The Good Side of Kenya 2008 and Beyond

Leadership Crisis in Kenya

Kenya is a nation located on the eastern shores of Africa, most famous for wildlife safaris, Mount Kilimanjaro, Lake Victoria and as a holiday haven for Europeans. But like many developing nations of the third world, Kenya struggles with high rates of poverty, diseases, infertility, and mortality.

Kenya has over forty tribes that each has their own language and customs. However, they are united by two official trade languages--Swahili and English.  Swahili is a lingua franca language uniting Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya.  In recent decades Swahili has become the choice of other border states for the purpose of trade.  East Africa is an important region to the governments of the north, and is Key in American’s foreign policy to fight the wars on terror and drugs.

Kenya’s economic muscle is larger than of Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi combined.  It is worth mentioning that Rwanda and Burundi have recently (2007) joined the former East African community to boost their economy. For example, one can buy one auto insurance policy (Comesa) for traveling within the five nations. For the first time in recent years Kenya is operating at 97% of her total GNP, borrowing 3%.  Kenya government statistics indicate that during the last five years the poverty level fell from 56% to 46%, a sharp contrast to the high levels of previous years. After Kenya’s independence in 1963 the poverty level skyrocketed from 20% to 56%.

Unbearable health conditions in the third world

Despite the progress noted in the previous section, Kenya faces serious challenges in the commitment to achieve Millennium Development Goals (MDG) for the year 2015. Millions of Kenyans cannot access clean drinking water or basic food and shelter (major elements of the Goals). UN statistics estimate that every 20 seconds a child dies in a third world countries due to poor sanitary conditions and unsafe drinking water. Unsafe drinking water claims more than 1.5 million children per year. The UN report says 443 million children miss school every day because of illness related to sanitation and unsafe drinking water. In addition to the UN report, a report issued by the World Health Organization/Unicef joint
Monitoring Program for Water Supply and Sanitation, indicates that 62% of people in developing nations of Africa have no access to basic sanitation.  UN’s whp/unicef report (2006)

To improve unsafe drinking water and sanitation are two of the major goals targeted by countries like Kenya who are far from being on track to reach their goals.  July 2007 was the halfway mark for achieving the MDGs.  I was one of a few registered political candidates to distribute tens of thousands of MDGs to more than 60,000 voters in rural Kenya in 3 months.  I am committed to this course because the MDG initiatives must be achieved by 2015.  The political leaders in Kenya continue to worry about stuffing their pockets with the country’s economic boom.  During the writing of Leadership coinciding with the World Water Day, UN Secretary General, Ki-moon, reminded the world that “We are nowhere near on pace to achieve that goal.” I believe Kenya has the potential to reach the MDG goals if her economic growth stays on course. Therefore, the leaders of the world should reaffirm their commitment to programs like global water solutions and other aspects of the MDGs.