Donors beginning to show Kenya respect

• The country’s debt proportion to the GDP is getting smaller

Other panelists were Prime Minister Raila Odinga, Finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta, aid activist Bob Geldof, Nobel Peace laureate Wangari Maathai and Akere Muna of Transparency International.

But experts like Ms Ndomo are warning that there could be more to the IMF’s new charm offensive than meets the eye.

“The government should know that the IMF is not our friend. I suspect the IMF might be out to lure the government into an expanded [aid] programme similar to the like the structural adjustment programmes (SAPs),” she says. “I don’t understand why the government even came to accept funds from the Exogenous Shocks Facility (ESF).”

IMF lent Kenya about $200 million from ESF to deal with the effects of the global financial crisis in June last year.

SAPs were a series of economic and social reforms imposed on Kenya by the IMF and the World Bank in the 1980s and ‘90s as a condition for aid.

They were linked to increased unemployment following mass layoffs from the civil service, cost-sharing policies that made it difficult for the poor to get education and health services and low standards of living in the country, among other things.

jkotieno@ke.nationmedia.com