UNDP calls for participatory governance

Kenya has been urged to adopt an approach to governance in which people directly participate in the country's decision making processes, if it is to empower local communities to contribute to development and reduce poverty. A new report, jointly produced by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and Kenya's University of Nairobi, identified lack of "effective, participatory and good governance" as one of the major causes of underdevelopment in Kenya. Isack Chivore, the UN Deputy Resident Coordinator, said the main focus of this year's report, the third Kenya Human Development Report, was to highlight the need to improve governance in Kenya, as a measure of broadening people's choices, raise their standard of living and improve the quality of their lives. "Lack of participatory and good governance is among the main causes of underdevelopment in Kenya," Chivore said on Thursday at the report's launch. "Human development expands the capabilities and access to opportunities in social, economic, and political arenas, especially for the poor. Our role as UNDP is to facilitate the national discourse in the development process," he added. The Human Development Index (HDI) included in the report, is a composite of three major indices of a country's population namely, life expectancy, education attainment and standard of living as measured by income. This year, Kenya's HDI was estimated at 0.55, placing the country in the medium category, and higher than the 2001 index, estimated at 0.539. Canada, a country with one of the world's highest Human development indicators had an estimated HDI of 0.937 in 2001. In the past decade, bad governance had pervaded all aspects of Kenya's political and economic life, causing economic stagnation, persistent poverty and social inequalities as evidenced by the fall of HDI in the country in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the report said. "Corruption, inefficient management of public resources and reluctance or failure to involve the poor in the development process are some of the manifestations of this problem," the report noted. Kiert Toh, the USAID director, hailed the report for highlighting the major challenges facing the country, especially in the delivery of essential social services like education, health, electricity, clean water and housing. He urged the government to forge closer partnerships with civil society and the private sector in mobilising domestic sources of funding for the social service sectors, to reduce overreliance on external aid. "Although we have seen increased efforts by the government to improve partnership with the private sector and civil society, more is still needed to strengthen and coordinate these partnerships," he said. Evaluating the report, Caleb Opon, an economic and development researcher, said whereas it had significantly captured the status of human development in Kenya on a broader level, it had concealed the many socioeconomic problems that the majority of Kenyans faced. He added that it had missed out on recommending the specific policies required to make the necessary changes. He said, for example, that although the report HDI for Nairobi was highest at 0.783, it did not reflect the overall reality of poverty, the lack of opportunities and provision of basic social services affecting majority of the city's residents. Also, whereas acknowledging poor performance of girls compared with boys in primary schools, the report also failed to examine deeper socio-cultural factors, such as household responsibilities that tended to reduce girls' performance in school, and push many girls to early marriage and childbirth. "Elements of the voicelessness of girls are not captured in the Human Development Index," he said. "Are girls really benefiting from the free primary education? The issue of what they do at home after school must be reflected," he added. Stressing the point for democratic governance, Opon said external aid in Kenya had only been useful where projects were carried out using the participatory approach. "We do not have a policy on how to use external resources. The quality of the government matters more than money," Opon said.