Hunger, Anger and Leadership
The majority of Kenya's population is under 35 years of age.
The majority of the population is female.
Most Kenyans live in rural areas, although the rate of urbanization is quite high and this will soon change.
A large portion of Kenya's population has 8 years of formal education and less than 3% is university educated. And even with university education, a significant proportion is unemployed.
The rate of inflation has increased to double digits, and is at about 15% in Kenya today. Economists know better what to attribute this to but for most Kenyans it means life is ever more expensive.
To wake up in the morning and leave one's abode is a costly affair - if you are on foot, at some point you will need to sit down, rest and eat something. It costs 10 shillings more than it did last week; if you find something under 100 shillings. I will not even go into the fact that getting a job, even a temporary one is difficult. And with the power rationing schedule will mean even more jobless skilled and semi-skilled young men and women in industrial areas across the country.
Kenya is struck by another season of drought which has resulted in a famine situation which could have mitigated by a proactive Government. Just to clarify, drought is an extended period of time whether months or years where a region has deficient water supply, often as a result of less than average rainfall. It is all about Mother Nature. Famine on the other hand, whether argued as an event or a process is about scarcities that lead to people dying of starvation. It can be averted.
Pundits on social media in Nairobi are concerned that the media frenzy about the famine situation in Northern Kenya is triggered by a need to make the Government “look bad”, featuring starving people trooping to food camps – the pundits claim these are mostly Somalis. Some media have been featuring famine in part of the country not so close to Somalia such as Pokot, Turkana and parts of upper Eastern. The Government needed no help in making itself “look bad”. Several months ago the Special Programmes Minister declared that there was no crisis even as she set up a toll free number to enables citizens make an SOS call in the event that hunger bites. In subsequent media interviews, she indicated that the situation was under control. Other news reports indicated that there were sufficient food reserves, it was simply a matter of distribution should the situation require it.
Kenya’s policy makers, technocrats and political leaders are well educated and widely travelled. In Kenya today, we have more sophisticated systems and human resource base more knowledgeable than ever before. How is it that anyone can accept that a section of the population, whether citizens or guests of the state, go hungry? Women and children emaciated and exhausted given rations of food in gunny bags by representatives of Government – two Presidential hopefuls (one being the Vice President no less, the other a former Minister for Agriculture) and a Cabinet Minister. These “leaders” of the present Government standby hungry people in their county, who suffer hunger under their watch, 48 years into celebrating our sovereignty as a nation-state.
No man, woman or child should die for lack of food in Kenya. No excuses. Shame on us.
The outlook for Kenya is dire with regard to basic issues of sustenance. As we got into election mode, the promise of a rosy future by aspirants of political office will distract many of us.
Young people in Kenya in particular must not forget to ask the important questions, seek a track record in positive impact of every aspirant. Citizen accountability begins with vetting those who seek our support to political office. Citizen accountability rests on every young person to ensure that those in office now and those seeking to continue to be in public office can demonstrate how they will address urbanization, access to education that builds skills for employability, growing the economy to increase job and entrepreneurial possibilities for skilled and semi-skilled labour force that mostly young, food security for everyone within the borders of Kenya’s territory, and political leadership and policy makers that are responsive and empathetic to citizens well being. Citizen accountability is the responsibility of every Kenyan who abides by the Constitution promulgated in August 2010.
