In Kenya, State procurement is a sure path to wealth and influence

There is a sense in which public procurement is at the heart of the majority of conversations about corruption in public fora in Kenya especially since the introduction of devolution with the new constitution in 2010.

And so you will forgive me if, with all due respect, I describe the nexus of public procurement and governance as a disaster in the management of public affairs in Kenya that has cost us much in treasure and national standing.

By the late 1980s, when public land that could be dished out as a patronage resource started to slow down - with Agricultural Development Corporation, Kenya Railways and other such lands running out – the stealing from parastatals via the abuse of procurement was all the rage.

Through the 1960s and 1970s and into the 21st century, however, procurement in the security sector was a goldmine for those involved, whether they were politicians, civil servants, service and goods providers. And it did not matter whether you were selling jets to the air force or eggs and socks to the police.

Trade mispricing costs Africa US$38 billion per year, according to the Africa Progress Panel.

The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa estimated that over the last 40 years, US$1 trillion was lost by African countries in savings transferred to the developed world.

Today, the Kenya government is embarked on the largest debt-fuelled procurement binge in the country’s history.

Whether you are talking about projects like the Standard Gauge Railway, the titillating procurements of the National Youth Service and the assortment of other high profile legacy public works, projects underway since around 2008.

Indeed, public procurement has too often become one of the most scandalous elements of public service.

There would seem to be a widespread perception that the majority of public procurement is particularly prone to corruption of the kind that ultimately costs citizens dearly for goods and services that can often be of substandard quality or not arrive at all – ‘air supply’ as the Ugandans call it – you get paid for supplying air.

Over the past seven years, rapidly intensifying over the last four years, one of the most extraordinary achievements in the conduct of public affairs is the normalisation of corruption via conflict of interest.

As a result, Kenya is a country where one becomes a public servant expressly to become rich.

This has seen the introduction into the Kenyan lexicon of a term I always associated with South Africa – the ‘tenderprenuer’ – individuals or corporates of no particular training, specialisation or professional qualification whose primary capacity is to extract contracts from the State or regional governments

primarily for private gain, where the provision of public goods or services is purely incidental if it happens at all.

We are reading about some of these with regard to the Devolution ministry, for example.

The widely accepted definition of corruption: ‘the abuse of vested authority for private gain’ has become more nuanced into: ‘the illegitimate transfer of economic surpluses from those without power to those who wield it’.

The destabilising social and political implications of this are apparent not only in countries like Kenya but in the world’s most developed countries as well.

Conflict of interest has become the Achilles Heel of governance in public procurement in Kenya.

Over the last half a decade it has acquired both a sophistication and level of impunity that has little precedent in the country’s history.

Public officials – be they politicians or civil servants are able to work together with the service sector – lawyers, accountants, engineers, quantity surveyors, bankers and the like, to fashion corporate vehicles designed specifically to rip off citizens for personal benefit.

I call this not the private sector but the pirate sector.

It is a phenomenon whose influence over public policy and capacity to loot is truly globalised, and has the wits to craft deals that are intrinsically corrupt and against the public interest but on paper entirely legal.

This sophistication has had important effects.

There was a time when people stole from the Government and there was even a rationalisation that the Government – going back to the colonial era was an alien, occupying force that it was okay to oppose, interrupt and even steal from.

There was a dissonance – stealing from serikali was not a wicked thing because serikali was itself a deeply wicked creature.

Partly as a result of this, today procurement even in the private sector is facilitated by kickbacks, bribes, commissions, considerations and other corrupt activities even in some of the most ostensibly respected companies especially in the banking, advertising, telecommunications and such sectors.

The signature of a procurement officer has been commodified to the extent that it can be traded on the Nairobi Stock Exchange.

Secondly, the decades of struggle against corruption in procurement have led to some of the most complex procurement procedures in the region. This complexity has grown as corruption has deepened and donors and consultants have been hired to ‘tighten controls’, ‘benchmark procedures to global standards’, ‘respond to the complications of supply chains in the globalised era’.

We have thus ended up with a public procurement regime that assumes the providers of goods and services are thieves trying to rip of the government because past evidence demonstrates that.

One of the most reassuring things about the existence of the Chartered Institute for Procurement and Supply (CIPS) Kenya Chapter is that it is precisely this kind of civic body that can change this situation.

Indeed, a code of conduct and disciplinary procedures in a body such CIPS can help simplify our public procurement procedures by ensuring that those who participate in procurement have been verified and can be trusted because of that verification.

Even the much vaunted Integrated Financial Management Information System – IFMIS has demonstrated that you cannot even digitise integrity. The integrity of a procurement system resides in the values of the participants in it which is what makes CIPS so important – especially now given the public procurement crisis Kenya faces.

This, as we all know, is about to intensify exponentially as the government goes into a spending spree prior to the election.

Every election year is a procurement disaster for Kenya whose economic aftermath can take years to clean up.

We are already in an election season so we shall see the most determined and profligate buying spree in history.

It already started with Eurobond, SGR and other expensive projects padded to enrich a few at the expense of the majority.

Thirdly, the normalisation of corruption via conflict of interest has disempowered the capacity of leaders to deal with corruption in Kenya.

As a result, we’ve seen a resurgence of the public harambees at which public officials spend mind-boggling sums of money.

This has been accompanied by a culture of conspicuous consumption that is symptomatic of the extent to which the entire value system where theft of public resources is concerned has been overturned.

It has reduced even the nation’s top leaders into either defensive positions when accused of corruption or into situations where they are whistle-blowers complaining about corruption in their own government while sitting at the top of it.

The fourth development has been the grinding down of even those institutions, processes and traditions that Kenyans assumed were inviolable. Some which have defined us over the years.

In recent years, corruption has been seen to infect institutions such as our beloved athletics fraternity, Uchumi Supermarket, Kenya Airways, the national parks, banks, the Kenya Defence Forces, our national

examination system, the Judiciary and election machinery for example. This causes the sense that nothing is holy any more, nothing untouchable - anything can be ‘eaten’.

All while at the same time we are building some of the world’s most expensive roads and railways in Africa.

In the past few years, we have seen a number of public officials step aside ostensibly to allow corruption-related investigations to be carried out. Still, others have been caught up in court in prosecutions that appear and feel so contrived they have an element of theatre to them.

Indeed, it has caused cynics to opine, that having corruption-related skeletons in one’s closet is not a disadvantage when seeking public office any more, it is qualification.

The behaviour of a thief is far more predictable and politically manageable.

It also helps to create an environment where as many officials (and their relatives) are complicit in some form of corrupt activity or embroiled in conflict of interest situations, almost as if there is a determined effort to turn the public service into a gang. It is these situations that make organisations like C.I.P.S. so important.

They act as a retreat for individuals under pressure; a lobby group for procurement specialists; guarantors of integrity in the profession; protectors of public resources.