UK minister: Why we acted tough on Kenya

By Kenfrey Kiberenge

The Standard spoke to British Minister for Department for International Development Stephen O’brien, and reveals how the Government refunded £1 million to the UK following misappropriation of the Free Primary Education funds. It has also emerged the UK has not sent money for the project through the Government for the last two years citing corruption.

There are assumptions in Kenya that Britain is not happy with President Kibaki for embracing China at the expense of western nations like the UK. What is the truth?
The UK is one of Kenya’s biggest and long-standing trading partners, which continues to be the case. We want to see Kenya and her people succeed. Having a trading and investment partner such as China is a welcome boost to the Kenyan economy. If economy thrives, lives of the poorest will improve, and the country will be better placed to achieve self sufficiency.

Last year, DFID forced Kenya to refund money lost through the free primary education scandal. How much was refunded and when?
The British Government will not tolerate corruption. We will go after every penny of British taxpayers’ money that has been stolen and those responsible for fraud must be prosecuted through the courts. In October 2011, the Government of Kenya returned to us the full amount of unaccounted UK funds amounting to £1 million. This was the right outcome. Britain is committed to ensuring the poorest Kenyan children can receive education and we are channelling our aid investments through non-governmental organisations such as the Kenya Independent Schools’ Association and the Aga Khan Development Network.

Are you still funding FPE? Why?
Britain takes a zero tolerance approach to corruption and has stepped up the battle against it. We were deeply shocked at the extent of fraud in the Kenyan Government’s education programme and have not provided aid through the Government of Kenya since March 2010.

What is UK doing to ensure there is no impunity among Kenya’s political elite and is International Criminal Court one of the tools?
Let’s first take stock of the progress Kenya is making on governance and justice. We are starting to see judicial, police and parliamentary reform and there is a new Constitution with a greater emphasis on accountability.

The British Government is supporting the Government of Kenya’s efforts to ensure the next elections are free, fair and safe, with no return to the post-elections turmoil and violence of 2007. Since 2008, we have supported wide-ranging reform, including the creation of new institutions such as the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission.

Our support for civil society and others is helping to address some of the causes of previous electoral violence, such as hate speech. There is clearly a strong demand for an end to impunity – polls consistently show that Kenyans want to see justice against the perpetrators of that violence – and Kenya is now in a stronger position to address the issue.

The British Government fully supports the International Criminal Court process, which is providing justice for the victims of post-elections violence and serves as a powerful deterrent to the use of violence for political ends. The ICC cases should be treated as an independent legal process, not a political one.

The UK recognises that this is a difficult process, but it is important that Kenyan co-operation with the ICC continues. Polls consistently show that a majority of Kenyans support it, and the victims of post-election violence need justice and the perpetrators held to account. The ICC is a professional court, treating everyone – including the accused – with respect, and it is an impartial legal process.

Is the UK backing any aspirant ahead of the General Election?
We are impartial. It is for Kenyans to decide. We hope that they are credible, safe and fair. Our job is not to back any one candidate. It is not who wins but how they win.

What initiatives is DFID undertaking in Kenya at present?
British aid is very much focused on unleashing Kenya’s potential by supporting the priorities outlined in the Government of Kenya’s Vision 2030, namely promoting stability and security, stimulating growth led by business, and improving the delivery of basic services to meet needs of the poor.

The British Government is supporting market development to create more jobs; providing ‘safety nets’ for the most disadvantaged; improving maternal and reproductive health and accelerating progress in fighting malaria; getting more children into school in the poorest areas; and promoting stability and good governance, a relentless focus on anti-corruption and strengthening security.

Another key aspect of our work is to help Kenya and the wider region cope with the devastating food shortages that we saw last year and which continue now to a lesser degree.

Britain is proud to have stepped up and led the international response to the famine in Somalia and the food crisis across the Horn of Africa. As a result, 3.5 million people in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya have been fed as a result of British aid, including 274,000 malnourished children and pregnant or breastfeeding women.

In the last year, UK aid to Kenya supported over 500,000 people to access financial services for the first time; provided nearly 600,000 of the poorest with cash-transfers to help cushion the shocks of drought and high food prices, and distributed over two million anti-malaria bed nets. In education, UK aid provided a complete set of textbooks to more than 250,000 children in primary schools in urban slums, and learning materials for another 70,000 pre-school children in slum area.

Your department has mulled the idea of re-routing aid from the Government to NGO partners. Who are you using and how accountable are they in comparison to the Government?
This Coalition Government has made a promise to British taxpayers to deliver better impact at best value for our aid investments.

We’ve pushed hard to shift our approach on aid to one focused on results and accountability. That means routing aid through the channels, which are most transparent and have robust systems in place to track how and where our aid is spent and what it is achieving.

In Kenya, we do not have sufficient confidence that support through the Kenyan Governments’ own budget meets our high standards of transparency and accountability. In order to ensure that the poorest people are not affected we are currently channelling our aid to the Kenyan people through alternative channels such as multilateral and non-government organisations.

DFID recently hosted a family planning summit with Gates Foundation. How will Kenya benefit from donor funds?
The London Family Planning summit was an extraordinary breakthrough for women and girls in developing countries. As a result of commitments made at the summit, an additional 120 million women and girls in developing countries who want to avoid pregnancy will have access to contraception.

The focus now is on galvanising the commitments into concrete progress on the ground. The majority of funds raised will flow through existing channels to support the delivery of countries’ own transformational plans. This ownership at country level is crucial in achieving sustainable progress.

Our British aid office in Kenya is already planning to have a number of programmes that build upon our existing work on family planning. We are going to take the time needed to get this right. To make sure that we target additional resources to where they are most needed and where they will have the greatest impact. More details will become available in the coming months.

The Roman Catholic Church in Kenya has strongly opposed the summit saying Kenyans should embrace natural family planning and abstinence. They say this is the West trying to introduce abortion through the back door.

Let’s be clear, access to family planning information, services and supplies is about giving women and men in developing countries choice so that they themselves can decide whether, when and how many children to have. And there is very good reason for this – put simply, contraception saves lives.

Every two minutes a woman dies of pregnancy-related complications; 99 per cent of these maternal deaths occur in developing countries. Yet, over 200 million women who want to avoid pregnancy lack access to contraception. In fact, access to family planning education and contraception will reduce unintended pregnancies and therefore prevent recourse to abortion.

What is the projected impact of the summit’s achievements on Kenya and modernising attitudes on family size?
Kenya made a number of significant commitments at the family planning summit including enshrining the right to quality reproductive health care into the Constitution; increasing the budget for family planning; and expanding services to meet the needs of young people.

All of which mark an important stride forward for the women and girls in Kenya who want to plan their families. We know that access to family planning is transformational – it saves lives and leads to healthier and more prosperous nations.

The impact of these commitments is genuine hope for a better quality of life and a brighter economic outlook for Kenya’s poor, particularly the future generations.