Category Archives: kenya elections

Inside Kenya’s BBI (Building Bridges Initiative) Report.

Last week saw the release of a report from the Presidential Taskforce on the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI), that was the result of a March 2018 ‘handshake’ between President Uhuru Kenyatta and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga who had led different parties into the 2017 Kenya general elections.

The document is sub-titled Building Bridges to a United Kenya: from a nation of blood ties to a nation of ideals and its authors claim to have incorporated the views of about 7,000 Kenyans from all 47 counties.

One of the summarized findings was that elections are too divisive – and the country’s economy gets three good years that are interrupted by two-year blocks of intense electioneering campaigns.

Anyway, on to an alphabetical look at some of the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) Report clauses.

Anti-Money Laundering: A bank involved in corrupt transactions should be made to repay all the money laundered through it, with interest.

Audits: Devolve the Office of the Auditor-General to the counties. Also, projects initiated in the final year of an electoral cycle should receive extra scrutiny from the Controller of Budget and all oversight authorities.

Capitalism: We have confused value extraction with capitalism (and) we as a people must build an economy that is dominated by value creation and not value extraction.

CCTV: Link private CCTV of hotels, shopping centres, and other highly trafficked sites to the National Police Service to deter terrorism and crime.

Cyclists: Every new road in an urban area should be legally required to also have a sidewalk for pedestrians and specified lanes for cyclists, with clear signage.

Doing Business Rankings (not the World Bank ones): Develop and launch a measure of ease of doing business for small Kenyan businesses and not just foreign investors. This should be a comparative assessment published annually by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics and broken down by counties, cities, and towns.

(Fighting) Corruption: One of the summarized findings was a need to reverse the Ndegwa Commission and ban all public officers from doing business with the government. Another is that no procurement officer should be at a post for more than two years.

e-Government: Make Kenya a 100% e-services nation by digitizing all government services, processes, payment systems, and record-keeping. This should include the ability to offer Kenyans digital identities, e-health records and Kenyans should be able to vote digitally.

(Attitude to) Free Money: When money is known as ‘pesa ya serikali’ (Government money), it is something to plunder not respect; indeed, people who try to save public money are dismissed and even rebuked.

(Use of) Government Services: dubbed “skin in the game of leadership” – all ministers and county executives and leaders should use the services that they manage on behalf of all Kenyans. E.g. the children of the education minister should attend public schools and the health minister should use public health facilities.

History (of Kenya): President Uhuru Kenyatta should commission an official accurate History of Kenya, going back 1,000 years, whose production will be led by an Office of the Historian resident in the National Archives.

(Digitization of) Land Records: Complete the digitization of land ownership and give the public access to the database. Also, map and publicize government-owned land open for commercial leasing under simple and enforceable terms.

Loan Apps: Properly regulate loan apps which are driving up indebtedness of poor Kenyans to destructive effect with their shylock-level interest rates and borrowing from multiple platforms.

Marginalization: The marginalized should not marginalize others – strong evidence was presented that some communities that complained about marginalization at the national level were themselves guilty of marginalizing minorities in their respective counties.

Media: Kenya needs media that uplifts through investing in quality local content (and) should build programming around Kenyan histories and showing what is exceptional.

Mining: Concessional agreements, policies and regulations in mining and oil should be made public in an accessible manner, including clear accounting for the public participation and environmental impact assessments.

New bodies proposed in the BBI Report:
• A Health Service Commission to look at the human resourcing in the counties.
• A unified and assertive food safety and regulatory body to ensure Kenyan food becomes safe.
• Nairobi be accorded a special status as a capital city that allows the National Government to maintain it as a capital city and as a diplomatic hub.
• A commission to address current boundary conflicts until they are solved.
• (Compel the) Private sector to form a national, non-profit foundation, chaired by the President, that provides mentoring and support to aspiring business owners aged 18–35. It should match the young entrepreneurs with a business development advisor and a nationwide network of volunteer mentors.
• A Government-run national lottery to replace the private betting industry (which is leading to hopelessness and greater poverty)
• A Sovereign Fund that allows for savings in case of emergencies or extraordinary circumstances.
• An Office of the Public Participation Rapporteur mandated to conduct all public participation on behalf of governmental entities at the national and devolved units.
• A Prime Minister, appointed by the President, from the majority party in Parliament.
• A Department of Happiness, Wellness, and Mental Health in the Ministry of Health.
• Baraza la Washauri: The President should benefit from the private advice of eminent, experienced, and honourable citizens serving as a Council of Advisors on a non-salaried basis.

NHIF: The National Hospital Insurance Fund administrative costs should be cut down to 5%-10%. Currently, this is at about 18%.

Privatization: Expedite the privatization of Government shareholding in assets not delivering value to the public and undertake parastatal reforms.
The findings are further summarized to include “parastatals carrying out County functions should be either wound up or restructured.”

Revenue allocation: Public resources should follow people not land mass. Health, agriculture, and service delivery are also most important than land mass.

Taxation: Have a “flat tax” for every income category above a living wage/income of Kshs 30,000 (~$300) – to reduce tax fraud, encourage compliance, and cut down on corruption in the assessment of taxes.

Tax-cuts:
• Minimize taxation of new and small businesses by giving them a tax holiday of at least seven years as a support to youth entrepreneurship and job creation.
• Cut taxes in relation to Auditor-General audits .. money should remain in Kenyans’ pockets until there is more accountability and governance on its use at the National and County levels
• Also no double taxation and double regulation at the National and County level.

Wealth Declarations: These should be made public and all senior leaders should publish written statements on how they acquired wealth over Kshs 50 million (~$500,000) and have this available on government websites, along with details of shareholdings, partnerships, directorships etc.

(Reward) Whistleblowers: Offer a 5% share of proceeds recovered from anti-corruption prosecutions or actions to the whistleblower whose information is necessary to the success of the asset seizure or successful prosecution.

White-elephants: To stop the abandonment of incomplete projects with each change of administration, the Treasury should not release monies to the new Governor before obtaining a list of incomplete projects and a plan for their completion.

Way forward: In the BBI report, there is no mention about a public referendum, the TJRC report, and very little about land and historical injustices. It also does not address much on legislative issues such as the two-thirds gender rule, and disputes between the Senate and the National Assembly. Parliament breaks for a two-month Christmas holiday this week, during which the BBI debate is sure to be a topic of much discussion up to February 2020 and beyond.

Kenya Political Party Financing in 2019

What’s to be learnt about the state of political party finance in Kenya? Some parties have published their unofficial financial results for the year 2019.

Jubilee: The ruling party has income of  Kshs 339 million, that includes 240 million from the Political Parties Fund (PPF) and 98 million from members. They spent 80 million on rent, down from 90 million, 173M on general  expenses and 81 million on secretariat staff and executives.  They have 16 million of property.

ODM: The main opposition party received Kshs 112 million from the Political Parties Fund, same as last year, and donations of 78M. They have also booked an astronomical accrued amount from the government of Kshs 6.47 billion. They spent 170 million on administrative expenses, 19M on campaigns, 11M on party policy, 10M on conferences, 3M on branch coordination and just 712,000 on civic education. The amount they are claiming from the government is also listed as a current asset and bumps up their balance sheet from 119 million last year, to 6.5 billion.

Other Parties: Meanwhile other parties have been silent on their finances, but are active in other areas. These include the former ruling party – Party of National Unity, which has changed its officials. New parties have been formed this year  include  Transformation National Alliance Party of Kenya (TNAP) with “money bills” as its party symbol, the Democratic Action Party Kenya and the National Ordinary People Empowerment Union (NOPEU).

Summary of results:

1. Party coalitions are dead:  The party coalitions put together for elections appear to have fallen apart. ODM has stopped making payments to its coalition partners and no longer provides for them as they did in their earlier accounts.

2 Expensive secretariats: The amount at Jubilee of 81M  is down from 141M last year and which was a sharp rise from 28M in the previous year. That may coincide with hiring for the 2017 election period. Usually, party activities go into a lull after elections, until the next election cycle. In Kenya, this is set for 2022 unless another constitutional referendum is engineered to happen before that by political leaders.  At ODM, their property assets went up from 8M to 185M. in September 2019 they relocated their headquarters from Orange house to Chungwa House ay Loiyangalani  Drive in Lavington.

Old Pic from the State House FB page

3. Parties IPO: ODM has sued the government for not paying it the amount of Kshs 6.4 billion which it says dates back to when parliament came up with the  political parties act.   

But the National Treasury has been saying it cannot afford  to fund the political parties to the tune of 0.3% of the budget as parliamentarians had their parties, without impeding their constitutional requirement  to also fund the county governments.  Treasury has been allocating Kshs 300 million instead of 3.6 billion a year to the Political Parties Fund.

4. If that payment ever materializes, ODM’s coalition partners, have stated that they will stake a claim for a slice of that windfall. 

EDIT – September 2020: For the first quarter of 2020/2021, the Political Parties Fund to pay the Jubilee Party Kshs 161 million and the Orange Democratic Movement party, Kshs 75 million.

Kenya’s Money in the Past: TJRC

From reading the introduction to a new book (available on Amazon) by Ronald C. Slye,  a Commissioner with the defunct Kenya Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation Commission, he narrates how the Commission evolved and troubles it encountered as it sought to carry out  investigations, through to completing its report and handing it over to Kenya’s President. These included accusations again their Commission Chairman and delays to the release of their report so it did not clash with the 2012-13 Kenya electioneering period as well as demands that some clauses be deleted from the final report.

The foreword of the book written by Reverend Desmond Tutu is also available and he gives some more background to the Commission and Slye’s writing. Tutu writes that the Kenya Government did not support the report, and printed as few of them as possible and Parliament has not debated the TJRC report.

In a chapter, available online, Slye explains how he came to join the Commission and some to the things he went through. He thanks his university, the Seattle University School of Law,  for making the complete TJRC report, in sectors and versions, available online on its website as well as also hosting supporting documents that he researched as the basis for his book.

In terms of finance and budgets, there were allegations against that the commission was a waster of public funds and Slye has dedicated a separate page called “Financial Scandals” that contains documents and correspondence on the financial affairs of the Commission. .. includes the letters written by the Commission to the relevant Parliamentary Committee’s requesting an investigation into the handling of the Commission’s finances by the Ministry of Justice. It also includes the only document the Commission received from the Ministry of Justice in response to our inquiry concerning how our monies were being spent.

Excerpts from the documents;

  • The Commission, while independent, never really had control of its monies which was stipulated in the TJRC act; that was done by the (Justice) Ministry. The Ministry also communicated that the Commission would have no control of funds until much later.
  • Some trips Commissioners made e.g to hear facts at the Kenya Coast were paid for out of their pockets but were never reimbursed. Nor did they get reimbursed for some medical expenses, some local travel which were done out-of-pocket, as well as for moving expenses of foreign Commissioners.
  • Money was spent on their behalf for activities which the Commissioners were not aware of e.g. Kshs 16 million to host a “council of elders.”

TJRC financial report from the Justice Ministry

  • In October 2009,  the Ministry sent three different sets of papers to JTRC purporting to give a breakdown of usage of their funds and Slye writes that it included bulk payment for Ministry of Justice retreats and bulk payments for unidentified casual workers when the Commission had just a CEO and two consultants
  • In December 2009, the TJRC submitted a two-year budget request for Kshs 2.06 billion. It also submitted a supplementary request for Kshs 631 million. When no answer was received, it wrote, in January 2010, requesting for a lower amount Kshs 480 million. In March 2010, the Ministry wrote that, of this request, they had been allocated Kshs 30 million in the budget for the rest of the fiscal year. The Commissioners soldiered on and decided to pursue alternative means of funding.
  • The page also contains a press release the Commissioner put out that stated:  “The TJRC would like to emphasise the need for financial independence and to restate that at no time has the TJRC had control over any finances. The Ministry, which has seconded one of its finance officers to the Commission, controls all and every aspect of our budget.”

In July 2011 the Commission was accused of corruption through media reports. Slye writes that internal investigations concluded there was no foundation. In their first year (2009-10), their budget was controlled by the Ministry and they had no control of finances till their second financial year. They lacked financial independence, they had to seek Ministry approval of all activities (delayed processes), and had no authority to approve /disapprove expenditure incurred by the Ministry on behalf of TJRC with no knowledge the ministry expenditure beforehand and they were not given a true account of expenditure in the first year. 

During their second year (2010-11), they ran low on funds and had to seek advances from the Treasury for 44 million and 80 million from the Ministry of Justice. They requested supplementary funding which never came which allowed hearing in Mount Elgon, Upper Eastern and North Eastern. Eventually, 650 million of the 1.2 billion was released. There were recurrent delays, payments came in tranches, they had to seek loans, and were only able to visit two provinces and hold public hearings.

Office of the Auditor General (OAG): 

Meanwhile, the Office of the Auditor General of Kenya mentions the TJRC in some reports:

  • In the report for 2010/2011, reference was made to the Commission’s failure to deduct Pay As You Earn (PAYE) from the salaries of 304 statement takers totalling Kshs.13,077,033. A review of the position during the year under review revealed that no attempt was made to recover the amount.
  • The statement of financial position of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) lacked opening balances. Further, the statement of management responsibilities was not signed by the officials as required. The whole financial statements were not dated and the necessary supporting documents and schedules including cash books and government ledgers, were not provided for audit review.
  • Although notes to the financial statements were provided, they were poorly numbered and arranged such that it was not easy to follow the financial statements. The financial statements also lacked numbered pages and headings.
  • In the circumstance, the accuracy and completeness of the financial statements could not be ascertained.
  • With regard to truth, justice and reconciliation activities, the Ministry reported to the OAG that it had facilitated the enactment of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Act, 2008 and the appointment of the TJRC Commissioners. 

EABL: Beer, Taxes, Innovations, Tanzania.

EABL released their financial results for their 2018 year to June this week. It was a tale of two halves with flat growth in the first half of the year which coincided with Kenya ’s prolonged electioneering period and which affected sales of its products such as Senator lager, an affordable beer brand.  But the second half of the year (January to June 2018) saw a more business-friendly environment and more money in consumers pockets.

EABL ended the year with 5% revenue growth to Kshs 73.5 billion and the star of the show for the company in 2017 was Tanzania which saw 41% growth, mainly driven by Serengeti Lite beer. Also, special innovations that contributed 22% to the results is one of the best performances in the world. At EABL, Tanzania’ grew to account for 11% of revenue while Kenya’s was 73%, and Uganda was at 16%.  Capital expenditure was Kshs 13 billion, up from the 5 billion the year before and Kshs 7.8 billion was due to the Kisumu plant which is expected to be opened later in 2018. While overall profit before tax for EABL was Kshs 11.7 billion, a decline of 12% from the year, the company will pay out the same Kshs 7.50 per share dividend to shareholders.

The EABL managers spoke of innovating to reach the 1 million consumers who attain the legal drinking age (18) every year in Kenya – and investment in existing brands, and rolling out new brands to win over changing customers tastes. They also made some excise tax savings in Uganda by moving some  Tusker and Guinness production there while in Kenya, EABL’s profit was weighed down by a Kshs 2 billion one-off provision for taxes that significantly reduced their final result. They said a stable tax environment would enable the company to generate more taxes for governments without causing consumers to pay more.  

Also that by doing more local production of beer and spirits at Ruaraka in Nairobi, at Tanzania, Uganda and soon at the new line at Kisumu has allowed them to bring global brands into countries and produce and offer them at local prices. In the 2019 financial year, they will commercialise the Kisumu brewery which will also benefit 15,000 farmers and generate over 100,000 direct and indirect jobs in the production and distribution chain of Senator beer from Kisumu.

Post Election Economic Forecasts in East Africa

Kenya goes for a repeat presidential election on October 26. The country conducted general elections on August 8, but the Supreme Court invalidated the presidential election in which the electoral commission (IEBC) had declared incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta as the winner, and instead ordered a fresh election be done within sixty days.

August also saw two other major elections in Africa; On August 4, Rwandans re-elected President Paul Kagame as he was the choice of 99% of the nearly seven million voters. Meanwhile, in Angola, elections were held on August 23. President Jose dos Santos was not in the running as he was stepping down and they were won by João Lourenço, the Minister of Defense and Vice-President his party.

Elsewhere: Togo is to have a referendum on a bill that limits the term of the President; also a bill has been introduced in Uganda’s parliament to remove a 75-year age limit for the President (Yoweri Museveni is 73 now), and Liberia is to have an election on October 10 that will usher in a new President after Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who in 2005 became Africa’s first elected female leader,

The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) published a report they did with advisory firm Oxford Economic on Africa economic insights for Q3 of 2017.

some excerpts

Kenya: The leaders who take office in Kenya after the October 26 presidential poll will need to reign in expenditure to improve the economy’s prospects according to ICAEW.

Old Pic from the State House FB page

The report states that the new government will need to take a number of steps to revive the economy following the October 26th vote. A start would be to rethink the regulatory cap on commercial interest rates, which has starved small and medium enterprises of funding. Reining in expenditure, in order to ensure government debt does not get out of hand, would improve the economy’s future prospects. Furthermore, the newly elected government will need to lead the charge against corruption.

Rwanda: President Kagame’s re-election is expected to result in the continuation of business-friendly policies to boost entrepreneurship.

Tanzania: The operating environment in Tanzania is becoming increasingly complicated due to President Magafuli’s economic nationalism.

Ethiopia has lifted a state of emergency that was in place for 10 months, and there is a risk that social unrest may keep disrupting the state led development that has produced the country’s economic boom. Still, real GDP growth is forecast to come in at the very impressive rate of 7.1% in 2017.

Nigeria, & Angola: The two big oil producers, Nigeria and Angola, have continued to deal with the effects of a much lower oil price: foreign reserves are hard to come by, which complicates the operating environment for all firms, especially those that need imports. In both countries inflation is falling but still high, interest rates remain high and the governments have been cautious with their spending, meaning government expenditures have not contributed to the economy.

Ghana: Ghana’s continued participation in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Extended Credit Facility (ECF) programme has been characterised by significant uncertainty ever since the New Patriotic Party (NPP) took the reins by defeating the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the 2016 elections. Real GDP growth is expected to exceed 6% in 2017, driven by higher oil output and a recovery in consumer demand. International reserves also received a healthy boost due to robust foreign appetite for longer dated government securities. Finally, authorities have made significant progress with the implementation of the banking system roadmap. There are several reasons, to think that the operating environment is set to improve.

Ivory Coast, Ivory Coast is experiencing similar problems as a consequence of a fall in cocoa prices, and political risk sporadically takes the form of mutinies by soldiers, but its economy is still set to grow by 6.9% in 2017.

South Africa: South Africa continues to hold back growth in Southern Africa, although the regional giant has emerged from recession with positive quarterly GDP growth in Q2.

Senegal: Senegal is forecast to boast comparable output growth (6.8%) – thanks mostly to infrastructure spending undertaken as part of the Plan Emerging Senegal (PSE).

Zambia is forecast to show real GDP growth of 3.3% thanks to improved performances in the agriculture and industrial sectors.

The ever-stable Botswana and Mauritius are expected to record stable growth of 4.1% and 3.8%, respectively. The smaller economies in the region continue to feel the effects of a severe drought last year, and South Africa’s weak economy.