Leverage ICT to Tame Petty Corruption in our Counties and Government Agencies

To tame petty, tender-related corruption in Kenya, the Public Procurement Oversight Authority should take the route of information technology to evaluate applications before tenders are inflated.

The Principles:

      a) Goods supplied to Government and other Public Agencies in Kenya will be sourced locally, supplied by qualified Kenyans, and 30% by Women, the Youth and the Disabled;

      b) Any Kenyan has the right to establish and conduct business anywhere in the Republic, and

      c) Public Agencies must procure high quality goods and services at the best possible value.

Information Technology will avail potential benefits, such as that it:

       1) Removes bias, by ensuring every application is evaluated, without arbitrary hiding of applications.

       2) Will allow comparison of Primary Producer Prices, e.g. Farm or Factory prices.

       3) Ensures suppliers will compete on Function, Price, Quality, and Speed of Delivery.

       4) Removes multiple brokers from the equation – why buy from a broker when the producer is bidding?

       5) Permits the purchaser to set maximum price differentials and expected margins.

       6) Will have basis that any price quoted includes taxes and margins for the procurer.

       7) Can be evaluated by the Public Procurement Oversight Authority.

Therefore, set up a nationwide system of integrated procurement software that allows for evaluation and aggregation of all Supplies Tenders by Public Agencies.

Suppose you want to supply office biros to a Public Agency:

      A) You must be a registered seller of biros. How else would you supply what you don’t sell?

a.       A general merchant, hawker, shopkeeper or kiosk-keeper;

b.      A bookshop,

c.       A wholesaler,

d.      An agent of a manufacturer, or

e.      A Manufacturer of this commodity.

      B) You must indicate your tax payment status, and the tax component of your bid, which will be withheld and paid to KRA by the procuring agency.

      C) You must quote at least three types of biro pens, and your capacity to supply them:

a.       Pen type 1, its attributes, and why it fits this tender;

b.      Pen type 2, its attributes, and why it fits this tender;

c.       Pen type 3, its attributes, and why it fits this tender;

d.      The manufacturer, wholesale and retail price of each pen type.

      D) You must indicate own quoted price for delivering this pen type to indicated place of use or storage, and why it is superior to the manufacturer, wholesale and retail price.

a.       Your quoted price must not exceed the Manufacturer price by more than 15%

b.      Your quoted price must include all relevant taxes payable to government.

The buying agency has a responsibility, when buying standard goods, to buy from the lowest priced 20%. For procuring non-standard goods and services, the tender must be open to international bidding.

Each supplier can only submit one application, but is allowed to amend it once, to remain competitive.

Each application will be filed for free, to encourage as many applications as possible.

Anyone resident in Kenya can submit an application.

Each application will be aggregated with the preceding supply tenders, and each attribute averaged, as a guide to any other applicant willing to participate. The system will display the leading bid code at all times.

They software system will suggest the top five leading bids for further evaluation.

All bids will be presented in Kenya Shillings.

On Elections Held in December

It takes a newly-elected government at least four months to install itself comfortably into the nooks and crannies that characterize the corridors of power. Selecting nominees for the many offices and committees that usually need reconstituting - due to executive privilege, or resignations of holders with viewpoints opposed to the incoming administration. Vetting procedings, as well as general familiarity with new official environments, rearrangements and general euphoria that characterize accession to power, take time to settle.

In my opinion, the last four months of the year are just the right time for such elementary proceedings. Which is why elections should be held earlier; in August preferrably, so that by January of the following year, everything is set for a neat take-off. Voters allow themselves the chance to bond over the festive season, and easily overcome the tensions of a charged elections season. Schools and businesses can look forward to a complete new year devoid of distractions, when the festive season ends; and the new year has a psychological starting point from which to evaluate its progress.

When the country votes in December, just the opposite happens. Nobody really has a festive season, as the days are consumed by political tension and noise. These spill over into the new year, and literally waste away the first few months, as a new government strives to install itself, while meeting the challenges of a demanding public. In temporal terms, two calendar years are lost to politics. Should schools be opening, or should we await the Supreme Court's ruling on the presidential election? Should you, instead, be flying away to the holiday you could not award yourself due to your civic commitments over December? It is unnecessary messiness. And it wastes the natural tendency of people to work harder towards the end of the year.

Every time you mix two high-tempo seasons, someone is bound to come out a loser - either emotionally or even economically. That hurts the nation, deeply.

Seeking Rationality, I Must Shift From DStv to GOtv.

In Kenya, the digital migration wars are roiling. As the ITU mandated deadline for migration from analogue television broadcasting technologies to the more efficient digital systems elapses, a momentous court battle is raging between the industry regulator, the Communications Authority of Kenya, CA, and the three largest terrestrial broadcast networks in Kenya. Senior Counsel Paul Muite and a battery of awe-inspiring laywers are pitted against the regulaor in various courtrooms, from the High Court all the way to the Supreme Court.

Whereas I feel for the broadcasters in their battle against a hard-tackling regulator, I am not particularly perturbed by the possible outcomes. You see, I migrated from analogue to digital, at a household level, in May 2009. Five and a half years ago, as I write this. For those years, I have paid subscriptions to MultiChoice Kenya, for their lowest-priced satellite bouquet. That serves my need for news briefs, a bit of live sport and quite an array of dated culture shows - not being a real television buff.

However, with the recent transition to digital terrestrial broadcasting technology, their offerings on GOtv have shifted my allegiances. For a slightly lower fee, I have access to seven or more channels that were previously unavailable to me. CNN, MTV Base, Sony Entertainment, Sony Max, one or other of those Nigerian movie channels and an Events Channel that has recently been broadcasting the African Cup of Nations extravaganza in Equatorial Guinea. I might not receive the RAI channel, Bloomberg, NDTV or the debased CNBC Africa, but I am fine, thank you.

The decorder allows me to view quite a number of local free to air channels that are not available on the satellite platform. That is a huge value proposition for me. As a message to MultiChoice? Don't miss me too much on satellite, because I am fully grounded at home on DTB.

Now for an appeal: satellite broadcasting required a smartcard in the decorders as a buffer to signal misappropriation by clients. The new terrestrial technology, without smartcards, should be cheaper for all of us. Why, wouldn't MultiChoice consider winning the decorder wars in Kenya, by placing all the premium content channels on GOtv, so as to reach a bigger market, with lower costs both for themselves and the clients?

I would not mind a super dose of live sport and headline cinema, at a lower cost. After all, Kenyans are known to love buying things in small quantities, only more often. As a rational consumer of television, I hedge my bets with GOtv, and have given up on exclusive satellite feeds.

Putin rubbishes 'American exceptionalism' and throttles Obama's war-cry

Russia's President Vladimir Putin, in an op-ed in the New York Times, has chided the United States of America's proclivity to deploy "brute force" for accomplishing simple geo-strategic aims. President Putin was especially visceral when disagreeing with the numbing mantra beloved of all US politicians of "American exceptionalism', terming it as dangerous and vain.

Mr Putin was reacting to a speech to the nation by President Barrack Obama that sought to explain the need for a befitting response, following the gassing to death of over a thousand people in the suburbs of Damascus, on August 21, 2013. While both leaders agree that chemical weapons were deployed in nine neighbourhoods of the Syrian capital, they diametrically disagree on the culprits. While President Obama has accused the Syrian Government of President Bashar Hafez al-Assad for the atrocity, President Putin lays the blame at the door of Syrian rebels and regional war-mongers who want Assad's military capabilities eroded, in order to swing the two year long civil war in their favour.

Both leaders have good points. But as things stand, Putin has lifted the moral standard, and Obama must defer and re-strategize, especially after the hectoring and belligerence expressed by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Secretary of State John Kerry in voluble orations in the last fortnight.

Affirmative Action: Let Kenyans Elect Women Running-mates in Marginal Areas

Fellow Kenyans, it is time to amend our Constitution. It is time for our own First Amendment: the Affirmative Action Amendment. Urgently required of the Constitution of Kenya, 2010 is an amendment that will make its affirmative action agenda to be realized fast, less fractiously and more reasonably. Our people’s sovereign aim of increasing the participation of women in politics, and of diminishing the patriarchal skew of our national conversation has been steeped in endless incompetence and inconsistency.

Whereas our people have the free will to participate in politics and elect whomever they prefer in regular elections free from undue influence and discrimination, the Constitution still demands of them to ensure that “no more than two thirds of all people elected into office are of the same gender.” That creates a real conundrum. Free choice does not sit very well with strictures and limitations.

The Constitution offers the first way out, though an inadequate one: by creating the positions of 47 Woman Member of the National Assembly, one for each of the Counties of Kenya. Yet, and consequent to this overt effort, the People have responded by directly voting in only 19 women – none of whom is a Senator or Governor - among the 337 parliamentary seats available at the ballot. The feeling in the wind is that “women have their own preferential seats.”  Communities thus responded by casting their lot with the men folk.

As a result, Parliament - as elected - has not met the one-third principle of the Constitution, and might necessitate the nomination of some 140 more women, to balance the stakes. This trial and error process of aggregation and “guesstimation” is too tawdry and untenable in the long term. In the choice between whom the people want and have rightly elected, and whom has to be included in order to balance the numbers, democracy suffers, and cronyism is bound to blossom.

Our political system has a pungent history of poor nominations; of people who simply pick the parliamentary nomination, enjoy the monthly cheque for their term, and yet represent nobody in particular. Aside from a few truly exceptional servants like the current Supreme Court Justice Susan Njoki Ndung’u, who indefatigably legislated for Women and Children, the majority of nominees have performed dismally. It would be disastrous and a pugnacious twisting of wisdom to reward a system that has so brazenly misused twelve slots, with one hundred and forty more.

Solution
It is, therefore, time to amend our Constitution to settle this matter. The main premises for arguments on representation of the people centre on population size and land area. Regions with huge populations feel under-represented and marginalized, as no single constituent has adequate access to their representatives. Also, very large area constituencies are difficult to mainstream, as any infrastructure project serves only a few people in a small place, marginalizing the rest of the sparsely-spread residents.

It follows, then, that marginalization exists both in small areas with high-density populations and much larger areas with low-density habitation. Both extremes deserve increased representation and developmental funding. Generally, it happens that women are the more marginalized gender both in high-density and low-density habitats.

I suggest a formula that elects alternate representatives; adjutant or lieutenant members of the national assembly for both sets of areas – call them running-mates.

We should have a senate of seventy: forty seven elected from each county, a woman running-mate senator from each of the eleven most populous counties, a woman running-mate senator from each of the eleven largest area counties, and the speaker. Neat number: 47 and 11 and 11, then 1; to give us 70. Right away, the Senate has 22 women representatives - who have real people relying on them for service and representation.

Also, we should have a parliament of three hundred and sixty-one – two hundred and forty main candidates elected in each constituency; and, one hundred twenty alternative women members, sixty elected as party running-mates from each of the top 60 largest area constituencies, and a further sixty women as party running-mates from the 60 most densely-populated constituencies; and the speaker. Here, we will have 361 as 240 and 60 and 60 then 1.

A similar formula can be used for nominations to the county assemblies, to limit the sizes of their memberships.

Benefits
The immediate benefit of this is certainty in the size of the national assembly. Kenyans will go to the polls knowing which places will get a second representative, or not. Further, the actual choice of a running-mate in a county or constituency necessitates regional balancing: that east-west and north-south inclusivity that causes regional harmony. Those who nominate their sisters, cousins or kinsfolk as lieutenants will be felled at the ballot by voters who prefer more diverse tickets of the opposing parties.

Also, places like Tana River County, larger than Western Province combined with Nyanza, but with only one senator and three members of parliament will now have two senators and six other members in the national assembly. And we expect the same fate for Turkana, Garissa, Kajiado and other larger than average counties.

Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, Nakuru, Eldoret, Kiambu, Kakamega and Bungoma, the most populous counties of Kenya will have two senators each; one representing the urban marginalized and women in the senate. The constituencies within them, with hundred-thousands of residents will each get two members, serving their diverse interests in Parliament. As a consequence, Nairobi’s four million residents will have 34 MPs from its seventeen sub-counties, much more congruent to its political and economic importance.

More significantly, we start the election assured of 142 women members of the national assembly, some of who will be youth, disabled, technocrats, activists and experts in various fields. We, by that stroke, eliminate the unwieldy nonsense of electing County Woman Members of the National Assembly. Shall we save ourselves the comedy of results like Rachel Shebesh’s, who was elected with 650,000 votes in Nairobi, only for her to share a platform with members who got only 9000 votes, to win their constituency election?

By any positive count, 142 is better than 47. In effect, we will never have to nominate anyone, because, as it stands, 19 women were elected directly, which outcome, though measly, would have pushed our starting numbers to 161, well over the one-third legal thresh-hold in an assembly of 431 people.

Patriots, it is time to amend our Constitution to achieve common sense, accelerate inclusion and secure our common interest.

Gkalelu-yia! Tribal Batching is the New Science

Political Scientist Mutahi Ngunyi has broken new frontiers. He has made blocking Kenyans into tribal bundles fashionable. And he has a brutish name for it – the tyranny of numbers.

So now we have a new science, we just need some disciples to establish and spread it. I proffer that Kenya has two main population nexi (plural for nexus?). We have the well established GEMA of the aGikuyu, aEmbu, and the aMeru. Former President Moi, the late former vice-president George Saitoti and former power-man Nicholas Biwott made a push to create a union of the Kalenjin, Maasai, Turkana and Samburu, called the Kamatusa, but failed at it.

But Mutahi just had to revisit the forsaken caves and reawaken their resident demons. Now I am also thinking aloud. And I am wondering – between the two main population clusters of western and central Kenya, which is more populated? GEMA rises with 7 million Kikuyus, and just over 3 million of the others. If we add the Akamba of the south-east, we have 3 million more people, giving a total metropolitan population of just about fifteen million.

In the western pentagon, we have the Maasai of TransMara, numbering over half a million; the Abagusii and Abakuria, at just over one and a half million; the Luo and Suba, at four and a half million, the Kalenjin of Bomet, Kericho, Nandi, Elgeyo Marakwet and Uasin Gishu, exceeding four and a half million in number; the Luhya nation at five and a half million; the Sabaot and the Turkana, nearing a million together. This communion, in an area equal to the Central Kenya hinterland, we have a total of nearly twenty million affiliated people.

The Gusii, Kalenjin, Luo and Luhya politicians can start shouting Hallelujah! Or, GkaleLuyia! for that matter.  Note the (G-Kale-Lu-yia, in place for each of these mega nations).

On this basis, Western Kenya has a comparative gross population advantage of five million Kenyans. And it has five important cities – Kisii, Kisumu, Kericho, Eldoret, Kitale, Kakamega, and Bungoma. The western region is Kenya’s bread-basket, has extensive network value for the East African region, and with adequate infrastructural investments, has the highest potential for economic return. Add to this the freshwater, hydrocarbons and wind-power potential of Turkana area, and we immediately notice whose numbers are tyrannical.

I am sure the ‘scientist’ in Mutahi Ngunyi is not advising the GEMA nation to insist on an attritional numbers game, because they would lose irredeemably. If the people of Western Kenya acted as unconcernedly about the rest of Kenya as the GEMA leadership always has, and united in self-interest against the rest of the nation, the greatest losses would happen among the wealthier GEMAns.

Poorer people in the west have less to lose, and paradoxically, their suffering would actually yield increases in population. Conversely, in Central, the birth-rates are declining, and their homelands are agriculturally unviable, strangely xenophobic even to their own kinsfolk, uninhabitable and insecure. In a vicious numbers game, GEMA would never see the presidency again. If the country votes for GEMA leaders, it is because the Western half works for national unity.

The GEMA pole has never been interested in national inclusion, but the bitter truth is, a pure zero-sum game would hurt Central Kenya more than everywhere else.

My Price: Our Peace is False.

I love peaceniks - the promoters, purveyors and winners of peace. I celebrate the Nobel Peace Prize with each annual laureate. Yet, deep down, I know peace to be a philosophical fraud. As an ideal, it is invaluable for the individual and the world. That, however, does not in any way mean it is worth half the effort we expend on it as societies.

To my mind, peace is a lull, a period of stagnation, like upon the surface of a pond. A river, though, is not a peaceful thing, because it is always hurrying downstream over rocks, rapids and falls. Ocean shores, on the other hand, are presumed to be places of repose and peace, because their constant ebbs and flows express certainty, repetition and predictability. Such is a facade that fools the feeble-minded. In their hurry to appear sophisticated, they flock to beaches to seek for peace, in total disregard of the truism that wherever you go, there you are. What peace, I say!

In kind, peace is absence of conflict, strife or disconcerting endeavour. It is acceptance of one's situation, of one's weaknesses and subjugation, or the attainment of a mental ideal. Normally, it is never the weak man that seeks peace. It usually is the strong that promote peace. Because, when peace reigns, the strong rein, and the weak suffer.

But you cannot claim peace if and when that peace is won for you by default - by the stronger ignoring the weaker. Those in ascendancy and in power will sing the praises of peace, until the weak ones take it for a good thing. They praise peace because it promotes their purposes, and as such, is in their own interest. The peace I can invest in is the peace of the weak man; the peace of the downtrodden, which can only be credentialed by the ending of weakness, and the absolute rise of equality.

Surprisingly, the strong man, the endowed man, the rich and powerful man, society or nation will never rest in peace until his or its needs are met. Not until their ambitions are fulfilled. No; not until they get what they must. And the permutations of effort, trial, pacification, treaty, trade, war, annihilation or subterfuge they apply to attain their aims are always such as that disturb the highly vaunted peace.

Credit the resilience of the enduring human spirit for the glory of its hope and the vitality of its dreams, because the wake of the strong is a rancid paean to devastation and desolation. The strong man wreaks harm and horror in the pursuit of his victory. The strong man wins peace at the expense of the weak.

Let me think of it as this: If somebody sought air in the African Savannah, would that be a real pursuit? If you can have peace by doing nothing, and allowing everyone else to do as they deem pleasant, is that really a fair exchange? No.

Societies have peace that are constantly in flux, in self doubt, in an unremitting pursuit of purpose, and in the constant search for meaning. Societies have peace that promise it to all and grant it to all, fairly equally. Societies win peace by overcoming their challenges and obstacles, by winning their freedoms and exercising them - not by decrees, defeat or silence.

The man is not sincere who advises a poor, hungry and denied compatriot to observe peace. Such advice is fraudulent, because the poor, hungry, and dispossessed man has no peace - he has serious and powerful needs stacked against him. Indeed, why should such a person be peaceful at all? Who has peace of mind in the presence of hunger, disease, ignorance and poverty? What is peace without opportunity?

Therefore, it is a waste of time pursuing peace, without providing tangible opportunities for each man, according to their desires and hopes. Ultimately, the opportunities available to each man are what will assure societal peace; the chance to live a life after one's own heart; the freedom to live life to the fullness of one's hungers for expression, is the only bulwark of human peace.

Doubtlessly, such free choice will result in some man here or somewhere else oversimplifying their perceptions of freedom, and infringing on the sensibilities and preferences of others. Such fluky exceptions being always in the minority, affirm the conclusion that this pursuit of talents, this uninhibited granting of choices, is the right path ahead.

There really cannot be peace without every person claiming the capacity to win and keep it. Humanity would demand that we address all our personal and communal needs fervently, and afford for all of us the promises of peace, but not necessarily ask men and women to uphold a peace that is absent and unreachable to them.

Whenever citizens are weak and dispossessed, poor and uncatered for, their peace is false. Theirs is no peace at all.
___________________________________________

'My Price' is a series of articles about my values as a man, and my views about some of humanity's most important ideas. The articles are not arranged in any order, and address issues as they will occur to me on my journey of life. While I may quote other people or rely on their advice, what I write here is my commission. I hope my price will be a price worth paying.

Here's how to create 3 million jobs and grow at 20%.

I share these ideas in the hope that they will change the fortunes of my nation. I share these thoughts, as a moral obligation to my generation and our common offspring, as a patriot's remit. Partly to offer leadership out of our economic and political morass, and as a repayment for the opportunities that Kenya has offered me. And to spell out my vision for an Africa that has come of age, and steadied itself for the long leap that sustained, common prosperity demands. I hope to inspire actions that will push and finally lift Kenya over the high horizon of hopelessness that has prevented us from reaching the promised land; from attaining our heritage of splendour.

Our zero-sum politics, xenophobic, tribalist society, burgeoning hordes of disillusioned youth and a leadership that leaks courage and lacks conviction have been our fate for too long. Yet, that is not as it should be at all. Indeed, as any sensible person knows, much gathers more and loss leads to greater loss. Our challenges are bound to grow, and our few opportunities will only lessen, if we fail to stand up for good, to reject the worse and choose the better way out.

All of our good people will be safer in the long run, if they offer and effect positive solutions. And again, their little good efforts will gather more, and cause ever larger gains. Convinced thus, here is my way out; my considered view of an immediate solution: a solid path out of the palpable despondency and obvious distress in whose vicious swirl millions of Africans find themselves inundated.

How To Create Three Million Jobs Immediately.
It might appear simpler than you credit - too simple, in fact.

The government should offer minimum interest long-tenure mortgages to qualifying citizens. Let us  give Kes. 2.5 million at 4 per cent interest rate, to build decent homes, to every person who earns Kes 40,000 or more a month, payable over a term of 25 years. Let us give this to our policemen, teachers and soldiers every year, for the next two decades to create 10 million homes for every person.

Why this is important:
First, decent housing is a core promise of our Constitution. It is a progressively attainable right under our Bill of Rights. Secondly, the real estate sector, as presently structured, is privately driven in the free market, which profits from shortages, and caters only to the already rich. And private sector real estate growth is predominantly urban orientated. It is controlled by fewer than 100 companies which are limited by financing and administrative bottlenecks. Thirdly, and most critically, this idea will create three million jobs each year.

From a psychological stand-point, a decent home is a spur to social decency and increased economic aspiration. Consider a child raised in the opulent greenery of Runda and Kitisuru, and another in the filthy trenches of Mukuru and Mathare. Their outlook on life is to a larger than acceptable extent, determined by the sanitation of their environments. I am persuaded to think that housing impacts self-esteem and an estimation of social worth. And that is a possibility I would want to sponsor. If children will want more than their parents had, I would rather we prop up present age parents, so as to raise motivated future parents whose worldviews will be unlimited and very vibrant.

On the jobs score: let's start with lending out Kes. 2.5 million to 50.000 Kenyans to build 50,000 new homes all across the countryside per year. Assume, for a second - no, truly think long and hard about it - that, this will create direct employment to 3 million workers:-

• Three sand harvesters per lorry of sand, 10 lorries per home: 30 on 50,000 = 1.5 million;
• Two workers on each lorry ferrying sand = 100,000 lorry transport jobs, assured.
• Three workers producing each concrete building block, 3000 blocks per home = 9,000 by 50,000.
• Market and jobs in the cement production and stone-masonry and hardware businesses.
• A construction tradesman and four assistants working on each home = 200,000 jobs
• a) Wood workers making windows and doors, three per new home, 20,000 homes: 60,000 jobs supporting the carpentry and timber sector, creating market for wood products, and improving furniture standards around the country.
• b) Metal workers forging steel doors and windows on 30,000 homes: 90,000 jobs to support the steel market, and improve skills in the housing supplies sector.
• Three workers on each roof: 150,000 jobs. A huge market for roofing materials - wood, tiles, iron-sheets, ceiling materials, chimneys, - support for 450,000 sector jobs;
• 10,000 electricians and power installation jobs; 10,000 power inspectors, and 50,000 new customers for the electricity market, creating more background jobs: an assured market for manufacturing of housing supplies, increased demand, production efficiencies, supply chain efficiences, profitability.
• 10,000 plumbers, and increasing demand for water and sewerage services, perhaps 20,000 new jobs created in expanding that sector.
• Overall increase in transportation of supplies will provide a market for transport business owners, increase road fuel purchases, earning revenues for government and sustaining jobs.
• Home equipping after construction: painting, fencing, garbage collection, upholstery and furnishing, household energy - better homes will encourage uptake of better energy sources - i.e. less firewood, more biogas, liquefied petroleum gas, solar power and mains electricity, about 200,000 related jobs.

And the total annual cost is almost minimal: Kes. 2.5 million on 50,000 homes is Kes. 125 billion only, all invested in Kenya, with the related stimulus impact you can imagine. And it will be productive, not consumptive capital expenditure, to boot. 

Housing Influences People
Housing changes tastes and preferences, and substantially redirects economic choices. It is the perfect starting point to a growing and working nation, since people will generally protect and promote their own personal wealth and private interest. The people will be more tolerant of their neighbours and will defend peace in their neighbourhoods, as they have interest in national peace, to preserve what they will have worked hard to own. Homeless people are more easily agitated against home owners or their more prosperous communicants.

Government
Improving housing will increase demand for government accountability and action, as people will demand services like wastes treatment, improvements in transport infrastructure and spread of opportunities for skills training, employment and local investments. It will lead to technical training of youth in construction skills, and create opportunities for employment across the country, and people from good homes are more likely to seek self improvement and better opportunities, both within and outside their communities..

Women and mothers will demand better nutritional and health choices, improving our nation's overall state of national health. Better housing will spread access to durable, higher quality home appliances, higher access to information and literacy through television, digital radio and the internet, and better choices in leadership. Better standards of life will improve attention to matters of national importance, and increase interest in government policy, with the expected improvements in demand for more  focused leadership.

Women's & Youth Economic Empowerment
When our women and youth are assured of good homes, they will invest emotionally and economically in their societies, seeking value in themselves and lower social tensions. It is the shield and cross-spears of our national coat-of-arms that will defend our peace and deliver the promise of a proud and rich homeland of Kenya, a new home for people with vast opportunities for progressive action.

But most importantly, increasing the gross national housing capital will reduce the housing inflation - artificially exploited by the private sector to make prices of homes unaffordable and prohibitive. It will keep our youth busy, and reduce the despondency and economic exclusion that keeps them bitter and easily prone to political exploitation and irresponsibility.

Hope and Progress
It will engender hope in the idea of Kenya, promote academic and economic effort to earn higher incomes that will qualify individuals into the promise of this programme, and higher incomes will improve family nutritional and health prospects, stabilizing birth rates. Great housing will be its own collateral, its own security and our nation's path towards faster devolution of government and social equality. It will be the first step to national transformation, and a guarantee of our cultural progress.

Again, mortgages will afford everyone the owner-occupier housing tax-breaks for families, reducing their tax burdens and increasing their purchasing power, hence lowering poverty. It will save women from total dependence on men for shelter, and improve their socio-economic independence.

For these and all the other reasons and ideas you will associate with this call, and which my thought has engendered in your mind, this is Kenya's most urgent agenda, and I enthusiastically promise to pursue it with all people of goodwill and similar opinion.

The Coming of Power - Preparing the Lake Basin to Lead Kenya

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, said a British statesman of the past. He spoke for all time in these seven words.


Power without Preparation
But there is no greater corrupter than power attained without preparation. Most people go into politics with the very best intentions. In fact, the majority of leaders are amazingly superb souls: better humans than most would anticipate, upon first hearing the bleak histories of their failings and weaknesses. Yet, in all circumstances, the corruption and odium that reflects their tenures and blights their age is embodied in the exertions and over-zealous actions of their supporters.

It should not come as a surprise that most traditions insist on moulding and mentoring future power-wielders. Monarchies and organisations, homes and businesses are known to identify future leaders and to train them for the wise performance of their expected social authorities and responsibilities.

Apprenticeeship
Understudies and apprentices learn over time and become so good that at the onset of their appointed time, everything flows seamlessly. This important preparation is almost a lifelong calling. For example, if Queen Elizabeth II - of the United Kingdom of Britain and Northern Ireland - if she were to leave her majestic and powerful offices for any given reason, few expect to feel a blip of the scales of state, because her heir apparent, Prince Charles, is so thoroughly prepared to be King that his talents are awasting...

When I say few, I especially refer to her subjects, both loyal and disloyal, as well as the rest of the global public. And that is my foremost intention. The world would remain stable as is, if Charles became King today, because we are long mentally prepared for the circumstance.

Power in new hands
To return to Kenya, it is fated that there will be a new president, yet none of the 'probable presidents' has prepared his or her people for power. There is absolute need to prepare for power, for the president to be, but especially for the communities that the prime leaders will come from.

In our situation, one can say that Gema communities and the Kalenjin have had the experience of producing a president, i.e. the power of ruling a nation, hence require little remedial training. What they require is the assurance and acceptance in the national common upon relinquishing that power.

Perils of Losing Power: Our history
The experiences of the Kikuyu and the Kalenjin peoples upon 'losing' power have been of pain and rejection. The first Kikuyu president died in office, without having prepared his community for the end. Then President Moi and his Kalenjin elite fought hard to ruin their economic power.

Sackings from public office, witch-hunts, public humiliations and stereotyping pushed the grieving Kikuyu into a hard shell of suspicion and angst. They were a community of 'children bereft', who longed for the days of privilege. That is why they fought so hard to dislodge Moi from power - using all means, local as well as foreign-instigated. And when they regained power, they acted as ruthlessly as is permissible by their collective conscience.

When the Kalenjin gained power unexpectedly following the demise of Mzee Kenyatta, on the other hand, they made it a tribal celebration. Upon Kenya was foisted the most incompetent and egregious regime of kleptomania and illiterate arrogance. A rapacious breed of people whose badge of honour was a warlike mentality and huge doses of low self-esteem filled the public sphere, causing the nation untold harm.

Their primal conservatism saved this nation a lot of pain, though. One shudders to think what would have happened had such thin-skinnedness boiled in the cauldron of wicked adventurism. Kenya would be a failed republic!

Then Moi left power, and the Kalenjin faced the wrath of the returning Kikuyu - sackings all around, replacements in all major positions of public privilege and horrendous chasticement. The Old Warrior clans clammed up into a shell of anger unknown. Just a piece of it was shown when they thought they had "got" the Kikuyu at their weakest, in 2008.

These two cases help me to sufficiently illustrate why it is important to prepare for power - both to exercise and to bequeath it. Such preparation, now, is especially important for the people of Luo Nyanza and Western, who are at their closest possible leap to power.

Luo/Kikuyu Rivalry
One other vital reason is the traditional rivalry that has been created, both by the Kikuyu and Kalenjin, against the Luo. How will the Luo people relate to the common Kikuyu, when the former obtain the reins of state?

Even though our new Constitution has restructured our government and sufficiently emasculated the Presidency, so that the President is not the omnipotent Collosus that he has been in this land, the institution of the Presidency (including the powerful position of Deputy President) is still an overwhelming estate. It is such as to earn any county or community with which it is temporarily associated extreme pride and unfathomable prestige.

Which is why we should not be casual and simplistic, using cheap excuses and unverified legalisms to take for granted the benevolence of any of our next ruling communities. I will not buy the childish optimism of the 'one Kenya, one people' idealists. That is merely our hope; our intended destination, folks. It is certainly not our current position on the journey.

If the Luo/Luhya people are not actively prepared to be gracious and magnanimous in victory, then we face a tough fourth republic as a nation. It is especially important to direct the Lake Basin peoples to start thinking of themselves as leaders of a nation - both of themselves and of their former rulers. They should be helped to set aside extreme haughtiness and pomposity, highfalutin braggadocio and feelings of vengeance against their losing opponents. They should also divorce themselves of unreasonable expectations.

Producing the next President
This is the time to lead the Luo and Luhya, who are likeliest to produce our next President and Deputy President, to start thinking of themselves no longer as passengers in a bus or just clients at a restaurant, but as the drivers of the bus, or the staffers of the restaurant, whose main concern should be the safety, peace and satisfaction of their esteemed clients. The Luo and Luhya people must be made to understand the value of tolerance, community and charity.

It is our chance to seek a co-operative, collegiate society that accomodates those with who, for too long, we may not have seen eye to eye. It is time for the peoples of the Lake Pole to become 'bigger' souls, citizens who will more closely embrace their brethren from the Mountain Pole. Like a powerful magnet, let both polarities attain an indissoluble, mutually attractive and uniting force of national cohesion.

Opportunity to Serve the Nation - It's Work, not Play
They should be leaders in service and hospitality, in times of joy and of difficulty, and should above everything else, know that leading a nation is a responsibility, not an endless barbeque party. Over every other groupings, they will be watched and harshly judged for the defining errors of their own era in power. For history to be kind to all of us, the Luo and the Luhya should totally seek the pragmatic balance that only well-mentored rulers ever attain.

They must be prepared to share with others and accept those who may not look at issues from the same angle, or speak like them. They must be taught to be accomodative of criticism in their direction from those who ruled before them, and should be made to learn that they will one day leave the stage of power.

It is not good for a people to attend the banquet of state power with unwashed hands and untrimmed nails.

I am concerned that the polarising politics of the election year might not leave enough time to address these vital matters of community manners. Yet, it seems written in the stars that the Luo and Luhya will be leading Kenya, at least for the next decade.

What we witnessed in 2007 showed a people unprepared for the sacred duty of governing a nation of 43 different societies. Eventhough the Kalenjin muddled through for 24 years, the strict expectation that we have learned from their mistakes, and our own avid clamour for a better Kenya require that these two communities behave better and conduct their affairs in a much more dignified manner than their predecessors on the festival stage.

Better than our Predecessors!
This way, they will reclaim Kenya, not just for themselves, but for all the 41 remaining groups, whose turn might come too late to straighten a steadily bending tree. The mistakes of the Kenyatta, Moi and Kibaki administrations should not be used against their people, but rather to set the minimal standards of good that the next leaders should attain.

There is a certain inevitability about it. this time around. Unlike in 2007, when President Mwai Kibaki still retained hope of returning for a second term, and his supporters and all the business interests reliant on his umbrage could afford some form of lackadaisical complacency, 2012 bears certainty of change. We will be electing a new President of Kenya, whatever the result. And, therefore, everyone is bated in their breathing. We do not appear to have any noticeable group of disinterested citizens. Some are feeling sure to win, others fear the uncertain weight of loss.

For this last group, their leaders too should prepare them to hand over power and accept the dynamics of time and fate. It is not their rights they are giving up, just the privilege of leading our shared, beloved nation to the able and steady hands of their loving compatriots. They should be assured of prosperity and peace in the next chapter of this verse.


I thank you, and do sincerely hope you too are preparing to lead exemplarily in this next dispensation.



.

An Ode to Wanjiru

Gone too soon, and that we rue
A brighter star we'll wait to see;
our nation's pride, Sam Wanjiru,
reaped from the sky's starry sea.

Happy, you made us; sad now sore,
Mad, failed we to see your true right
amid the accolades and wins more;
tumultuous us, you burning bright.

Now gone, journeyed single way,
Now mourn all friends and foes
of runs long and jaunts short, say
respect and regrets throats force.

A man so rare, a name unique..
to speak, foot after foot, long pace
Bronze, Silver, no Gold to pick;
in cities and roads famed for race.

Toothy smile, sweaty face, nighted!
Where just this morning, peaceful
and full of hope, gilt medal lighted
the slopes of a town alive, blissful.

Nyahururu, where comes another?
Wanjiru, what replaces a true guru?
Dare we speak in pain for bother,
or silently mourn a beacon of Uhuru?


Beijing in Zero Eight, in full rapture
a world held atrance by Marathon.
The gods of Olympus did capture
a glimpse of one fit them to dethrone.


And their ire stoked, didn't subside
plotting with Minerva, to jot demise.
Woman beguiled, money lots beside
This day, against you, we surmise.

Jealousy, greed, desire, inhumanity!
False friendships, faked dalliances;
Now consigned to cavernous vanity,
Head first, proving Death's valiance!

Then again, you always came first,
beating and winning, your prowess;
Should we bewail your utter thirst
to vanquish Death? No, we confess.

Rest in Peace, ChampionWanjiru.

How many people may a police officer shoot and kill legally?

Human life is precious. I strive with honest desire to discover, and greatly struggle against the strong subjectivity of my circumstance as a human, yet find nothing more sacrosanct than the vital force in a person. This, to me, therefore, is a self-evident truth: that the life of any and every person is worth more than everything and anything else.

I have personal reasons for respecting human life, above being well aware of the inherent evil of human minds, but will not recount them here. I will, instead, lean standing at the foyer of Law, on the Pillar of our national Constitution. The lofty preamble, in the mould of that immortal American bequest to democracy, starts us off with this promise:

   We the People of Kenya …
         COMMITTED to nurturing and protecting the well-being of the
                            individual, the family, communities and the nation:…

as evidence to the value of the individual to the nation.


My guiding law, at Article 3

    [(1) Every person has an obligation to respect, uphold and defend this Constitution],

enjoins us all to regard the national values and principles espoused in it, and set out at Article 10. Here, human dignity is not included in error. Neither is the emphasis on the rule of law, nor accountability. These are all key values of my nation.

That being so, from where does our persistent impunity and extra-judiciality originate?

I will not excuse, or be accused of defending crime in any hue. And that is exactly the point! Crime is not codifiable into private or public categories. Crime by a wanted brigand, or a wanton state brigade is crime. I will not fork out my taxes, to be protected by a police ‘force’ of whimpering sissies; nor will I foot the bill for a ‘service’ of marauding, blood-thirsty and trigger-jacking hounds. Neither is contemplated in law or fact.

I, nay, we the people expect to be served by professional, humane and law-regarding police officers.

Murder is a crime recognized in all law, and especially without resistance, cannot be used as a defense against another crime. Listen to this:

   Article 26 (1) Every person has the right to life.

Short and precise: every person, including the common criminal. There must be a part of that sentence that the superintendents at Vigilance House do not recognize, and it is spelled E-V-E-R-Y.

Article 27 appears as an oasis of life in this desert of perversion.

    (1) Every person is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection and equal benefit of the law.
     …


    (4) The State shall not discriminate directly or indirectly against any person on any ground, including race, sex, pregnancy, marital status, health status, ethnic or social origin, colour, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, dress, language or birth.

Many will claim that criminals have no consciences; which is vapid nonsense. We will not be in good reason expecting the conscience of each individual to work in exactly the same way, with the same markers, beacons and light-houses to point right from wrong. Just as some eye-sights are colour-blind, failing to differentiate green from blue, some consciences are as naturally out of tune.

That must reasonably be recognized as a disability. At least a modern, civilized society should. And most do, creating judicial and correctional facilities to preserve and protect wider society from these vagaries wreaked by Nature herself. If science endeavours to correct failing eyesight, so evidently and avidly should science attempt to correct consciences.

Call it character management, behavior control, mind engineering, what not. Many organizations and groups do it. My church did it to me, before I realized and took leave of absence. Further about consciences, it is the moral duty of every social grouping to protect the individual within it from being rendered soulless and totally taken over by the addictive routine of the rituals and performances of their jobs.

When Pavlov (Ivan, and his protégé, Ivan Filippovitch Tolochinov, 1901) confirmed conditioned reflex action by experimenting amongst dogs, he was testing the power of mind over the functioning of the body. Have we trained and raised our police organs to such callous and murderous conditioning, that the only way – they know – of reacting to crime is to cock-aim-and-twitch-the-index-finger? If we have, then it becomes our task as society to shed the habit, unlearn the condition, learn fresh approaches, and relearn our compassionate instinctive nature.

The Kenya Police Service owes a duty to its officers to protect them from running amok, armed amongst millions, maiming and ruthlessly lining up a morose, mournful trail. It is an urgent good: that the people trusted with the protection of society, and the maintenance of its law and order, must in turn be protected, for their own good – in the mind.

Otherwise, we sow some sort of Pavlovian anchoring, a gluttonous, Tekayo-esque[1] appetite for human blood, and reap the whirlwind – a Lamarckian[2] adaptation to murder.

We have thus far, ended up with criminal investigators and intended crime busters who no longer bother to exercise their minds. They are tired of being ‘played around with, ever running on recurrent fools errands.’

When witnesses to crime, or even while contemplating its possibility, they act – rather, react – reflexively. They are run as hostages by sudden resurgences of desires and sharpened, animalistic reactions to crime scenes, and will kill without choice or will.

Someone mentioned the late king of Nairobi shots – a Mr. Patrick Shaw, infamous for performing final rites amongst the pot-shot clans. He met his end the same way, to confirm the adage. Still, Shaw was a man hardened by the weight of his time: policing a city in the aftermath of an attempted coup. Men had died of the gun, and many soldiers had been loosed on society, relieved of their honourable duty, due to indiscipline. They knew how to use guns, and were out of the regimented sequestration of the barracks without much hope or welcome.

They were roaming the streets with angst and disillusionment, victims of the State’s indifference, and willing to pay back in kind to a society that bailed from their side at the smell of trouble. They needed a force to control them, and due to a failed Police policy, Shaw had to run the show. He did his bit, standing up to a rabid army only as one man can, until the inevitable happened. But Kenya today is not Shaw’s Kenya.

We have reached a point of national maturity and identity. We have something in us that we sorely lacked in 1985. Yet the Police of today do not seem to adapt to this national maturity and recognition of change. They want to be Patrick ‘Show’, instead of serving their country, like did Mr. Shaw. Shaw acted to protect the society from a rogue military element. Show me who will protect us from ‘a service’ that discriminates on the basis of conscience, against our sacred Constitution.

I would like someone to answer this: How many people may a police officer kill, before he is psychologically declared disabled of conscience, unable to deliver the public good, and therefore unfit to hold a gun? One. Three. Five?

Determining this number is the solution to extra-judicial shootings in Kenya. The number will act as a touchstone, a defence post beyond which officers will not venture. It will be a second deterrence, beyond normal human feeling, and will definitely save lives. The number will advise action, control choices and recall to sense any officer in a moment requiring use of gun-force. Hit this tally and retire. Or simply, serve without killing people.

Self-defence as an excuse has been adulterated. In my opinion, if a single officer can shoot three armed, ‘dangerous’ criminals in a single ‘fight’, then the danger is imaginary.

A man, a criminal man, any man will give their all to live. That three men are routinely downed by one officer in an instant is a measure of skewed aggression. That ten police officers maroon a thug and pound him to steaming pulp, is still a measure of misplaced choices. Either the others were not armed, or they were not interested in the shootout. But most probably, the police just wanted to ‘finish off the job.’

How else, would we explain their daily ‘dangerous criminal’ tag? How dangerous, if always ending up stiff on the mortuary slab?

Main and disarm, arrest then charge!

Or is it because there are never any facts to prove a crime in court?

Callous: "Lie dowb well, so that we may finish you off!"

Scavenging: "Loitering with intent to cause a breach of the peace..."

[1] Grace Ogot, 2001: Land Without Thunder, East African Educational Publishers, Nairobi.


[2] Jean-Baptiste Lamarck: ‘Soft Inheritance’ - works and heritage, online materials about Lamarck (23.000 files of Lamarck's herbarium, 11.000 manuscripts, books, etc.) edited online by Pietro Corsi (Oxford University) and released by CRHST-CNRS in France.

My Vision; My Pledge

CORRUPTION:

A society grows when it transforms and adapts to ethical conduct. Acts of corruption occur with the confluence of three factors:

1). One party with a 'critical need' that must be solved fast;
2). An event that hinders a quick end to the need, and
3). A third party that bears the power to allow access to the remedy.

Of all effects of graft on society, the ultimate is delay. What is corruption but delay of the ideal? People’s values vary and states may not legislate on morals, but time stays true and fair. An hour is sixty minutes, whether in the city or in the wild. To wait for justice, service, healthcare, licensing, amenities, education and security, wastes time and wreaks torment. A whole nation must wait longer for a future when people will serve the roles they are paid for. Because everything delays, some adapt to 'greasing palms', to get served.
When this becomes a way of life, the cost in money matches the cost in time. More people paying bribes raise its costs and induce more delays, "since everybody knows it takes time..." What a city must have is delayed for decades on end.

Always, one party has a quick need that must fester or go awry, unless another party is induced to ‘help.’ Corruption occurs when one offers inducements to another to arrest delay.

Were all services offered in reasonably quick time, corruption would abate. Where enough facilities exist, there is no need for long queues and shortages of options. Corruption is delay, and the easiest way to deal with delays is to embrace time limits for every service. The Kenya POA assures that all officers will declare fair time frames for their work, and will not bear the power both to permit and perform tasks.

Equality vs Equity: What to Choose?

The Purpose of Government

 It is a common occasion in policy debates for the interlocutors to skirmish over the principles of equity and equality. Depending on the ocular power of the lens one elects to view the stage through, there is a veritable glut of mallets and pick-axes available to any protagonist, for breaking the rock of these broad principles into smaller pieces of scary projectiles, to be hurled at the opponent, as time will unfortunately have stood him. Since skirmish we must, then we might as well understand the reasons for our opposed array on these fierce battlefronts.

Having no luxury of dictionary definitions I will, in their stead, present my 'surprised-out-of-sleep' understanding of the two, to explain why and when either is necessary.

To my mind, equity is best represented in the Gadhian expression: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. But since that only helps to address the supply side of the economic coin, we shall flip to the 'coat-of-arms' and observe on the demand side that to whom much is given, much is expected. Fair exchange! The goose will only lay the golden egg if she is fed on the finest grain and assured of life by the farmer; who will only secure these assurances if he must, without option of default, ultimately obtain his prized eggs.

Equality on the other hand is a concept born of all communal effort. At a certain basic level of humanity, all people are distinguishable only by the outturns of their mental exertions. We are just male or female, all requiring each other for successful accomplishment of our most basic endeavours.

Just as men cannot beget babies without women, geniuses cannot exist in a vacuum - they are born, raised, recognised and celebrated amongst the blundering hordes of the 'average.' They are children of someone, parents to someone else. We all, for the harmony and advancement of society, must shed our 'public airs,' hang the frock of fame and fortune on the office coat-stand and bolt the door behind us as we walk home to common society. At 'home' within society, we are mere participants, equal partners to everybody else co-operating in society's progressive trek though the treacherous plains of life. We become boys or men, girls or women; warriors, farmers, teachers, students, etc., each working for the final benefit of all. Selfish actions and restrained participation, aiming to reserve one’s best for own benefit is the bane of all societies.

Nature roots for equity, advancing its majestic law of survival of the fittest. In the wild, disability counts for certain demise. Human history - that is what we read, for we know nothing of the histories of reptiles: who are their heroes, which their wars, who their gods? - not only records but also recounts the deeds of our finest. Everywhere it is apparent, then, that life, left to its own vagaries, will always lead to equity. It is vain and wasteful effort, to fight for equity. Being the natural law, it does not require our weak slaps on a mountain to shake it.

Our business distils itself to understanding the purpose of social organization: why people seek groupings - to spread and share the high benefits of genius among the greatest number, to carry along those whose beneficial output is only but a future expectation, and to lend a helping hand to 'precious' laggards, those rare creatures amongst us whose value lies in extreme adaptation derived from debilitating deprivations of other 'normal' faculties, the sub-normal. This calls for a more compassionate look at all members of society. That what good one human deserves, is what all people deserve. Society, therefore, cannot afford equity. Compassion quickly resolves itself into equality.

Competition on the other hand will bring about equity. Consider an athletics sprint race at the Olympic Games. The organisers will provide a level track, in similar weather, at the same race time, with similar curves, a flat slope and accurately equalized distances for the participants to run on. The starting conditions are therefore equalized for all competitors from all over the world. When the race is started, by a ringing shot and ended later at the laser tape, the fastest and slowest runners are recorded by the time-stretch photo equipment. The athletes run an equal distance on an equalized track. The only difference, the main one indeed, in their positions at the tape is a product of their desire and physiques. That is the flower of equity blooming from the stem of equality. Nature wins out, again.

Where do I lead to with this? Just a simple point really! That we organise ourselves in groups to seek equality, because left to our own devices, we can only obtain equity. So, what is the role of common social organizations like Government? To provide equality - that level playing field - so that the individual brilliance of endowed individuals will separate common folk only when they advance well outside levels of tolerable life. That a boy in Turkana and a boy in Alego will have an equal chance in the Society's schools. That when a girl from Lamu beats them both, it should not be because her school was preferred, but because she has a higher IQ than these boys.

For national development, let us seek to equalize the facilities and amenities available to all persons and regions. Those that will squander their opportunities will thus be left behind, but from a tolerable starting point. Those who excel will, therefore, earn the respect of all, for their industry without imputations of graft, thievery and favouritism as are the usual fare here. And just like in the Olympic race, the winner will only be one metre ahead of the last to arrive, not a difference of the whole distance ran, as can be attested to by our rich-poor gap.

Government must be a tool for equality; equity is a natural grant.

Tech Terror Quakes Lethargic Banks

Mobile Money Transfer is Mere Usurpation and Exposure of Banks' Lethargy

The idea of a telecommunications company transfering money is much like a salon that offers a snack to its clientele.  The meal is only an enticement; and the salonist has no obligation to improve the quality of her morsels.  Infact, it becomes a health hazard to eat in such a place, though it provides the proprietor with vital experience, were she to diversify her interests into food. At the salon, whereas you certainly get your hunger satiated, the meal can never be as good or as safe as at a dedicated eatery. 

I concur with Crown Paints' Peter Marangi and join him in chanting his chorused exhortation to us: ask the experts!  Safaricom's M-Pesa and the whole litter of cash-zapping rival chefs are mere usurpers; they will never feed us on a first-class full course meal served with five-star grace.  The reason is simple, a barbershop that stocks beer can never beat a real pub.

Every business has a core competency; its raison d'etre, its sine qua non. And the basis of banking is money.  If anyone has the natural instinct for creating and transfering money, it is the bank.  We only happen to live in an age of timorous bankers and stagnancy of innovation.  Although the idea of mobile money transfer is great; its conduct by mobile phone service providers (MSPs) is not. One just wonders when banks will awaken from their slumber to leverage their licences and reclaim their forte.

Thousands of jobs

That the mobile money transfer phenomenon has transformed lives and transfigured townships cannot be gainsaid. Millions of households are being rescued from excruciating poverty and literally saved from sleeping on empty tummies. But at what cost to the economy?  Unfortunately, humans are only impressed by sensual perceptions, and in this instance, by what they see happening. In most pursuits, however, what we do not see is more significant. For instance, what is the real cost of this industry? Respectfully, may I posit that MSP money transfer is not unlike a boil, a sort of sore abscess; principally, an inefficient outpouring of pent energy and waste, resulting from clogs in the natural systems. It is not only uncomfortable and difficult to hide, but also very painful. Let me expound.

The Kenyan banking system is too slow to react to new ideas and technological advances.  Ever since Western Union and Moneygram came up with the secure Transactional Reference Code for money transfer, it was obvious that someone would use the idea for mass money movements across local wallets.

Why banks have never invested in technology that allows them to adopt this concept defeats logic.  Fair lady Idea met MSP Technology along Money Avenue, and while staid Lord Banks hesitated, his lumpen servant, MSP quickly set up a candy store and stole her languorous attention. Can Mr Banks reclaim his street and woo back his pledged lady?  

In responding to this query, we have to consider the efficiency and merit of the MSP offering against the natural competence of the banking industry. 

To transfer money in the MSP model, the sender has to get cash - from some trade transaction, bank counter or cash machine and 'deposit it' into her mobile phone account at an agent of the MSP. Only then can she send it over the phone system to the recipient, who may send it onwards to a further recipient (or visit her local MSP agent) for 'withdrawal' and expenditure. This process involves at least four person to person exchanges, the first: when a sender trades commodities or visits the bank for cash; the second, when she visits the Send Agent for deposit; the third, when the recipient goes to the Receive agent for withdrawal; and the fourth, as the recipient exchanges cash for commodities. 

This model is seriously vulnerable to insecurity and criminal intervention, as would be the case were thugs to accost the 'sender' and confiscate the cash while on her usually distant way between the source of cash and the Send Agent's premises; or even the recipient after withdrawal. Further inefficiency is encountered because these cash exchanges can only occur during the working hours of each Agency, which, again for security reasons, are limited to an average ten-hour day.

And does the economy work well with all these informal money agencies? Everyone cannot be a good doctor; certainly not many can make good bankers.  Why do we need all these MSP agents? Systemic banking inefficiences are directing precious entrepreneurial capital into this MSP industry, away from greater social pursuits and achievements. 

We do not need any informal bankers in an economy of over twenty thousand formal bankers working in forty-five commercial banks and serving only nine million bankable individuals. (Considering that Kenya's population of forty million is comprised, upto fifty-five per cent, of children below the age of majority, whose accounts, if at all anywhere held for them, are funded and operated by their guardians; and taking as granted that of the remaining forty-five percent, only about a half, still many of whom are enjoined as spouses, have the financial weal and muscle to hold a bank account), the banking system is adequately manned.  The few account holders have even fewer monthly transactional counts. 

Yet these few are the people transfering money within this economy.  Any more agents are just rent-seekers. What can be more inefficient than that?  We just end up with more people 'getting to know who has received how much,' exposing the recipients' privacy and as a consequence inflating consumer prices - because we must pay the excess baggage of informal bankers, and we must charge a premium on commodities sold to 'the newly rich villager, who has received money from Uppity.'  Can an economy grow on internal transfer payments without matching productivity increases? Mobile Money Transfers are a form of intra-economy transfer payments, and their impact can only be inflationary, on the microeconomic scale.
That is the underlying social cost.  Next time you want to complain of deteriorating standards of living and persistently higher costs of goods, perhaps we should consider blaming the twin C*K regulators - the Communications Commission of Kenya and the Central Bank of Kenya.

Now, in the bank-provider model; the bank runs a money transfer platform, employing the MSPs only for data exchanges. Any bank account holder can register to the premium service at her bank and access her account anywhere, anytime.  The transaction process involves a data message to the Bank's software modules, and a virtual transfer of funds from own account to any individual mobile number in the republic.  Every transaction only yields a reference and report of new virtual balances to each party concerned.  And the bank system keeps a complete, safe and secure record of transactions per each account and associated mobile number.

This way, a registered user can access money on call from the comfort of her bed, any time of the day or night, and pay rent, school fees, water bill, purchase airtime, send pocket money to her old folk or young boarding school child, send money to the shamba boy, pay Mama Mboga, the doctor, the supermarket bill, and so forth; and the money can flow within twenty or thirty trades, without anyone touching any cash.  Then we will not need to carry cash to Namanga because our bank has no ATM out there.

Your phone only transfers data.  The money stays at the bank, and anyone needing hard cash should walk to their nearest bank or sacco branch for 'download'.

This way, banks deal with money, and the telcos with data.  Fair trade! Neat division of labour and exercise of comparative advantage.  The economy enjoys complementarity, not undue competitive pressure.  But the banks must first wake up to this!

 

My Vision; My Pledge

WOMEN:

Nations rise out of women and the seeds of any culture flourish in the souls of its mothers. Races endure and raise their vital stock with each choice their women make. Who to love and bear babies with; which child to train to which trait; how to nourish a family; which codes of faith to endow and fuse into a child’s mind; and in what tongue to express free ideas, are native acts to the role of Mom. Women influence their men in subtle but strong ways and shape destinies with the stamp of fluent nurture.

Much war and evil has razed hope or life, in quarrels over ethnic purity and cultural merit. Sadly, the wagers of woe, from Nazi Germany to the Hutu of Rwanda neither consult nor care for women. They act to destroy women, subdue them, and plant in them aliens’ kids, in aim to disrupt their cultures at the base. The blood that flows in the veins of a people is their all. The more there are who bear it, the surer the chance that it will live on. Every girl enriches her adopted society, but is a loss when she leaves. If we must keep our finest women raising our heritage, we must shred barriers to their progress, clear their routes to high ambition, and greet their best deeds with approval.

So, it is in the neat interest of a nation, to make the lives of its women happy above all else, respect their choices, to love and cherish them at home, and ward off the lures of foreign snares. To those on who so much depends, utmost care is owed; therefore, to meet our nation’s debt to women, we must attain Millennium Development Goals fast.

The Kenya POA will.

False Gender Agenda

The fallacy of reserved seats and gender balance

The Indian Parliament has struck a hitherto unprecedented blow for democracy and gender balance. The Federal Parliament in Delhi has this March 9th, 2010, passed by a massive 186 - 1, the bill that reserves a third of all seats of Parliament in the national and state assembles, for women. It was a decision intended to coincide with the International Day for Women, but that had to be delayed overnight, after it was marred by extreme scenes of dissension, with some Parliamentarians tearing copies of the bill and shouting in vehement damnation against its authors.  Six of those were suspended from House debate and had to be forcefully removed from the chamber.  Upon passage, its proponents led by the ruling Congress Party's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh were beside themselves with effusive praise.

India is not alone in this choice, having been preceeded by even bolder leaps elsewhere.  Countries like Sweden and Rwanda lead the world in the proportion of women on their sovereign decision organs.  Other cultures, ancient and modern; nations like Sri Lanka, Argentina, Chile and Liberia have, with the passage of time, gone a step further, and elected women as heads of their governments.  To my mind, this is the epitome of the power of free choice, and the truest testament to the equality and competence of the world's womenfolk to the challenges of leadership.  Everywhere, women have proved their merit, and their accession to power is no longer a matter for worrisome reconsideration.

For this reason, the Indian choice deserves more than glancing attention. While this step is laudable and, indeed, emulable, it still betrays an offensive triumph of sentimentalist force over the strict dictates of nature and reason. 

Since antiquity, leadership has attracted the reverence and esteem reserved for the finest forms of culture and art.  Indeed, leaders are a society's finest artists, and their shoulders sometimes bear the real lives of their subjects.  What leaders dream, society drools at, and their word is the whole wide world to it. Like poetry, literature, music or natural science, leadership is, in some form, a spiritual concept. It is an outcome of passion.  And we may not reserve positions of passion on the basis of gender! Can we, for example reserve a third of all poetic positions for women; a third of all sculptors, all architects, all newspaper columnists, all farmers? Nature dictates that the most passionate hearts and minds on these planes should excel. Reserving positions of leadership for a given gender is promoting mediocrity. In the already miserly temple of politics, society loses the rarely sacrificed steak of merit at the altar of arithmetic.

Perhaps more poignant is the perversion of this gender equity concept on the Kenyan political scene. If the Constitutional review goes according to plan, Kenya's 47 new counties will each be represented in Parliament by a woman. Noting that each county is composed of several current constituencies, it effectively means each 'old' district will have a Super MP, who will likely be the county spokesperson, and to boot, a woman! Ask with me: why would a more popular candidate representing real people at the lowest level, be subordinated to an amorphously defined 'leader' for political expediency, representing an extinct entity and answerable to no-one on the ground?  When this county leader speaks, shall we take her word to be the synthesized wisdom of five or more Sub-MPs in her county?  And what is to stop her from being subjective and partisan in her views? Isn't she just a human like all others in the House?

There has never been shown any proof that 100 women produce more and better ideas than 20 women.  The same cannot be said of 100 passionate souls, whether men or women. Both in the real and the ideal world, we are better off with a passionate, focused all-men parliament, than a reward-for-gender House. Let justice be our shield and defender.  Reserving seats for women is discrimination against men.  The implied outcome is that no woman will be elected to represent a constituency, since their lot have a free pass, through the county quota system.

Unless the aim is merely to create jobs for cronies and spouses, the representation red-herring is dead and rotting. Tell me another, India!