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Why is no one talking about poor people’s future?

Wednesday May 17 2017

There has been a notable absence of a dedicated focus on social justice since 2013.

Bear in mind that some 46 per cent, or almost half of our population, lives below the poverty line, with 18 per cent — almost one-fifth —living in extreme poverty.

Of course, devolution is an attempt to ensure better delivery of critical social services such as healthcare. The allocations for the counties are not just about ensuring more money gets to the ground but also that that money responds to persistent inequalities in both social service provision and poverty outcomes. And those allocations have been on top of the multitude of pre-existing devolved funds.

Far less attention has been paid to the ways in which social insurance has been restructured over the years as well. Trying to ensure the public medical insurance and pension schemes of the National Health Insurance Fund and the National Social Security Fund are not just limited to the minority in formal employment in the public and private sectors but can also be joined by those in informal employment, albeit also on a contributory basis.

More attention has been paid to the ways in which social assistance — through cash transfers — has evolved. There are a multitude of cash transfer schemes, three of which fall under the National Social Security Secretariat, providing support to orphans and vulnerable children, people with disabilities and the elderly.

And then there are the range of public micro-financing programmes, one example being the Uwezo Fund for youth, women and people with disabilities.

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So it is not that there a lot of good stuff going on — good at least in intention.

That said, several points have to be made.

First, almost all of these structural and programmatic initiatives predate 2013. Yes, the First Lady has at least taken up the gauntlet of promoting maternal health. But, frankly, she’s not part of the executive. Even if her position has meant that public funding and institutional commitments flow into maternal health as a result. More important, it is hard to think of a single structural or programmatic initiative on poverty and inequality initiated by the current executive.

Poverty and inequality are also not reported on by this executive. There’s a lot about growth rates. There’s a lot about infrastructural investments (not to mention the sharp rise in our indebtedness that financing these investments has caused us). But nothing, really, to indicate that our drive for and pride in our supposedly middle-income status is a drive for all of us. That 46 per cent living in poverty, for example. Or that 18 per cent living in extreme poverty.

There’s also not the sense — as there last was in the immediate post-2002 “transition” period — that these structural and programmatic initiatives are part of a cohesive whole, a concerted national plan to deal with poverty and inequality and drag all of us up by our bootstraps.

Why is this relevant now?

We’re in the electoral season. And, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I just don’t get the sense that anybody’s talking about, or even really interested in, the elections as a field in which to hawk competing policy agendas. On matters of such importance to the majority of us. We deserve better. We deserve more — particularly that 46 per cent and 18 per cent.

L. Muthoni Wanyeki is Amnesty International’s regional director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes

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