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Begin New Search Political Geography Kenya Publication Year within 5 Years

61. African Jobs in the Digital Era: Export Options with a Focus on Online Labour

Author:
Elvis Melia
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS)
Abstract:
This study asks what impact the Fourth Industrial Revolution will have on job creation and catchup development in Sub-Saharan Africa over the coming decade. Can light manufacturing export sectors still serve African development the way they served East Asian development in the past? If factory floor automation reduces the need for low-cost labour in global value chains, can IT-enabled services exports become an alternative driver of African catch-up development? I present case study evidence from Kenya to show that online freelancing has become an interesting sector, both in terms of its growth trajectory, and in terms of worker upward mobility in the global knowledge economy. As life everywhere moves further into the digital realm, and global internet connectivity between Africa and the rest of the world grows, more and more young Africans who stream onto the labour market may find work in the world of global online freelancing. I discuss the building blocks needed to make online work a sustainable vehicle for African catch-up development in the years ahead.
Topic:
Development, Science and Technology, Labor Issues, Internet, Exports, Manufacturing, and Industry
Political Geography:
Kenya and Africa

62. Socially Responsible Public Procurement (SRPP) in Multi-Level Regulatory Frameworks: Assessment Report on Policy Space for SRPP Regulation and Implementation in Germany and Kenya

Author:
Tim Stoffel
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS)
Abstract:
Public Procurement is a highly regulated process ruled by a complex legal framework. It comprises not only national but also, increasingly, sub- and supranational regulations, giving rise to a multi-level regulatory governance of public procurement. The integration of sustainability aspects into public procurement, as called for in goal 12.7 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the Agenda 2030, needs to take this multi-level character into account. This reports focuses on social considerations, which are a central part of sustainable procurement – whether with a domestic focus or along international value chains. Social considerations have been somewhat neglected in Europe, whereas they feature prominently in procurement regulations in many countries of the Global South, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The advanced process of regional integration in the European Union (EU) and the progress made towards integration in some regional economic communities in Sub-Saharan Africa call for deeper analyses of the influence of the higher levels of the regulatory framework on the lower levels. The question is whether public entities, from the national down to the local level, are required or at least have the option to integrate socially responsible public procurement (SRPP) into their procurement processes and tenders, or at least have the option to do so. This report is conducted as part of the project “Municipalities Promoting and Shaping Sustainable Value Creation (MUPASS) - Public Procurement for Fair and Sustainable Production”, implemented by DIE in cooperation with Service Agency Municipalities in One World (SKEW) with funds from the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and compares public procurement in Germany and Kenya. In both countries, the multi-level regulatory frameworks allow for SRPP regulations and practices ar the national and sub-national levels of government. There is, however, an implementation gap for SRPP in Germany and Kenya that appears to be independent from the specifics of the respective regulatory framework. To tackle this, supportive measures, such as capacity building, are key. Furthermore, Regional economic communities, such as the EU and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), can play a role in promoting SRPP, even without introducing mandatory provisions. At the other end of the multi-level regulatory spectrum, municipalities in the EU had and have an important role in SRPP implementation, that might be replicable by sub-national public entities in Kenya and other contexts.
Topic:
Development, Governance, Regulation, and Sustainable Development Goals
Political Geography:
Kenya, Africa, Europe, and Germany

63. From Optimism to Disillusionment: Examining Civil Society Perceptions of Police Vetting in Kenya

Author:
Daniel Blocq, Mary Mwikali, and Agatha Ndonga
Publication Date:
06-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ)
Abstract:
In 2013, a police vetting process began in Kenya in response to the 2007-2008 post-election violence. Some reports suggested that the police had failed to stop that violence, others that the police had actively contributed to it. For decades, the police force had been notorious for its corruption, extrajudicial killings, and torture. This was the context in which a comprehensive police reform program was set up, one that included a vetting component and was led by the newly established National Police Service Commission (NPSC). The NPSC was mandated to screen every officer inside the Kenyan police. Civil society organizations (CSOs) initially expressed a great deal of optimism about the vetting plans. Indeed, political will for the process seemed to be present. The vetting of the judiciary, which had started shortly before the police vetting and was considered to be quite successful, also strengthened CSOs’ beliefs that serious and genuine police vetting was possible. Unfortunately, their optimism quickly turned to disillusionment and their confidence in the process crumbled. Six years after the commencement of the police vetting process, CSO representatives commonly agreed that it had failed. From Optimism to Disillusionment: Examining Civil Society Perceptions of Police Vetting in Kenya, the report from ICTJ and the Van Vollenhoven Institute at the Leiden Law School, offers an account of the police vetting process in Kenya. Drawing on interviews with CSO representatives, former NPSC commissioners, staff, and panelists, and victims of police violence, the report focuses specifically on the causes underlying civil society’s disillusionment. One of these causes was the outcome of the vetting. Out of the estimated 80,000 officers in service, the commission vetted only 5,993, of whom 445 were found unsuitable and dismissed. While the program did subject the very top police commanders to vetting, and the early hearings occurred in public, which was groundbreaking, in the end less than 7.5 percent of all police officers were subjected to vetting. But the more important cause may have been the process. The commission was certainly not simply engaged in a whitewashing exercise, and was at times, at least initially, quite committed to the vetting process. But the NPSC was also seen by civil society as a commission that, crucially, did not always take the CSOs seriously, culminating in a lack of responsiveness, sensitivity, and transparency on the commission’s part. While the commission’s approach seems to have also resulted at least partially from external pressures, it seriously hurt the overall assessment of the vetting exercise by the CSOs. The report is accompanied by two additional publications. The briefing paper Hearings and Decision Making During Transitional Vetting Processes: Insights from Kenya focuses on micro-level decision making within the commission, illustrating how a combination of factors—discretion, decision makers’ experience, and social tensions—can affect the outcomes, perceptions, and legitimacy of a vetting process. The policy brief Reflections and Recommendations for Transitional Vetting draws on the research conducted in Kenya to highlight the importance of strategy, coherence, information gathering, communication, expertise, and political and material support in vetting processes more generally.
Topic:
Civil Society, Reform, Institutions, Police, and Vetting
Political Geography:
Kenya and Africa

64. Truth, Accountability, and Asset Recovery: How Transitional Justice Can Fight Corruption

Author:
Ruben Carranza
Publication Date:
08-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ)
Abstract:
On March 2 and 3, 2020, two weeks before the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a COVID-19 global pandemic, transitional justice and anti-corruption policymakers, experts, and activists from the Gambia, Kenya, South Africa and Armenia met with their counterparts in Tunisia for a two-day conference entitled, “Truth, Accountability and Asset Recovery: How Transitional Justice Can Fight Corruption,” organized by ICTJ with the support of Tunisia’s National Anti-Corruption Commission (INLUCC) and the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany. This diverse group of leaders came together to share solutions to a common problem: How can countries emerging from dictatorship, war, or political transitions hold corrupt ex-rulers accountable, recover their ill-gotten assets, and ensure that those harmed the most by human rights violations and large-scale corruption can achieve justice, obtain reparations, and overcome marginalization? For many countries pursuing transitional justice, including those represented by participants in the conference, the health and economic impact of the pandemic has made it more urgent to find and design solutions that advance accountability for both human rights violations and corruption. In Kenya, for example, citizens questioned the government’s use of $12 million in COVID-19-related aid from the World Bank, “amid reports that the lockdown intended to curb the spread of the virus had worsened poverty, even forcing a mother to cook stones to make her eight children believe she was preparing food for them.” In Tunisia, INLUCC “identified 11 instances of suspected corruption and conflicts of interest” related to a government deal to acquire millions of facemasks. At the conference, participants brought up the role of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in enabling corruption during dictatorship or in facilitating state capture through privatization. Ninety-seven human rights and anti-corruption groups have jointly reminded the IMF, which has offered loans to pandemic-hit countries even as it continues to set austerity as a condition, that “transparency and accountability are key to making sure the money the IMF is disbursing actually goes to protecting lives and livelihoods.” This report gives an overview of the conference and its five panel discussions. It presents the thematic questions posed in each panel and summarizes the panelists’ statements and the comments and questions from moderators, other panelists, and participants in the audience. By design, the premise of the conference was clear: The practice by mainly global South countries of including accountability for corruption in their transitional justice processes has settled the debate over whether accountability for corruption should be part of transitional justice. In 2008, the Kenya Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission began investigating land-grabbing, large-scale corruption, and violations of economic and social rights. Soon after the Arab Spring in 2011-2012, Tunisia took the most significant steps when it established the Truth and Dignity Commission (TDC) with a mandate that covered violent political repression as well as corruption under former President Ben Ali. In its recently released final report, the commission examines the extent of the corruption and how the development policies and austerity measures imposed by international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF enabled it. In 2016, the post-dictatorship government in the Gambia created a truth commission to examine human rights violations as well as a separate commission of inquiry to investigate ex-dictator Yahya Jammeh’s corruption and identify his ill-gotten wealth. The latter commission is now considering using part of those assets to fund reparations. Although corruption was excluded from the mandate of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, activists in 2017 created the People’s Tribunal on Economic Crime that linked the continuity of post-apartheid corruption to the failure to address it in earlier transitional justice processes. In 2018, the South African government then created the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture to investigate specific economic crimes during and after apartheid. After the 2018 revolution in Armenia that ended a decade of authoritarian rule in the post-Soviet state, the new government embarked on prosecutions for corruption and human rights violations and is now considering a truth commission that would examine specific cases of corruption and human rights violations since 1991. These processes informed the conference, and the panelists who were directly involved in them discussed the challenges, successes, and lessons learned. This report’s original intent was to highlight the most important lessons from these experiences and promote South-South exchanges on transitional justice and accountability for corruption. However, the unprecedented global pandemic during which the conference took place has given it another equally relevant purpose. As ICTJ pointed out in a recent special report on COVID-19, “The pandemic is bringing to the surface underlying inequalities, including the unequal access to health care.” With this in mind, the author hopes this report will also offer policymakers practical approaches to transitional justice that can help address those underlying inequalities, such as measures aimed at improving access to health care for the most vulnerable, and initiatives to use recovered ill-gotten assets to fund reparations for victims.
Topic:
Corruption, Reform, Criminal Justice, Institutions, Reparations, COVID-19, and Truth and Reconciliation
Political Geography:
Kenya, Europe, Armenia, North Africa, Tunisia, Gambia, and Africa

65. Digital ID and Risk of Statelessness

Author:
Grace Mutung'u and Isaac Rutenberg
Publication Date:
12-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Statelessness & Citizenship Review
Institution:
Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness, Melbourne Law School
Abstract:
tate issued digital identity is trending in sub-Saharan Africa,1 and Kenya has not been left behind. The government of Kenya launched the National Integrated Identity Management System (‘NIIMS’) in March 2019.2 Dubbed ‘Huduma Namba’, which translates to ‘service number’ in Swahili, the programme envisages a centralisation of identity programmes and the issuance of new unique personal identifiers to all citizens and registered foreigners in Kenya, but it has not been without problems. The legal situation for NIIMS is defined by an Executive Order, an amendment to the national ID law, Huduma Namba Regulations and a judgement from the High Court. Through Executive Order No 1 of 2018, the President directed the development of NIIMS to create and manage a central master population database, to be the ‘single source of truth’ on all Kenyan citizens and foreign nationals residing in Kenya.3 NIIMS was to serve as a reference point for personal data for Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and other approved stakeholders.
Topic:
Governance, Identity, Digitalization, and Stateless Population
Political Geography:
Kenya and Africa

66. Constraints to Enhanced Revenue Mobilization and Spending Quality in Kenya

Author:
Nelson H.W. Wawire
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development (CGD)
Abstract:
This study addresses constraints to enhanced revenue mobilization and spending quality in Kenya. The structure and growth of Kenya’s economy and spending quality have a bearing on its taxable capacity. Constraints to enhancement of revenue mobilization and spending quality include the existence of a large informal sector; inadequate information on property ownership; perceived corruption; inefficient use of public resources; political interference; volatile election cycles; abuse of tax incentives; uneven transfer pricing; illicit financial flows; and untaxed online businesses, coupled with poor administrative capacity and tax policy design. Policy implications on revenue performance are (1) the National Treasury and Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) should focus on property taxes and capital gains taxes to expand the tax base; (2) development partners are needed to direct technical assistance to the informal sector, to aid with transfer pricing, to monitor illicit financial flows, and to properly tax online businesses; (3) greater use of technology is needed to increase efficiency; (4) intervention by the Geospatial Information System is needed to link data on land and property ownership with tax information in the existing database; (5) a pay-for-results model needs to be deployed; (6) need to reduce tax expenditures; and policy reforms to be initiated in the agricultural sector. The policy implications on expenditure are (1) the need for efficient utilization of tax revenues; (2) the need for implementation of digital technologies; (3) the need to revisit an integrated financial management information system (IFMIS) configuration; (4) the need to adhere to long-term planning; and (5) adoption of the GFS 2014 reporting standard. Overall, an independent entity needs to be established that will set budget ceilings, monitor budget implementation, and carry out audits.
Topic:
Governance, Revenue Management, Public Spending, and Mobilization
Political Geography:
Kenya and Africa