The 3 games in the USA - Africa summit:

America playing catch up with the Orient; Obama playing legacy politricks; and Africa playing host

Last week President Obama hosted Africa’s crème de la crème in Washington at the ‘US-Africa summit’. This was by all means a good thing and deserves a round of applause. However, it is imperative that Africans put this meeting into context and reflect on its efficacy.

Ask yourself: who decided the timing and schedule of the US – Africa summit? Who decided the venue? Who elected who to invite and who to alienate? Who determined the agenda?

Symbiosis or clever lopsidedness?
This summit came at a point in time when both the USA and Africa need one another.  Maybe USA needed Africa more. To claw back on Chinese influence in Africa after a lost decade fighting terror in the middle-East, to reassert US hegemony and ‘big-brotherdom’, to tap into Africa natural resources and to increase trade and investment in the region.

Trade: - Over the past decade, US-Africa trade declined substantially when some of US arch rivals and Africa’s trading partners like the European Union, China and Japan expanded their portfolio of trade and investment in the continent. Notably, EU-Africa trade expanded to an all-time high of about US$200 billion in 2013. Chinese – Africa trade likewise increased exponentially from just about US$10 billion in 2000 to US$ 170 billion in 2013 (largely exports to Africa - 70%). Meanwhile big brother USA’s trade that stood at US$80 billion (US$ 40 billion imports from Africa due to AGOA and US$ 20 billion exports to Africa) in 2011 declined to US$ 60 billion (US$ 40 imports from Africa and US$ 20 billion exports to Africa) in 2013. It is important to note that even the small portfolio of trade with Africa (US$ 20 billion exports) was very crucial for American jobs – supporting over 100,000 jobs. Therefore for America, this summit could not have been for a better reason than to explore and expand export opportunities for American goods and services in Africa.

 For Africa, this summit came at a time when the continent was ripe with opportunity and required strategic partnerships for trade, investment and for combating some of the ills that have perennially hamstrung economic, social and political progress in the continent like terrorism and violent conflict. It’s important to note that Africa’s trade with the rest of the globe accounts for only about 2%. Yet Africa is home to 14% of the global population; has an increasing middleclass population which will expand to 100 million by the end of 2015 and has consumer spending projected to increase to 80% by 2020.  This means market, that the continent could bargain with or leverage for intra-Africa trade. Moreover, African countries are prospecting or already exploiting and commercialising substantive natural resources, oil and gas, in Ghana, Mozambique, Angola, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and South Sudan for example. African countries have also made considerable progress in regional integration and cooperation. The East African community for example was one of the fastest growing regional blocks in 2013. All this is evidence to the economic and political opportunities that Africa is realising that require strategic partnership and cooperation (multilateral or bilateral) like with the USA.

Just a playing ground or real prospects?

Africa is now undoubtedly a pot of gold, and a beehive of economic and political activity that could be a tipping point in global political economy. How the super powers like China and USA handle Africa could mean great opportunities or their greatest undoing. Could Africa be merely the amphitheatre for deep seated political and economic wrangles between the West and the Orient? Are African leaders alive to this reality? How could Africans exploit this for the best interest of the continent? These are difficult questions that require reflection amongst Africans.

Nonetheless, three possible good things that I hoped the summit could herald. Maybe Africans should check with their Presidents and entourage if any of these came through:  

·         Increasing USA Africa trade and investment through a strengthen and extended AGOA.  

·      Enhancing trade competitiveness in Africa: - African countries can exploit partnerships with USA to speed up progress towards meeting the Bali agreements on trade facilitation for example. This could also pave the way for useful Public Private Partnerships under AGOA that enhance competitiveness. Such links could also help build the capacity of private sector in African countries to promote investment in key sectors like energy, agriculture and other trade related infrastructure.

·   Africa US cooperation could also support and deepen regional integration in many of Africa’s mushrooming regional blocks like the EAC, ECOWAS, SADC, and COMESA. US partnership in Trade Mark East Africa is a good example of how strategic cooperation could facilitate integration.

Tricky partnerships

Nonetheless, the flipside is that this manner of cooperation or partnerships between the USA and Africa could as well have been detrimental to Africa or yield dismal returns. The summit itself could just have been another of the many conferences of ‘nothing’ that have been witnessed in the past. The agreements and pronouncements made also risk benefiting the USA more, judging by the lopsidedness of the conduct of the meeting.

However, one thing poses a greater threat to possibilities of a favourable outcome both for the USA and African countries. Both the USA and African (as individual states and as AU) appear to be ill prepared for the outcomes of the conference. Why? The US is not the only country that has noticed that potential opportunities in Africa. China has, and adapted quickly, fronting innovative modalities for development financing (that some African countries are warming up to), pursuing fewer restrictions on credit/loans and assistance strategies. The USA on the other hand is stuck in idealist modalities for development cooperation. Further, while China is actively and aggressively engaging Africa in all corners, US infrastructure for economic diplomacy in Africa appears lame and ill suited to succeed. China currently has over 150 commercial attaches in different corners of Africa while the US department for commerce has presence in just about four countries in the continent each of which supported by no more than two officers.

Africa on the other hand has failed to determine a common political-economic agenda and framework for haggling with potential partners in the international arena. The continent (AU) was unable to meaningfully influence the conduct of the summit in terms of setting the agenda, agreeing the modalities for engagement and so on. However, it is fair to note that some regional blocks like the East African Community met ahead of the summit in Nairobi and compromised to front some of the EAC’s infrastructure projects like Lamu Port Southern Sudan-Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) Corridor project as a block instead of individual bilateral engagements. In fact the architecture of the summit was in such a way that it couldn’t allow serious bilateral or even multilateral dialogue for substantive action.

Legacy politricks?

The question that cannot escape being asked is that about the timing of the summit. Why did the Obama administration choose 2014 to host this meeting? Why so late in the course of his tenure? Was Africa ever seriously on his agenda? Was this Obama’s clever way of making peace with his clearly underwhelmed kins? Is this summit for Obama’s memoirs? Every US president has had something to take home to the books in their sunset days. Bill Clinton penned the Africa Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA), that though not been fully exploited was something both for Africa and for the Democrat. George Bush, despite the bad name took the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to his memoirs as one of the greatest initiatives for Africa. PEPFAR was very successful in supporting programming and interventions for combating HIV/AIDS. So, when all is said and done, was this Obama’s legacy card for Africa?

Beyond selfies, cowboy boots and statesons, what?

In summary, when all the picture ops are exploited, when all the dinning and winning on White house south lawn are done; when all the interviews with CNN and curtains drawn o the US-Africa summit, what have African leaders brought back home? Beyond selfies, cowboy boots and Stetsons; what should they have returned to Africa with? May be three things:

·     Extension and strengthening of the Africa Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA) beyond its expiry date in 2016. Strengthen the Act and encourage African countries to fully exploit the opportunities it offers. There are some countries that exported very little to the USA despite the provisions of AGOA.

·     A road map to a US-Africa trade and investment treaty: - The leaders could have laid the ground work for a bold move towards ratifying a treaty of partnerships (not necessarily of equals as many African leaders demand). They could have left Washington with a framework of action towards actualising this in the future.

·     From aid to partnerships: - This summit should have ignited the departure from more of aid or Official Development Assistance (ODA) or Humanitarian Assistance towards more of meaningful and inclusive partnerships for development financing, for combating terrorism and violent conflict, and addressing food insecurity and disasters like Ebola and HIV/AIDS. 

You do the math; sum up the expense of summoning 50 heads of state to the US for some 72 hrs and the returns. Check the bag of goodies that your ‘leader’ brought back home. Was it worth the hype? Are the prospects real?

You kill me Kenya!

You kill me Kenyans; with your shameless double standing, with your selective reasoning; with your insolence and ethnic chauvinism. You are poor (just like me). You own no land (just like me). You will die poor (just like me). Your children will inherit nothing (just like mine). But you are rich in your ethnicity – you are Luo, Kikuyu, kalenjin, Kamba, Luhya, Gussii, Ogiel bla bla. If ethnicity were monetized we would be billionaires! But you will die for your tribesman; what he owns you own too right? When you go home to your humility, you dine with him right?

Kenyans hark my voice. What your president and his company want you to do (and he's sure you will), is resign to the cheap lazy conversation of chest thumping and ethnocentrism and forget the real issue. How the point shifted from the chronic land grievances in the Coast instigated by historical land injustices to the guilt of former Lands Minister James Orango for not detecting illegal allocations, I wonder.

The point that people want to bury their heads in the sand and wish never existed is how a group of people found themselves in the Coast, settled in land that never belonged to them, but to people who were originally there, born there, displacing and disenfranchising them.

Kenyans it happened, all these will not end until we acknowledge that these injustices occurred. They have been well documented in the Truth Justice and Reconcilliation Commission report and the Ndungu report - of the Commission of Inquiry into the illegal/iregular allocation of public land. They will have to be addressed my fellow countrymen.

We all love Kenya. If you are young, take note that these folks in high office today will tear down this country to dust and leave us and our children this filth that they call Kenya and we will have to live in it or die in it. Wake up, we all hustle today to own 1/8ths of land in Nairobi when people are talking of thousands of hectares of land. But you are willing to defend them on social media, abuse, and murder and kill your 'facebook friends' because they are your fathers? Your brothers? Your mothers? Your tribe? Painful indeed!

Uhuru and Ruto are doing a great disservice to this nation. If they had no interest in addressing the 'sensitive' land issue - they should have kept off it and let Kenyans deal with it like we always have - accepted and moved on. Not open up a dangerous conversation they are not willing to honestly engage in. 

I hope no one finds this - hate mongering'. Am poor, I cannot afford 5 million Kshs bail. I only got my voice, my mind. Those are free, bequeathed to me by Ochieng Okwaroh (who never owned land) - no law, no man, can ever alienate or take them away, so long as they are just. I got no land and am not obsessed with land.

I am Okwaroh Ja' Paprombe. Good day Kenyans

Mr President: - focus on the real issues

Implement recommendations of TJRC and Ndungu reports

As Okwaroh I refuse to let people in public office insult my intelligence like Uhuru Kenyatta is trying to do. 

You show up on TV claiming to revoke titles for some 500K hectares of land allocated by the Government of Kenya when there are deeply rooted, chronic land grievances all over the country; fuelling ethnocentrism and threatening our nationhood that you are NOT saying a thing about. And we all know why!

IMPLEMENT the recommendations of the TJRC report, the Ndungu Report - "Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Illegal/irregular allocation of public land. Public money and time was spent conducting investigations and gathering historical information for these two reports. But you want to rely on politically expedient 'new' investigations right?

This is the same president whose lieutenants told the International Criminal Court (ICC) that there are no records of his ownership of land in Kenya. Then he demands respect from Kenyans?

We passed the days of whimsical presidential decrees eons ago. Address the real land issues at the Coast not hiding behind LAPSSET if you want respect.

http://www.africog.org/reports/mission_impossible_ndungu_report.pdf

http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/article-171707/what-tjrc-report-said-about-lamu-violence

Kenya’s Catch - 22

When the country is tense, about to burn and prophets of doom - smell genocide, violence: - the country is 'ours' - us all Kenyans. And we must exercise restraint, and we must let reason prevail, and we must respect institutions, and we must remember that we have nowhere else to go after it all burns down. There are things that cannot be said (no matter how truthful - they are inflammatory; they are ethnocentric; they are war-centric). We must soberly find solutions to our problems - Together as one nation. All that matter is PEACE and Kenya. So we gag ourselves and crucify those who attempt to speak. We are all Kenyans - we must be one.  

When the country is calm and we have our institutions, and our laws and our policies and our resources. When it is time for resource allocation. When it is time for reflection on our inequities and poverty. When it is contracts time; when it is public appointments time; when it is development decision time. Wither REASON. Wither NATIONHOOD. There is no such thing as nation/country/Kenya. Everyone for himself - God for us all. Let lazy people feed on their laziness. Let those outside political power wait for their turn in government, wait for 2017; 2022 whatever. It is every Kenyan and his/her pocket; it is every Kenyan and his/her family; it is every Kenyan and his/her business. This is what disturbs PEACE; threatens NATIONHOOD.

The hypocrisy in Kenya is chronic. You see people of influence (based on their business acumen, or their intellectual standing, or their political capital) administer half truths. You see intellectuals interpret events in this country like we began yesterday – like our problems have no cradles. It is a pity. 

I have watched a talk show considered ‘sober’ re #Sabasaba. The problem with talk shows is the correctness, the fence sitting and clever posturing that they demand from panellists. They make people look good even as they give naive, 'agreeable' impractical solutions. They make people say things they don’t believe in – speaking for debate-sake.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RD1cPElagbc&feature=share

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHZHKVOzZWY#t=97

Until we fix the poverty and inequality (economic, social and political); ours is a non-nation and will remain on the brink of the precipice; always unstable, squandering our wealth and opportunity and mortgaging our future generations. If we truly care about Kenya, and genuinely want solutions to our problems – we must be HONEST and OPEN with one another.  

Does saying GOD bless Kenya help? If it does, then Amen!

THE SPARKS FOR IGNITING THE DATA REVOLUTION

The data revolution should include a universal legislation requiring states to provide open, good quality data

Ever since the release of the High Level Panel report on the Post 2015 development agenda in 2013, the concept of a data revolution has gained significant traction in conversations at the global level. Nonetheless progress towards actualising the revolution in practical terms remains hamstrung by data sourcing and a myriad other challenges that can potentially be dealt with by an internationally-led consensus and sustained momentum to bring multiple stakeholders on board, and work closely with governments on issues of accessibility and usability of good quality, timely and relevant data and information.

  

I have participated in forums discussing the idea of the data revolution. I have also engaged in related conversations that seek to leverage the use of data and information for better policy making, governance and service delivery like the Open Government Partnership (OGP), the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) and the Open Data movements. A lot has been achieved towards outlining what is meant by the data revolution, of course with diverse and sometimes divergent views, what we want to achieve with it, and what obstacles remain on the way towards realising it.

  

The World Bank has sponsored elaborate conversations on the data revolution both in international forums and within localised national level facilitated processes. The Oversees Development Institute (ODI) as well through the Post 2015 blog has sponsored a series of research work and literature on the nature and impetus behind the data revolution. The PARIS 21facilitated an event on the sides of the UN General Assembly in 2013 on engineering a development data revolution. Elsewhere Civil Society Organisations are organising a broad range of stakeholders in many countries to make sense of the data revolution and what developmental ends could be achieved from it. In East Africa Development Initiatives is engaging an ecosystem of data handlers to discuss how to make sense of and utilise the data revolution to end poverty.

  

There is near consensus that the data revolution must be underpinned by a focus on providing open data, that is of good quality – available in machine readable formats and up to date.

However, the common narrative about what impedes the data revolution seems to rest on source challenges emanating from the supply side. These apply both in developed and developing countries. The argument is that even before discussing what to do with the data and how to make it relevant to poverty reduction in order to resonate with lives of common citizens, we need to locate the data. Data providers on the other hand lament that whatever is made available, no matter how little, is not being used. So where do we stand?

I am persuaded that unless these sourcing and usability of currently available data issues are resolved there will be significant challenges in realising the data revolution.

Across the globe, the approaches to data sourcing and tackling usability challenges vary, with similarities in certain instances. Some are using national level legislation or policies to compel custodians of development data to make it available to the public, while some are using laborious and expensive processes of purchasing and digitising data that is not available in machine friendly formats. But these approaches have achieved very little since, governments - custodians of the largest proportion of development data either lack the incentive, political will, or legal frameworks to make data available.

We now know that many interventions and programmes being implemented globally and at national levels are based on poor quality data or statistics that make them tenuous and contestable.  Yet for over a decade, enormous resources have been allocated and programmes implemented to tackle development challenges. African economies are suddenly leaping into middle income status due to revisions in national statistics and introduction of data previously not considered in calculating important national development indices.

The current development data isn’t good enough. Nearly 40% of developing countries cannot measure their poverty trends over the last decade due to inadequate data. The HLP report on post 2015 development agenda and UN Secretary General’s report on poverty both call for pioneering approaches to improving quality, timeliness and relevance of development data and a fundamental rethinking of the way we use data for social good” – Dr Jim Yong Kim, World Bank President.

I am of the opinion that now more than ever, the data revolution requires an international level facilitated process, to require national governments to make good quality data available to the public. Such a process could drive country level action by multiple stakeholders to invest in producing data and translating it to usable information.

This has been achieved in other spheres, for example the declaration on human rights was ratified globally compelling states to abide by and guarantee a minimum set of rights for all their citizens.

Through diplomacy and international driven consensus, development practitioners can lobby for a similar international declaration, or better yet, a standalone goal in the post 2015 framework to guarantee access to information to all citizens across the world. This could provide the much needed leverage that actors at national levels pushing for increased access to development data can use to further the agenda of the data revolution

This blog was originally posted on Open Development Toolkit here:  http://opendevtoolkit.net/en-US/blog/sparks-igniting-revolution/ 

God help us, forgive us for we have sinned.

Deliver us from the yokes of shameless PR, waste & kleptocracy

Dear Uhuru, Jubilee and Co. 

Next time you feel inspired and fired up to take Kenya to the lord in prayer, please, just kneel down on your well manicured office floor and pray, or in the car, or in the gym or on the plane now that yours is an airborne presidency.

Spare us the extra expenses of prayers at 5-starred hotels. The spectre of Safari Park Hotel wont rocket the prayer items to the almighty. 

We pray every day for our beloved Kenya - on the jam chocked in dust fumes and noise; in the quiet of our humble homes; in the sanctity of the many shrines that we have built with our honest kind contributions. Some of them are actually spruced enough to suit the ostentations of your stature and honour. And we believe God hears our prayers, we believe God sees our tears. He does respond! 

This is how God commands us to pray sir:

 "Matthew 6:5-12 - But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will repay you. "And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition, as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words"

"1 Timothy 2:8 - I will therefore that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting"

I have hosted events in these starred hotels like you hosted prayers yester. A breakfast meeting like that costs at least 2000 Kshs per head. I saw on TV dignitaries well over 1000 sir, praying for Kenya at Safari Park. We spent at least 2million bob praying, even if we discount all the other costs of taking you and your convoy to Thika road and back, the time wasted on the jam for the rest of us lowlies.

I am hurt sir, that whilst prayer is good, and God asks us to pray and take all our tribulations (terrorism, Anglo leasing, ethnicity in public service etc) to him in prayer, we spent so much in a shameless PR exercise. I am not judging - I leave it to God! I am not righteous.

Amen.

Let me be, this is my time. 

Let me be, this is my time. 
I am young, this is the time I can afford to live by my idealism 
When I still got the backbone, to stand up to unjust and corrupt morals 
When I still got the energy, to bear the weight that my idealism elicits
When I still got the courage, to dream big and the balls to take on the obstacles that come with my aspirations.

Let me be, this is my time.
I am young, this is the time I can afford the conviction to defend my idealism
When I still got the wits, to debate and the impatience for mediocrity
When I still got the friends, to rebuke, disregard or thumbs up my ideals
When I still got the aptitude, to call the resources to fund my itentions
When I still got the charm, to summon belief in my deeds
When I still got the blood and flesh, to die a thousand deaths.

Let me be, this is my time.
I am young, this is the time I can afford the creativity to change something 
When I have to look myself in the mirror and tell myself - not good enough
When I have to look my elders, my peers in the eye and tell them - not good enough
When I have to look my past, say thank you but - not good enough
When I have to look my future and say it can - not [be] good enough.   

Let me be, this is my time.
I am young, this is the time I can and MUST change the world.