Political debates are heating up in the run-up to the General Election next year. Kenyans are notorious for voting for personalities, especially those from their tribes, as well as accepting handouts in exchange for votes. These actions are arguably the main causes of poverty and corruption that arises out of bad governance.
Good policy proposals tend not to sway voters. However, some significant policies on social and economic issues are being offered by political candidates, especially former Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Deputy President William Ruto. Kenyans should take these proposals seriously, scrutinise them and vote based on the ideas they like most.
One of the areas candidates have focused on is the intractable problem of unemployment and inadequate social protection in Kenya. Deputy President William Ruto proposes to tackle this by facilitating small businesses to access grants, credit and tools for business and creating a conducive environment for them to access markets.
Good examples
This can be effective as a majority of Kenyan workers are actually self-employed or working for small informal businesses. Quite a bit of this kind of support has been provided to Kenyan small businesses, youth and women under various state funds since the days of the Kibaki administration to the current regime. What is needed is expansion and better access for all to the grants and loans as well as making doing business easier with less regulatory constraints.
An interesting idea is by the former Prime Minister Raila Odinga who has pledged to build the best social protection system in Africa, with grants of Kshs 6,000 per month for up to 2 million households to benefit about 8 million poor and unemployed Kenyans.
To build the best social protection system in Africa, Raila would have to design programmes that are better than Namibia’s and Mauritius’, the gold standards of social protection in Africa.
I helped design the social protection reforms for Namibia in 2018-19 under the then Minister for Poverty Eradication and Social Welfare, Bishop Zephaniah Kameeta. The policy reforms were recently approved by the Cabinet under President Hage Geingob.
Namibia has an extensive social protection system from cradle to grave, based on clear provisions of the Constitution. Article 95 of the Namibia Constitution requires the state to provide for the welfare of the people through equal opportunity, maternity benefits and fair pay for women; healthcare and adequate nutrition for all; child protection and care; access to education; a living wage for employees; assistance for unemployed, incapacitated, and indigent people; and old age pension for all.
This is similar to Kenya’s constitutional provisions in Articles 41, 43 and 53-57. However, unlike Kenya, Namibia has enacted supportive legislation and gone ahead to implement many of the provisions.
Kenya is still far from building a robust social protection system, with a socio-economic rights hampered by a legislative framework replete with lacunae, and a dearth of implementation.
However, as Namibia has shown, it can be done by an African nation with limited resources if prudent fiscal management is effected to curb wasteful spending and corruption is fought to create the fiscal space to implement the programmes.
Namibia’s social protection programmes have absolute progressiveness in distribution and get a huge bang for the dollar in terms of impact on reducing poverty and inequality as shown in analysis of the Namibia Household Income and Expenditure Survey of 2015-16.
The survey indicated very good cost-benefit ratios for the various programmes of Namibia ranging from $ 0.4 to $ 0.3 reduction in poverty gap for each $1 spent in the child foster care grant and old age pensions, respectively. Namibia’s repertoire of social protection programmes include:
1. Child grants for maintenance, foster care and disability, which I recommended in the new policy approved by Cabinet to be enhanced and the means-test for maintenance grant eligibility to be eliminated;
2.A non-contributory old age pension for all people aged 60 years and older at 1,300 Namibian Dollars (equivalent to Sh9,819) per month with no means-test. Kenya’s old age non-contributory assistance is intended to be for people aged 70 years, many of them yet to receive it, and it has no clear supportive legislation unlike the Namibian one which is enabled by the National Pensions Act of 1992.
The old people who are lucky enough to be registered get a mere Sh2,000 per month in Kenya, not enough for even basic food requirements of an adult, compared to Namibia’s Sh9,819;
3. Disability grants for adults certified by a state doctor as disabled of Sh 9,819 per month, with my recommendation for the new policy that the amount be doubled to account for the carer of the person with disability, many of them having given up work or lost income to provide the help;
4. Education fee waivers, allowances, school feeding and hostel accommodation for students at various levels;
5. A non-contributory maternity grant for women giving birth, increase in the period of paid maternity leave, and strengthening of contributory and social medical insurance are to be implemented in the new policy.
6. Grants for unemployed youth are to be enhanced and linked to skills development and establishment of unemployment insurance.
7. A non-contributory Basic Income Grant designed to reach those not receiving state support between ages 18 and 59 years is to be implemented.
8. Assistance for marginalised Ovatwe, Ovahimba and San people with food, grants and housing;
9. Support for self-help housing groups with statutory fee waivers of fees and capitation for their members to acquire affordable houses.
10. Very generous grants for independence war veterans and their dependants. Kenya never gave such honour and care to our heroic Mau Mau freedom fighters and their families who live and die in poverty.
11. An integrated social registry system linking social welfare, health, birth, immigration and other civil registration systems to make identification, delivery and monitoring of services efficient and seamless is being built.
The direct cost of a social assitance programme for the estimated 2 million households would mount to Sh144 billion per year, about four times the current social assistance expenditure and 4.5 per cent of the projected total expenditure of the government in 2022/23. This cost is affordable given the benefits of social assistance in helping families care for children, get health services and start small business to enable them to ultimately get out of the need for such assistance.
Cutting the waste of funds on travel, allowances, luxury vehicles, and grants for huge houses that highly paid politicians and officials get, as well as curbing the massive corruption in Kenya can easily fund this programme.
In fact, Kenya is one of countries in Africa with low expenditure on social protection of just 0.39 per cent of Gross Domestic Product on all programmes compared to 5.4% in Lesotho, 3.46% in Mauritius, 2.85% in Namibia, 1.49% in Malawi and 1.44% in Rwanda, according to World Bank analysis.
Sisule is a policy analyst based in Geneva, Switzerland. These are his own views.
sisulet@yahoo.com
