It is difficult to tell why Kenya will not embrace open government like Rwanda

Rwanda President Paul Kagame. His administration has established security of a type unseen in many other countries.PHOTO/ CYRIL NDEGEYA

What you need to know:

  • In Rwanda, villagers are empowered to hold government and civic administrators accountable, and it’s all planned and conducted in public.
  • Transparent governance works best when citizens have a clear idea of what their national or county government is doing and how they are spending tax revenues.

I was in Rwanda recently as the nation prepared to mark the 20th anniversary of the genocide in which at least a million people perished in 1994. I was last in Rwanda four years ago and I am amazed at the remarkable achievements this tiny, landlocked nation of 10 million people has accomplished.

Over the last decade, the poverty rate has been halved; the GDP per capita has doubled, and the economy has averaged per capita growth of around eight per cent.

Health statistics are even more impressive. Over the years, Rwanda has dramatically accelerated the trend of progress on all key indicators including infant mortality, under-five mortality, maternal mortality and immunisation coverage

It has one of the highest numbers of people on Aids treatment in Africa, and their multi-drug resistant TB treatment approach is held up as a model that other countries come to learn from.

Many challenges remain, however. Agriculture is the mainstay of the economy but over-population, small land sizes, inefficient farming techniques, and poor post-harvest handling and storage facilities make the productivity and growth of the sector problematic.

Public sector expenditure and economic diversification are also constrained by lack of access to energy, insufficient human capital, and high transportation costs.

External funding still accounts for more than 40 per cent of the government budget. But, over the years, Rwanda used the steady and generous inflow of domestic and external resources to strengthen the system, including public finance and procurement, social and financial protection mechanisms for the poor, improving food security and the health system.

In doing all this, Rwanda often designed its own brand of reforms and customised models, staying away from donor funds and looking realistically at how best to balance sustainability and equity. What lessons can we learn from Rwanda?

ALL DONE IN PUBLIC

Perhaps the most important are in the realm of servant-leadership, discipline and transparency in public governance, taming corruption, promoting citizen participation and putting people first, and a relentless focus on results.

In Rwanda, villagers are empowered to hold government and civic administrators accountable, and it’s all planned and conducted in public. Politicians, civic administrators and public servants have clear performance targets that they need to meet and report on, and they are given resources for implementation.

President Paul Kagame’s administration has established security of a type unseen in many other countries. The Rwanda security alert report from SOS, a global organisation that issues travel advisories to international travellers puts it this way:

“Rwanda is regarded as one of the safest countries in Africa for foreign visitors and while reliable statistics are hard to find, anecdotal evidence attests to crime levels roughly on a par with those in western European countries.

This is partly due to a pervasive police presence, both covert and visible, and to a tightly controlled social fabric which, right down to the village or district level, encourages the observance of the law”.

A report on Kenya would make you think twice about even passing through the airport.

President Kagame has worked hard to stamp out corruption. And we all know what corruption is doing to the fabric of Kenyan society, including my own native County, Marsabit, which hogs the headlines for all the wrong reasons.

Transparent governance works best when citizens have a clear idea of what their national or county government is doing and how they are spending tax revenues.

It’s beyond me why an open government is so hard for Kenya to embrace – where decisions made are known and the implementation follows rules and procedures that are freely available and understandable to those directly affected.

Let us all be very clear: there is a direct and extremely dangerous link between poor governance, corruption, extremism and conflict – and Kenya is currently dancing on this cliff.

Mr Adano is a US-based human capacity development consultant from Marsabit.