Why foreign funding must be taken with a pinch of salt

Devolution Cabinet Secretary Mwangi Kiunjuri delivers his keynote speech at the launch of the Public Participation Guidelines and Civic Education Curriculum at KICC on April 27, 2016. Every nation needs a population that is well versed with its civic duty. PHOTO | KNA

What you need to know:

  • Kenyans should be allowed to make their political choices without interference, financial or otherwise, from external players.
  • At the end of the day we need a country and leadership that we can clearly own and does not owe allegiance to a foreign master.

The issue of foreign funding is not new in Kenya.

It is, in fact, not new anywhere in the world and would therefore ordinarily not make news.

But this week it has been a point of national discussion, more so after President Uhuru Kenyatta made reference to it in his Jamhuri Day speech on Monday.

A day or so later, there was a detailed report in the dailies alluding to billions of shillings foreign countries and organisations have allegedly poured into the country through civil societies.

There was also an allusion to local foundations whose bank accounts could not be verified and whose activities are not so open and whose legality was questioned by the NGOs Coordination Board.

In a developing country, any financial assistance is always welcome.

There are hundreds of compatriots who face hunger, disease, ignorance and abuse to whom foreign funds are the only visible and practical hope they will be alive a month or year later.

There is, no doubt, so much that money from friendly foreign countries has done and continues to do in improving the lot of this nation.

Such assistance should not be discouraged or frowned upon.

But listening to President Kenyatta, I could not help but agree with him on one basic issue.

However needy we are, we need also to be wary of the intention and eventual use of the resources given to us.

BEING VIGILANT
Let us look at civic education for instance.

It is not in doubt that every nation needs a population that is well versed with its civic duty, rights and obligations.

Where the government is incapable of putting in place adequate measures to ensure citizens acquire the necessary awareness, then it is only fair that the international community and charitable organisations come in and offer assistance to achieve that end.

But caution needs to be taken to guard against possible ulterior motives that could harm Kenya and its people.

It is, for instance, the same channels used by well-meaning donors that could be used by extremist and terrorist groups to spread their ideologies and inculcate radical ideas.

There must be ways of moderating the curriculum of civic education and not necessarily adopting anything that comes in the name of change.

As the President put it, regime change should not be allowed to be the overriding basis of civic education.

Kenyans should be allowed to make their political choices without interference, financial or otherwise, from external players.

It cannot be lost on us that foreign interference in the political affairs of other countries has, in many cases, produced very bad results.

Zaire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, and recently, Libya are where they are because some apparently well-meaning foreign financiers thought they knew what was good for the people. New, is not necessarily better.

VITAL QUESTIONS

And then there is the issue of accountability on the use of the funds “donated” through NGOs.

While donor nations and agencies have been very vocal, and rightly so, on the need for funds channelled through government to be used strictly for the purposes they are given, little is made public about the accounting of monies given to NGOs.

We are aware of situations where the government has been made to return funds donated for a programme but which, for one reason or another, were not spent on it.

Not much is known about what happens in the NGO world!

Why, for instance, did it take the NGO Coordination Board to “send a secret memo to the National Intelligence Service director” for the public to know that Sh16 billion had been given to the country through NGOs by foreign agencies?

How was the money used and how much is left?

When, as the reports indicate, an NGO is given money for voter registration, what exactly does it do with it given that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission does the registration?

A few ideals need to be protected. These include the need for Kenyans to be able to exclusively decide their leaders, minimal external interference in determining the results of elections and unbiased civic education.

At the end of the day we need a country and leadership that we can clearly own and does not owe allegiance to a foreign master.