New development goals beckon, but the problems are the same

Mary Lochipo’s childhood was spent on the plains of Turkana County often herding goats and braving the merciless sun.

At 30 years, she is now a mother of seven, all of who were born at home. Her husband, Musa Iwose earns a living doing menial jobs in Lodwar town, some ten kilometres away.

On a good day, he earns 100 shillings. On a bad day, he goes back home empty-handed. He spends other days perched on a traditional stool as his wife weaves a basket or brooms to be sold.

Ms Ewoton Ng’ilimo, 52, too, has never left this county. She is widowed with three children, and two of them are married but jobless. They spent their nights in dung-walled huts on palm-frond mats.

Together, the Ng’limo’s and Lochipo’s form part of the Nataparakakono village, a long stretch of communal land patched with thorny bushes north of Lodwar town.

Here, women weave home craft to get daily bread. The men roam about town looking for something to do and get paid. The community is in constant food, water and shelter shortage.

A new school was built here a few years ago from the Constituency Development Fund and supported by the county government. Even then, the Nataparakakono children are often skipping classes for one reason or another.

Girls in their prime of adolescence stay away to go through menses. The boys may be absent because they have gone to fetch ground for water some two kilometres away. Overall, the families may have lacked money to buy them school needs, or pay any funds needed.

“We don’t have water and the land here does not support any crops,” Lochipo told the Nation on Thursday, carrying a bunch of new brooms she had woven and with four of her children

“I make brooms and mats but I can’t get ready market so I have to keep waiting for someone to buy. Sometimes we take them to town (Lodwar) but only the people arriving from other parts of the country can buy so we still wait.”

Turkana County is one of the largest counties in Kenya but it is also one of the poorest. According to the Commission on Revenue Allocation, just about 121, 000 children have enrolled in primary school out of a population of 855,000.

This is a small ratio, given about half of the population are aged below 14 years. The eldest of Lochipo’s children is 14 and attends the local primary school where her mother hopes she will one day become a doctor and lift them from the wretched life they live now.

The situation in Turkana could be the reason the UN is developing new goals to tackle poverty. Fifteen years ago, the UN agreed to pass eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) aimed at eradicating poverty and each country was to pursue them.

They included eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality and empowering women, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating HIV/Aids, malaria and other diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability and developing a global partnership for development. But critics charged those targets were too general and ignored local requirements for each country.

Next month, the UN is expected to formally approve the new targets, known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The new goals identify poverty as the greatest challenge still focus on the five Ps: people, planet, prosperity, peace, and partnership as a way of getting people out of poverty without violence or depleting the environment.

“They are people-centred and planet-sensitive. They are universal – applying to all countries while recognising different realities and capabilities,” observed UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on Monday.

“Fundamentally, they recognise that we cannot reach our development goals without addressing human rights and complex humanitarian issues at the same time.”

But what will Kenya be required to do? Kenya will have to focus on innovation, reduce corruption and redistribute its wealth to people if it is to achieve a new set of global development goals reached.

Foreign Affairs CS Amina Mohamed said the new SDGs will be welcome to Kenya especially since they have defined how each of the goals should be achieved.

“The new agenda defines the requisite means of achieving it through both the financial and non-financial means of implementation. It defines the link with the means developed by the third conference on financing for development and recognizes its complementary role,” she said in a statement.

The new targets seek to have authorities producing accurate data about development and will be implemented and monitored through those national development indicators which will in turn be compared with global measures.
Ms Mohamed argued that this will be advantageous because it will be voluntary and countries will compared with neighbours before being ranked alongside their peers in the distant world.

For Kenya though, the basics for eradicating poverty will go back to the usual song of fighting corruption, supporting the youth to innovate, promoting national cohesion, ensuring there is enough to eat without depleting the environment and helping everyone to take part in these programmes.

The new deal talks of factors which give rise to violence, insecurity and injustice, such as inequality, corruption, poor governance and illicit financial and arms flows; issues that could resonate with Kenya’s recent past.

“Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation,” says Goal 9 that talks about the need for reliable systems to support transboundary relations and generally reach everyone.

At Goal 16, the document talks of having peaceful and inclusive societies, a better justice system and accountable institutions.

“Substantially reduce corruption and bribery in all their forms. Develop effective, accountable and transparent institutions at all levels,” it says.

“Achieve higher levels of economic productivity through diversification, technological upgrading and innovation,” says another goal.