In President Ruto’s visit to America, it is not what happened at the White House that was of significance to us as Kenyans. We are at peace with all our neighbours. The Rwanda-Congo Peace Agreement (Washington Accord) primarily helps Rwanda and Congo stop their war — which is not our war.
It is what happened elsewhere, at the State Department, that mattered most to us.
At the State Department (which I am proud to brag kidogo I have been to — LOL), President Ruto finally removed the last vestiges of Kenya’s so called ‘Health Sector NGOs’ from direct health funding by US government, which has now been redirected to the government’s health ministry!
In the 1990s, civil society groups accusing President Moi’s regime of wanton corruption and embezzlement managed to convince the Americans to divert funding form government to NGOs, many of which were based in Nairobi with little to no contact with the vast majority of Kenyans living in rural areas, where only the government had the state networks and provincial reach to serve citizens.
I always ask myself if the Moi state was that corrupt, how was it possible to deliver milk to all primary schools across Kenya, to all school kids in those schools; in quantities which left enough for teachers and their children?
The final decade of President D.T. Arap Moi saw him lose the grip of the state to Kikuyu-Luo axis; but the successor to Moi became worse than Moi in all facets of public life they’d accused Moi of strangling.
Under the post-Moi “Mwamko Mpya”, corruption, tribalism, state capture, ineptitude, incompetence and the mass empoverishment of regions as resources increasingly got concentrated to one region, for one people; culminating in one of Kenya’s worst murder sprees to protect and sustain a new quo that had long lost its status, made a mockery of all that the so called “second liberation” had been about. Moism without Moi was not progress.
The point here is that with funding to Kenya successfully diverted from state to NGOs, billions in American dollars lined the pockets of a few Kenyans who had quickly learnt the rubrics of donor funding, adept at developing concept papers and funding proposals in the correct donor language.
The American government would release billions to american NGOs, who would liaise with Kenyan NGOs through USAid and other American church affiliated agencies. Billions would be siphoned off in America itself; with crumbs reaching Nairobi-based NGOs. Nothing ever reached Ndhiwa.
As explained by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, America is done with NGOs. Both in the USA and in Kenya. The Trump administration demolished USAID, remodelling international financing through trade and commercial deals.
In USA, the Trump administration is undertaking a massive investigation of corrupt networks within the diaspora Somali community, who perfected the rip-off of America; but the somalis are not alone.
Uko seatto mambo kangaja huenda yakaja…
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Anyway, Kenya under Ruto, which learnt very fast and reworked itself, is the FIRST ‘third world’ country to benefit from a new American power desperate to dismantle an old, corrupt order.
My friend Alando Evans tells me all the time, “bro these niggaz ain’t no jokes”.
Sometimes it is good to have a president who is a MUKORA. Peace for Rwanda and Congo; prosperity for Kenya! Ahsante Bwana Githinji!
KUMI BILA BREAK!
