lowering the levels of hydroelectric dams. Kenya’s fractured, ethnically divided politics has failed to deliver much in such fields in the past. Yet no one seems enough in charge at the top to get things moving now.
