“My Member of parliament is not keen to prioritize women’s projects. But who can I tell? How do I keep him accountable? He is the final authority there,” says Maureen Anyango, 32.
Anyango, a resident of Naivasha, a market town in the Rift Valley Province, lying north west of Nairobi, is distressed. She believes development projects funded by the Constituency Development Fund, a fund established in 2004 that aims to control imbalances in regional development brought about by partisan politics, should focus on immediate and tangible needs that benefit the widest segment of the community. She wonders why the projects are often so complex when the basic needs here are simple. Food. Water.
Fifteen years ago, Kenya’s leaders took part in The World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen. Along with 100 other leaders and heads of state, Kenya’s leaders made a commitment to reducing poverty by creating people-centered developing opportunities. But poverty is still on the rise here and it is unclear what concrete steps have been taken to pursue the pledge of poverty reduction.
Today it is estimated that nearly half of Kenya’s ever-expanding population, now nearing 50 million, lives below the poverty line.
There are, of course, many contributing factors. Land clashes and disputes in rural Kenya. Political tension in the aftermath of the violence that broke out post-election in 2007. Climate change. The continued spread of HIV/AIDS.
According to ActionAid International, the burden of poverty falls disproportionately on women. More than 70 percent of Kenya’s severely impoverished are women.
Women Experience Poverty Disproportionately
Kenyan women often have little opportunity to influence the political, economic or social processes that control and shape their lives.
A new study by ActionAid International–Kenya,revealed that while women in Kenya provide over 70 percent of the agricultural labor force, they own only one percent of registered land titles.
According to Sophie W. Khasacha of the Center for Development and Empowerment, “Women are the majority of the poor and their poverty is more intense than that of their male counterparts.” Khasacha says women here lack decision-making opportunities that “continue to impede women’s advancement.”
Land Disputes Play a Role
Land is a polemic thing in Kenya. A recent report from the Ndung’u Commission on Illegal and Irregular Allocation of Public Land notes that land is crucial in determining development patterns and plays a significant role in social and political stability.
The majority of Kenyans live on arid or semi-arid land. Just 20 percent of the country’s land has strong agricultural possibility.
In 1963, land ownership changed from communal to individual ownership. This gave rise to several long-standing property disputes throughout the country and specifically volatile in the north. In 2008, the World Bank noted that “severe inequalities” in Kenyan society would continue to trigger land-based disputes.
When post-election violence broke out in 2007, thousands of people were displaced and what followed was a land grab that remains the source of conflict.
The residents of Kianjoya Village in Mau Narok, near the town of Nakuru still have not returned to their homeland since the post-election violence. They are afraid to return to their homesteads and farms due to continued tensions that are triggered by the residents of the nearby Mau Forest, who claimed the land in their absence.
“I cannot spend a night at my [farm] which my husband bought, about thirty years ago,” says Mary Kimeu, a 49 year old resident of Kianjoya. “However, my sons and I often take trips to cultivate the land or harvest, but only during the day.” She says she is afraid of the people from the Mau Forest. “They have killed many of our people,” she claims.
The camp where they now reside consists of mud-thatched huts. It is safer, she says. But without continual access to her farm, crops and better shelter, poverty remains a way of life.
AIDS Rates, AIDS Orphans Continue to Rise
An estimated two million people in Kenya are HIV positive and 1.2 million children here have been orphaned by AIDS.
In the Nakuru district, female-headed households are common in the wake of AIDS. “My mother was a single parent. Since she died, I have been forced to stay with relatives,” says Patrick Muriithi, aged 23, who says he does not have the money to pay his school fees to attend college.
Like Muriithi, millions of young people here face serious challenges including, high rates of unemployment, now nearly 40 percent. In the absence of what he calls “adequate opportunity, he admits engaging in risky behavior. “I try to use protection whenever I can,” Muriithi says of his sexual activities. “Sometimes I get lucky when the Ministry of Health or a local non-governmental group has a random distribution of condoms,” he says.
HIV/AIDS, experts say, causes a spiral of poverty. When a parent contracts the disease, the family increases spending on health care. At the same time, productivity and income decreases. In villages, food production and income drop dramatically as more adults are affected.
Once savings have been depleted, a family is forced to seek support from relatives, borrow money or sell assets. Frequently, children are forced to discontinue schooling.
The Constituency Development Fund, CDF, recognizes AIDS as a primary factor contributing to Kenya’s cycle of poverty.
A Participatory Approach
The CDF committee, headed by a constituency’s member of parliament, allows local communities to participate in development projects. Community members can set their development agenda, by suggesting development projects.
Beatrice P. Onsongo was recently appointed as a women’s representative on the CDF committee for the Nakuru Constituency of the Rift Valley Province. She says she is distressed by the poverty levels among women that have become so common here. “Although women constitute a majority of the labor force, they are poorer than men,” she says.
“I am surrounded by extreme poverty. However, I am very fortunate to have had some basic formal education,” Onsongo says. “Some of my colleagues are not very fortunate, and I have a deep desire to help [other women]. ”
Onsongo admits that she has struggled to get parliament members to recognize and fund women-centered projects. Onsongo is now devoting much of her time to training women to write proposals to the CDF. “Most of the women are yearning for funding opportunities to enable them entry into adult education classes known as ‘masomo ya ngumbaro’ in Kiswahili,” Onsongo says, adding that illiteracy largely contributes to their lack of success in gaining funding.
Onsongo says she is going to start with the basics – food and water. So far she has been successful in implementing a water purification program.
