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DONOR FUNDING; Why Kenya may soon outlive it
May, 2006 

Donor funding if you didn’t know is the basis of control of the poor countries by rich ones. This control is what is known today as neo-colonization. History reminds us of the scrabble for Africa through the Berlin conference in 1885. This involved grabbing of Africa then known as the Dark Continent by the various super powers of those years. The grabbing however was conveniently treated as a meeting called to negotiate spheres of influence in Africa by the various European powers. The result was demarcation of Africa into zones from which the European powers were to acquire resources for industrialization of their own countries. These powers included France, Britain and Germany, Italy, Belgium, Spain etc.  
Prior to that, there was slavery practiced particularly by the eastern and western world through buying and selling of able-bodied Africa men and women to work for the rich for free and forced labour. This devastated whole communities in Africa and interfered with civilization process of the African continent.
The advent of colonialism though, is more relevant to our recent past. It will be recalled that colonialists initially used the western church to penetrate the African communities. It is not that the Africa’s were not religious themselves. It is philosophized by Professor Mbithi that Africans are notoriously religious and every one of their experiences in life can be explained through religion. But for westerners to gain a footing amongst the Africans, they came and introduced their own culture, religion, education, gifts etc so that they could endear themselves to the Africans whom they considered to be primitive and therefore uncultured.  
What followed was the entrenchment of the westerners on the African continent. They eventually established whole companies owned by their Governments at home e.g. The Imperial British East Africa Company operating in Kenya and the British East India Company operating in India. The aim of the companies was to exploit the local resources of land, minerals, etc for the benefit of the home countries. As the years passed by, the foreigners now took full control of the colonies to the extent of making them their own properties. This is how Kenya became a British colony.
Uganda on the other hand became a British protectorate. Protectorate arose in the sense that that the British could not penetrate the strong kingdoms with deeply entrenched social cohesion and rulership that were prevalent in Uganda. Conversely, Tanzania, formally Tanganyika, was a German colony until the 2nd world war. After defeat of the Germans, reins of Tanganyika were taken over by the British under the auspices of the League of Nations, which is today the United Nations. The British were just meant to oversea the affairs of the country hence no legal claims. Others like Rwanda/Burundi were strongly under the control of Belgium. Indeed, almost every African country was under the rule of one European country or the other. The French and Spanish for example controlled Western Africa; Germans had Tanganyika; Italians had Somalia whereas the British controlled the better part of eastern and southern Africa.
It was not until the 1960s when most of the African Countries managed to gain independence from the colonizers.  We should not loose sight of the fact that some countries like Zimbabwe and South Africa experienced severe problems with leaders of the European origin who took over from the original colonizers and refused to hand back power to the original Africans even after their Governments had retreated back home.
Independent Africa now became denominated by poor post-colonial leadership. The Africa leaders not only become corrupt but also dictatorial. Political patronage became the rule of the game. Meanwhile, tribalism became even more entrenched. It had originally been introduced and entrenched by the British to divide and rule Kenya.
The Belgians also succeeded in Rwanda and Burundi. It however didn’t work in Tanzania and Uganda. Through the tribal arithmetic, those close to power continued to amass wealth, leading to eventual extreme poverty for some of the independent Countries. Leadership wrangles became the order of the day in the late 60s and 70s, only a few years after Independence.  Coups became common in most Africa countries. 
In the meantime, Cold war between East and West also contributed substantially to the problems in post independent Africa.  The westerners advocated capitalism whereas the Easterners led by Soviet Union advocated socialism and sometimes the more extreme communism. Misdeeds of African leaders were given a blind eye by the west particularly in return to dancing to the tune of their ideologies. The competition for support thus drove the superior powers to encourage misdeeds by the leaders of the newly independent states.
Previous colonizers were sometimes the architects of the problems facing African states so that they could regain ground in resource allocation of the now disoriented countries. Thanks to the efforts of Mikhail Gorbachev the last effective leader of the Soviet Union, who opened up the communist world through advocating openness (Glasnost) and political, economic and social reforms (perestroika).  With the 1989 bringing down of the Berlin Wall, that had separated East and West Germany for decades, the world started experiencing a new order, in which Africa was not to be an exception. 
Meanwhile, extreme poverty had to be addressed. A new form of colonialism was put in place in the 1980s. The World bodies, through World Bank and its affiliates had started prescribing measures of reversing the poverty trends in the African countries. This is what is now known as structural Adjustments programs (SAPs).  For countries to be assisted or funded by the world bodies they were to implement the SAPs. They involved such things as staff reduction in the Government, Economic liberalization and divestiture of the Government from the mainstreams economy. Whereas some measures were positive others like staff reduction created social disorders like unemployment, increased corruption, poverty, crime and many more. Some countries have to date never recovered from the effects of the SAPs. It is worthwhile noting that some of the countries were used as guinea pigs for testing those SAPs, which had not worked anywhere else.
The World Bank bodies as is well known, accord themselves the responsibility of distributing World Wealth for the benefit of humanity. The G8 countries closely monitor them, whereas they are funded through subscriptions of all the member countries. Their activities are closely interrelated with those of countries with surpluses to invest elsewhere. It can be recalled that in 2005 one of the Nordic countries threatened Kenya because the country had refused to accept the conditions attached to its lending. That is, employment of their people whose skills and competencies were suspect, as part of the aid package deal. It should be noted that, where the recipient countries benefit it is rarely by more than 20% of the funds provided.
We should also take note of the emergence of the modern day slavery.  With reduced population growths, workers have to be found to provide cheap labour to our Western brothers and sisters. But what is most annoying is that what the European migrants to the Americas cannot get from the pedigrees of original slavery (African Americans), they are now getting it from the migrating Africans, Asians, South Americans etc from what is now known as the green card among other niceties.  Or is it continuation of colonization by a conglomeration of the Europeans in what is now their new land? As you prepare for the trip to Uncle Sam’s land of opportunities, you should be aware of these glaring and naked truths.
So what is the way forward?
Creation of national wealth is mandatory if we are to get out of the nuisance of the donor funding conditions.   The constituency development fund (CDF) is going a long way into improving the welfare of rural Kenyans particularly. It is adding valve to this Nation. Efficiency in tax collection is also bearing fruit. Regional integration is working well for us. Kenya enjoys almost 50% of the COMESA market. The strategy of the government borrowing less from the economy has made banks to be more creative as a result of stiff competition.
Now, almost everybody who does business can borrow either from the major banks or micro financial institutions. The latter have wider reach to ordinary wananchi particularly in their small businesses. Remember, by 1999 our economy was slowly grinding to a halt on account of mismanagement and almost official corruption.  Small businesses then were contributing about 18% of our Nation’s gross domestic product.  Like   most other African countries the sector was employing more than 7o% of the working population. The situation is certainly better today when the performance of our economy is on the upward trend. More attention has evidently been directed towards SMEs. But should there not be a holistic approach to SME development. By this I mean concerted national efforts of developing the entrepreneurial spirit which is the driving force of SMEs.
Indeed, the overall impact of the small businesses (SMEs) outweighs that of the Multinationals particularly with respect to employment creation. Remember, it is they who always repatriate whatever they have earned from us, to their mostly western mother countries.  Let us concentrate in building the small businesses including through improvement of the enabling environment. Meanwhile, it is a pleasure to learn that Donor funding accounts for only 5% of our National budget. We will soon forget factoring donor funds in our budget. Others who were at the same level with us at independence have done it. Why not us?  
In any case, it is money, which will still be repaid at a later date. Then, the funding only benefits us by not more than 20% of what is loaned, if lucky. The rest is repatriated back to the donor countries.  What of our dignity?  Not many people respect beggars anyway.
On corruption, the government should not only continue fighting new and old corruption. It should also put in long-term measures of eradicating it altogether. Some of the factors that contribute to corruption like most other unethical behaviors include personal values; people’s attitudes; Internal drive to succeed at whatever cost; performance pressures: little or no threat to punishment; peer pressure and availability of opportunities. Honestly, if three quarters of the issues listed were addressed, corruption would be brought down to its bear minimum. That is the work of any responsible government in this dynamic world now turned into a global village.

Regarding the media, constructive criticism is good not only for all of as individuals but also the entire nation. Negative or destructive criticism is good for nothing. It just creates fear and uncertainty particularly amongst potential investors and even tourists. They will think that this country is under fire and would collapse anytime like the Ronald Ngala twin building. Remember, the media propagated Rwandan Genocide of 1994. Let’s be positive in our approach. In any case, even if our country goes on fire, it is us who will feel the full impact and not the so-called friendly countries.

The writer is a Business Analyst and Training Consultant specializing in SMEs
Email: info@newtimesconsultants.com

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