INEQUALITY IN KENYA
INTRODUCTION
After independence, the few educated Kenyans easily acquired wealth, without competition, and major changes since then has spawned few rich people because this group perfected ways of ensuring that wealth does not leak out, including marrying among themselves. Distribution of benefits of economic growth has been one of Kenya’s biggest challenges in its quest for long term prosperity and stability putting the suitability of the trickle-down economics that Presidents use after coming to power under intense scrutiny.
Recent events in Kenya have cast a disturbing light on the depth and complexity of social distress in the country. The conflict arising from the disputed presidential elections has roots in inequality, poverty, poor governance and a host of other issues. However the major underlying issue is clearly the perception of deliberate unfairness and inequality in the distribution of national resources. However it can also be argued that beyond the real biases in resource allocation is the widespread failure of the State due to deliberate policies of retreat compounded by unchecked corruption. Poverty has progressively deepened as the state has reduced its provisioning of social services. This retreat of the state has been coincident with the slow and persistent decline that characterized the country’s economic performance from the 1980’s until the turn of the century. Thus narrowing economic perspectives due to declining economic growth, deepening inequality and pauperization due to Structural Adjustment and the arbitrary ravages of corruption have combined to create a multidimensional social crisis.
The DPMF’s research on Social Policy Development and Governance has hinted at the inherent dangers of the ever yawning gap between the elite and marginalized majority in this country. Public policy has failed to gauge the depth of alienation and the consequent explosive social climate. However signs of the malaise have been apparent to scholars and policy makers for decades. Since independence Kenya has been characterized by a huge gap between the rich and the poor. This gap has come with its own impacts and consequences. Education was supposed to mitigate inequality or be the great equalizer but it has ended in being the greatest uneqauliser. Parents have come to realize that. In fact, one other measure of inequality in Kenya is the emergence of private schools. School can make up for the deficiency in intellectual endowment., Rich parents can hire tutors , the school you go to determines how far up the social ladder one will go. Unequal access to all levels of education is a basic characteristic of the educational system in Kenya. This leads to deepening regional, class and gender differentiation in the country. Further the content of the education in Kenya is skewed in favor of the softer subjects for the service sector at the expense of IT and other development relevant science technologies. Majority of the poor households are not able to afford funds to take their children to school. This creates a gap in the society because opportunities distribution in the market is based on the different levels of education. Through the social welfare and education systems, the country has managed to reduce tensions amongst economic groups.

Crime and Insecurity in Kenya: It is clear that the interplay between economic, social and political factors have contributed to crime and state of insecurity. Key issues that have a bearing on crime and insecurity include inequality and poverty: most crime committed is poverty related with crimes such as stealing and robberies forming the bulk of crime recorded. Inequality in terms of access to social amenities and economic opportunities is also a big contributory factor in exacerbating crime. Conflict amongst pastoral communities has increased dramatically and is attributed to poverty and inequality in accessing infrastructure, social amenities and resources like water and land. Politics has sparked off the latest post-election violence. The violence and conflict are rooted in the favoritisms of state practice based on ethnic alliances. Political activities that have often spilled over into violence and hence insecurity are a characteristic feature of Kenya and these have serious implications. Poverty and inequality are a major cause of crime, violence and conflict and therefore general insecurity. More important however is the absence of democratic governance which has led to the manipulation of state institutions giving rise to rampant corruption, ethnicisation of state institutions, absence of accountability and generalized impunity granted to the power elite. The state has thus failed to provide a general state of peace and security and leads people to feeling that the law is applied in a discriminatory manner and that they are abandoned and unprotected.
The effects of a wide income gap in the population include low business confidence rendering transactions almost impossible. This coupled with an unsettled population that clamors for better living conditions and overall low productivity of goods and services. Incidentally these are characteristics already exhibited in Kenya and thus the time is opportune for corrective measures to be swiftly implemented. The poor were unable to secure banking services. Credit facilities were impossible to obtain. Times are changing, as banks in sub-Saharan Africa are fast realizing that banking the poor is worth the risk. Most of the credit facilities sought are small, manageable amounts, which borrowers can comfortably service. This pattern must be encouraged. Requirements and obligations need to be ‘friendlier’ to the borrowers and priority should be given to small businesses. Banks and micro-finance institutions can in addition add value by refining inferior business plans to categorically pursue profitability and growth. The ripple effect is obvious. There will be more employment opportunities and a definite focus on innovative products and services, with an impact on incomes.
Agriculture and tourism are the two top foreign exchange earners for Kenya. Taking the case of agriculture, incomes from exports can be better. The bottleneck constitutes little or absent value addition resulting in the continued exporting of raw materials which are then finalized into consumable products in the West. Even a layman can imagine the enormous potential of value addition to the country’s agricultural produce if manufacturing industries are to be added in the equation. Incomes at the primary level of the farmer will definitely be better. And this is the beauty of a fluent and efficient economy. Naturally there will be innovation through research, this trickling into vocational institutions that will produce qualified individuals who perfectly fit the skill gaps available. This then translates to a competitive labor market that attracts good income levels, which improves living standards and contributes to the eradication of poverty.
Another instrument that can assist in narrowing income disparity is the integration of a progressive tax system. East Africa’s tax regime is one of a kind making it comfortable for the rich but is burdensome for the poor. This ought to be reversed, placing stricter tax policies on the wealthier members of society to improve lower incomes. Many a government’s attempt is not to appear socialist where incomes are drastically averaged that an entire market lacks initiative to engage in hard work. This is not the argument here. What is rooted for is a balanced approach that allows the wealthy to still enjoy their levels of income but on the other hand strengthening the purchasing power of the low income earners.
All these sincere efforts do boil down to the political will to see change for the masses. Governments casually commit in writing but not in action. Leaders know what ought to be done. The hesitance to apply corrective measures to the malaise that is poverty is an indication that states want to deliberately maintain status quo. It’s easy to govern a desperate, miserable and needy population since it dances to whichever tune is played. Contrary to the practice in the West, the Kenyan capitalist system is fundamentally wrong and it is bound to create problems for all, both poor and rich. Firstly, Kenya’s high income inequalities between the rich and the poor are a recipe for insecurity. It is a known fact that the so-called economic growth and development in Kenya benefits largely a minority population. The rest of the population has been marginalized because the anticipated trickle-down effect from economic growth has failed to ensure equitable redistribution of the national wealth. A situation of this nature exposes the political system to great strain and generates serious social and economic vulnerability for many, and for which the solution lies in ensuring that redistribution of wealth accompanies economic growth as an economic imperative. Through such an approach, the state may ameliorate the plight of the poor and enhance equity. Unless this is done, the unfair distribution of wealth precludes the participation of many in development efforts and undermines poverty reduction strategies. Therefore, aggressive policy measures to redistribute wealth should not be seen negatively as diversion of public resources away from the productive sectors. After all, people are the most important actors in the development process and for whom national development should be undertaken. In Kenya, the economic system has tended to strengthen the hold of a privileged minority that continues to grow richer as the poor get poorer, obliging the latter to resort to forceful reallocation of wealth or violent crimes.
The second weakness of the Kenyan capitalist system is that it lacks social and institutional mechanisms to ensure equitable national development. Instead, it strengthens non-egalitarian tendencies that create conditions in which poverty continues to afflict many despite a growing national economic output. Furthermore, wrong value systems and attitudes have been inculcated to rationalize such tendencies in which acquiring wealth by cutting corners is viewed ambivalently by the masses. In a typical capitalist system in the West, there are strict rules to ensure that wealth is earned genuinely through sheer hard work. Therefore, there is need for some sort of a cultural revolution in Kenya to inculcate the right mindset towards acquisition of wealth, and to disabuse the popular belief that it is all right to acquire wealth by any means. The finding on inequality only confirms the yawning gap between the haves and have-nots across the country linked to high unemployment rates, failed policy interventions, and high of corruption on government that diverts large sums of public resources meant to lift those at the bottom of the pyramid from poverty. More recently, the government has responded to mass poverty with the roll out of multi-billion shilling plans meant to create jobs and shield the poorest from mass starvation. The government spent Sh3.8 billion on small and medium sized firms last year but most of the projects have suffered under the weight of corruption and poor execution.
Large sums of money were also spent in the maize subsidy programme meant to cushion the vulnerable from high food prices but the state is estimated to have lost Sh23.4 billion to bureaucrats and political wheeler-dealers leaving the targeted segments of the population in a neutral position.
Persistence of the high unemployment rates pose the risk of widening the income gap even further. The government estimates that the youth, in particular, suffer from a 21 per cent unemployment rate, excluding those in colleges.
“A large number of people outside gainful employment means a slide further into poverty while the few who have jobs continue to build mountains of wealth year-on-year,”( Tiberius Baraza of the Institute of Policy Analysis and Research) many economists have, by and large rightly, focused more on poverty than inequality. Poverty not only causes low standards of living and poor health but damages both individuals and society by preventing those at the bottom from realizing their potential, perhaps because they are unable to obtain a decent quality of education to prepare them for competition in the labor market. While poverty is clearly the more important factor in creating a non-level playing field, inequality may also be a nontrivial factor: those with greater wealth provide to their children resources and thus opportunities that the less wealthy cannot, and this may make it more difficult for society to achieve equality of opportunity.
Third and most importantly, inequality impacts politics. Economic power tends to beget political power even. This political channel implies another, potentially more powerful and distortionary link between inequality and a non-level playing field. It may also create pathways from inequality to instability, because both the economic and political implications of inequality can create various backlashes.
CONCLUSSION
Kenya has been ranked among the most unequal societies in the world, indicating that steady growth that the country realized in the past five years has done little to bridge the wide gap between the rich and the poor.
A new report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on the quality of life across the globe says up to 60 per cent of Kenyans live in poor conditions with no access to quality education and health services, while a further 23 per cent are on the borderline of poverty.
In moderated capitalist systems, there is effective injection of a heavy dose of socialist-like policies in order to create a safety net for the majority who tend to be marginalized whenever the capitalist system fails to satisfy wants, requiring that the state should intervene invariably through redistributive policies. In Kenya it is necessary for the state to come up with policies that will help narrow the gap between the rich and the poor in the society, as a yardstick to achieving the millennium development goals. "Lack of necessary infrastructure especially in rural areas has tilted wealth creation against the poor. Therefore there is need for policies to address these concerns," Another instrument that can assist in narrowing income disparity is the integration of a progressive tax system. East Africa’s tax regime is one of a kind making it comfortable for the rich but is burdensome for the poor. This ought to be reversed, placing stricter tax policies on the wealthier members of society to improve lower incomes. Many a government’s attempt is not to appear socialist where incomes are drastically averaged that an entire market lacks initiative to engage in hard work. This is not the argument here. What is rooted for is a balanced approach that allows the wealthy to still enjoy their levels of income but on the other hand strengthening the purchasing power of the low income earners.
All these sincere efforts do boil down to the political will to see change for the masses. Governments casually commit in writing but not in action. Leaders know what ought to be done. The hesitance to apply corrective measures to the malaise that is poverty is an indication that states want to deliberately maintain status quo. It’s easy to govern a desperate, miserable and needy population since it dances to whichever tune is played.

REFERENCES 1. Abdalla Burja and Said Adjemunobi (2003) Political culture, governance and the state in Africa. 2. Abdalla Burja (1998) Democratic transition in Kenya: the struggle from liberal to social democracy. 3. M. H. Khalil Timamy (2002) the political economy of technological underdevelopment in Africa. 4. The Standard Newspaper Kenya.

Compiled by Yvonne Nzisa