research

The issue of corruption overshadows donor relations with the Kenyan government. Much of the corruption reflects holdouts from the earlier regime of more than two decades, corrupt officials who have not yet been weeded out. Part of the corruption is new and completely avoidable, but only if donors help Kenya to improve the functioning of the public administration, not by moralizing and finger pointing but by the installation of computer systems, published accounts, job training and upgrading, higher pay for senior managers so that they do not have to live off bribes and side payments, continued support for the government's already major efforts to improve the judicial system, empowerment of local villages to oversee the provision of public services, and some humility on the part of donors. Most donor governments have corruption inside their own governments and even in the provision of foreign aid (which is often linked to powerful political interests within the donor countries). The affliction is widespread and needs to be attacked systematically and cleverly, but without useless and false moralizing.

Donors should sit down with the government leadership and say, "We'd like to help you scale up the Big Five in Kenya's villages to enable you to ensure that all of Kenya's rural poor have access to agricultural inputs, health, education, electricity, communications and transport, and safe water and sanitation. Together, let's design a budgetary and management system that will reach the villages and ensure a monitorable, governable, and scalable set of interventions across the country. We're prepared to pay if you are prepared to ensure good governance on such a historic project." Private international consulting firms could be brought in to help design these systems and to lend credibility to their implementation and performance.

-Sachs, Jeffrey, The End of Poverty: How We Can Make It In Our Lifetime. London: Penguin, 2005.