What Magufuli presidency means for Uhuru’s reign

Iconoclastes said:
Geza Ulole, Tanzania grew when Kenya was 'down', grappling with poor governance and mismanagement during the regime of Moi, and during the political and social crises that follwed the 2007 PEV. Include terrorism to that, it was such a heady brew that saw our economy spiralling downwards.
But our current govt (and the previous one) is struggling to fix all that.

It isnt like Tanzania isnt experiencing its own development challenges that has kept it from achieving its goals to this day. And they will still hound the country for a long time in the future cos those challenges are wide-ranging and complex to sort them all at once.

Tanzania has everything to be even greater than SA today, and what does Kenya have.....well the oil was discovered just recently and its yet to be exploited. But, it's a country that has been operating with very limited mineral resources, except for its skilled man-power, a vibrant private sector and tourism.
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but Magufuli can stay in power for 10 years and believe me if he keeps this momentum i am pretty sure we will catch up and surprass kenya! First you have election coming up and i have a strong reason to believe will not be conflict free looking at what is brewing between Ruto and Kenyatta (Jubilee) and Raila
 
Geza Ulole said:
but Magufuli can stay in power for 10 years and believe me if he keeps this momentum i am pretty sure we will catch up and surprass kenya! First you have election coming up and i have a strong reason to believe will not be conflict free looking at what is brewing between Ruto and Kenyatta (Jubilee) and Raila
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What you dont remember is we have a new constitution not those colonial type constitutions like tanzania's and the rest.Kenya's growth is dependent on institutions not one individual(s) like Uhuruto!Kenyas grows on stronger as we go on with the implementation of our constitution!If you guys are waiting for Magufuli to take you to Canaan on his own,you are up for a rude shock!It has been tried before in Kenya and it has failed,I mean every citizen and state institutions too have a role in the success of a nation,keep looking up to your president alone it will be a long way down from there my friend!
 
pingli-nywee said:
What you dont remember is we have a new constitution not those colonial type constitutions like tanzania's and the rest.Kenya's growth is dependent on institutions not one individual(s) like Uhuruto!Kenyas grows on stronger as we go on with the implementation of our constitution!If you guys are waiting for Magufuli to take you to Canaan on his own,you are up for a rude shock!It has been tried before in Kenya and it has failed,I mean every citizen and state institutions too have a role in the success of a nation,keep looking up to your president alone it will be a long way down from there my friend!
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stronger how?

Your Devolution PS just resigned out of graft

Revealed: How Devolution ministry tried to change details in Sh826m payout
Contentious fund committed to civil works projects.

Dn+clean+up+1909a.JPG.jpg

President Uhuru Kenyatta (second left), Cabinet Secretary for Devolution and Planning Anne Waiguru (third left) and NYS Director Nelson Githinji (left) inspect a clean-up exercise in Kibera. Police investigations have revealed that documents used to transfer Sh800 million from the National Youth Service headquarters were forged. FILE PHOTO | PSCU

In Summary
  • YS has three IFMIS accounts: consultancies, food and civil works.
  • Contentious fund committed to civil works projects.
  • Documents show NYS Deputy Director Adan Harakhe called IFMIS Director Jerome Ochieng to open up the accounting system to delete details of some payments.
ANDREW TEYIE and VINCENT ACHUKA


Fresh details have emerged on how the Devolution ministry attempted to arm-twist Treasury officials to alter details of the controversial Sh826 million National Youth Service (NYS) payments in the electronic platform known as the Integrated Financial Management Information Systems (IFMIS).

Documents also show that Treasury Principal Secretary Kamau Thugge had, in a letter dated May 7, raised the red flag on the goings-on at the Devolution ministry by cautioning PS Peter Mangiti against engaging in improper financial procedures.

“We wish to reiterate that it is a violation of the Public Finance Management Act, which states that it is an offence of financial misconduct if, without lawful authority, an officer incurs expenditure or makes a commitment on behalf of the government or entity since this results in pending bills,” Dr Thugge wrote.

According to documents seen by the Sunday Nation, just before the issue spilled over to the public, NYS deputy director Adan Gedow Harakhe tried to work backwards to correct the situation by calling on IFMIS director Jerome Ochieng to open up the accounting system to delete the payments.

“The purpose of this letter is to request that various Local Purchase and Service Orders be reversed and be decommitted from the system. The officer from NYS who will execute this task is Ms Leah Guchuka,” wrote Mr Harakhe in a letter dated May 27.

Mr Harakhe argued that because his password had allegedly been stolen by unknown people, the payments should be deleted from the system in which funds are allocated for specific jobs undertaken by ministries to avoid pending bills. Opening the system would have freed the funds for NYS to use as it wished, contrary to the rules.

An official from the Treasury, who spoke in confidence, said that making changes on IFMIS entries without written authority from Treasury Secretary Henry Rotich acting on written instructions from the PS or Cabinet secretary of the concerned ministry would lead to a full-blown investigation by Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission.

IFMIS was introduced to ensure transparency and accountability in procurement and payment in government.

SOURCE OF TENSION

On Thursday, Devolution CS Anne Waiguru said she had written to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations over attempts to steal Sh826 million from NYS. The appointment of Mr Harakhe to deputise NYS director-general Nelson Githinji has also been seen as a source of tension, something Ms Waiguru has denied.

Before the issue became public, Mr Harakhe had hit the panic button after an NYS officer (name withheld) who initiated the payments process in IFMIS to clear some bills in NYS pronects in Nairobi’s Kibera and Mukuru settlements declined to alter the documents, saying it would be tantamount to interfering with police investigations.

The NYS has three IFMIS accounts: consultancies, food and civil works. The contentious funds had been committed for civil works projects.

Funds in each account must be used for a specific job allocated. NYS had encroached on the civil works account to pay other bills after exhausting funds in food and consultancy accounts.

The Treasury officials are said to have rejected Mr Harakhe’s request and asked for a letter from PS Mangiti, who is yet to commit himself on the issue a month later.

On Saturday, Ms Waiguru took to social media to circulate documents showing that she informed the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) on June 5, more than a month after the incident. This was seen as an attempt to counter criticism on social media.

“I contacted the CID when Adan Harakhe informed me that his password had been stolen and money committed to NYS IFMIS,” Ms Waiguru said via her Twitter account.

In one of the letters, she asked DCI boss Ndegwa Muhoro to call in the Cybercrime Unit.

“This matter is of grave concern to me as the minister in charge. I am, therefore, requesting you to instruct the Cybercrime Unit to undertake urgent and thorough investigations to establish the exact happenings and extent of the activities,” wrote Ms Waiguru.

IN A HURRY

On Thursday, she held a press conference defending various payments, including to Mr Mutahi Ngunyi’s Consulting House, Transcend Media Group, Bora Global Ltd, Ms Things of Desire, and Brand Associates.

Just before the reading of the Budget, the Devolution ministry seemed to be in a hurry to claim Sh5 billion from Treasury.

“The purpose of this letter is to request your office to load this approval on the following budget heads and lines in IFMIS to assist the ministry to settle the already incurred expenses and other commitments before the closure of financial year,” wrote Mr Mangiti in a letter to Dr Thugge.

Some Sh4 billion was approved before the Treasury cautioned the Devolution ministry.

During the same period, Mr Mangiti had also asked the Treasury to release Sh162 million for the Kenya Youth Empowerment Programme, an issue that raised questions since the programme was fully funded by the World Bank to the tune of Sh1.4 billion.

On Saturday, Cord leader Raila Odinga waded into the NYS scandal and called for an independent forensic audit of how the funds have been used.

“Jubilee must get to the bottom of the theft going on at the Ministry of Devolution with a thorough independent forensic audit of the NYS, including its budget, recruitment, training manual and gender, ethnic and regional composition of its recruits,” said Mr Odinga in a statement.

The Sunday Nation also established that for the past three months, youths working for the NYS project in Kibera have not been receiving regular payments.

The more than 3,000 youth who are working for the project are supposed to earn Sh470 per day with Sh140 going to their saccos. Their pay is supposed to be consolidated for six days and paid on Saturday through National Bank of Kenya to their mobile money accounts.

A Sunday Nation enquiry to the Ministry of Devolution about allegations of irregular payments and withdrawal of officers had not received a response almost one month after being made.

This comes as part of the project remains unfinished due to lack of materials despite a six-month extension heading to a close.

The government in April silently withdrew its 675 NYS officers who were supposed to supervise the youth from the slum who work for the project.

This seems to have affected work. For example, a 3.6km tarmac road that was to be constructed between the Kibera DC’s office and Highrise Estate is yet to be completed nine months after its construction began due to lack of materials.

In addition, none of the posho mills that were to be constructed are working. President Uhuru Kenyatta, while on a tour of the slum in December last year, said the posho mills, which were to be owned by each of the 16 saccos, would sell maize flour at a subsidised price of Sh60 per 2kg.

A wi-fi project that was to provide free internet access to the residents has never been implemented. Only one of the eight police posts promised by the government is operational. Similar projects have been launched in Nairobi’s Mathare and Kisumu.

Revealed: How Devolution ministry tried to change details in

Why Corruption Is Devolution's Biggest Enemy
By JOSEPH KAZUNGU KATANA
Dec. 12, 2015, 12:00 am
1 Comment
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Integrity Centre, headquarters of the Ethics And Anti-Corruption Commission. Photo/FILE

In 2010 Kenya promulgated a new constitution which embraced devolution as the basic form of governance system. Forty-seven devolved units were established to be managed by elected officials that included governors, deputy governors and members of county assemblies. As governments, the counties established county public service employment boards and numerous other service delivery organs.

When the new governance system came into effect after the 2013 general election, Kenyans were filled with hope, expectation and optimism.

Communities from marginalised areas such as the Coast region, saw in devolution a fair share of national resource distribution, equal employment opportunity in public jobs, better health care, education and infrastructure —opportunities which they had been denied under centralised, one-party system of government.

In the three years devolution has been in existence, 14 functions have been devolved to the 47 county governments. They include agriculture, health, roads and transport, pre-primary education, trade, tourism, drug control, and community participation in governance processes.

What is devolution’s three-year scorecard? What have been the challenges?

Despite failure by many of the counties to uphold the spirit of devolution, Kenyans massively support it. An opinion poll by IPSOS released in April 2015 found that 78 per cent of Kenyans supported devolution, a growth of nearly 10 percent from a similar poll in 2014.

This overwhelming support for devolution notwithstanding, the poll found that Kenyans were dissatisfied with the performance of governors and Members of County Assemblies.

Another survey by Infotrak indicated that overall, counties that implemented highly visible projects scored highly, while counties where governors and MCAs were involved in political wrangles, and where MCAs have been threatening to impeach governors, performed poorly.

Devolution’s three-year-scorecard is incomplete. It is a mix of successes and observable failures, especially on the part of governors. Some counties have made modest progress in sectors such as early childhood education, health, agriculture, roads and bursaries, but others – perhaps the majority of them – are still liming toward devolution.

The big picture in these three years is that devolution has failed to fulfill people’s expectations. There are several factors to explain Kenyans’ mounting dissatisfactions with devolution, even though they overwhelmingly support it.

The governors, on their part, have attributed devolution’s slow pace to insufficient funding by the national government. They have also complained about the slow pace at which these funds flow from the national government to the counties. Overall, the governors’ perspective has been that the national government is frustrating devolution.

For the greater majority of Kenyans, however, the biggest concern about devolution’s slow pace is corruption. A recent opinion poll by Transparency International-Kenya (TI-K) found that 59 per cent of Kenyans perceive corruption to be the biggest threat to devolution, followed by 11 per cent who felt that political wrangles were a threat to devolution, and seven per cent who felt poor funding to counties was a threat to devolution.

The same poll found that while majority of the respondents were dissatisfied with their county governments and were to a large extent unimpressed by service delivery with regard to the 14 devolved functions, they did not attribute this to lack of funds, but rather to corruption and mismanagement of available funds which was seen to be the biggest threat.

This means contrary to what Cord and the Council of Governors are saying about more funds to the counties, the Kenyan public is more interested in how the funds are being managed than how much is allocated to the counties.

Mismanagement of public funds in the counties has also been periodically mentioned in reports by financial oversight organs like the auditor-general, the Controller of Budget and the Commission on Revenue Commission.

According to reports from these organs, improper procurement procedures have contributed to corruption. The ‘get-rich-now’ attitude prevalent among some officials in the counties has also contributed to misuse of public funds through unnecessary domestic and foreign trips and inflated numbers of MCA sittings to get additional allowances.

If devolution was meant to empower local communities through employment opportunities, access to county tenders and participation in local governance issues, then it has failed to tangibly achieve these noble objectives in these three years.

In addition to corruption, county governments have been embedded to the culture of tribalism, clanism, nepotism and cronyism. It has been about who knows you and how to access county employment and tendering opportunities.

In September 2015, the International Budget Partnership indicated a majority of county bosses are reluctant to involve the public in the process of determining county budgeting priorities, often resulting in ineffective planning for devolved funds.

IBP reported that despite having established county budget and economic forums, governors and their deputies have not been keen to make effective use of these forums.

It further accused county governments of lacking interest in involving locals in the process, and that county budget forums have ended up becoming a rubber stamp, only reflecting what the county governments want.

Devolution’s rising expectations are slowing down. Kenyans are now thinking about changing the constitution, in part, to give devolution a better chance of success.

An IPSOS poll has suggested Kenyans feel that the most pressing constitutional changes should be the reduction of elected leaders and limitations on salaries and benefits for senior government officials.

It is about controlling corruption. Kenyans are increasingly speaking against corruption, both at the national and county levels. This is why the travel visa restrictions to be imposed on individuals linked to corruption should apply to national and county officials, as well. Kenyans still overwhelmingly support devolution, the biggest enemy to devolution’s success is corruption.

Why Corruption Is Devolution's Biggest Enemy
 
Atleast we recognise there is corruption and we are fighting it.Tanzania is the only country in the universe,not the world,where a whole president says that corrupt people who are known cant be arrested,because.....wait for it,it will lead to the breakdown of the economy.Haha!Then he goes ahead and begs...literally begs for those who have stolen public funds to please return it!Very comical,and the citizens of tz just cheer on yet tanzanians have stashed more stolen money than Kenyans in illegal accounts in switzerland and the islands.You people must be sick!You need prayers very badly,chap chap!
 
pingli-nywee said:
Atleast we recognise there is corruption and we are fighting it.Tanzania is the only country in the universe,not the world,where a whole president says that corrupt people who are known cant be arrested,because.....wait for it,it will lead to the breakdown of the economy.Haha!Then he goes ahead and begs...literally begs for those who have stolen public funds to please return it!Very comical,and the citizens of tz just cheer on yet tanzanians have stashed more stolen money than Kenyans in illegal accounts in switzerland and the islands.You people must be sick!You need prayers very badly,chap chap!
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which President is that as far as i know Magufuli fired PCCB top guy right after coming into power! This article i posted it took nearly a half year of Raila shouting for Waiguru to be fired
 
What people don't realize is that what we are experiencing in kenya now with coruption is not an increase in the vice but it's exposure in the media. If you look at what is happening in the banking sector you'd understand that the war against it is being fought. It's now very difficult to bank ill gotten wealth and bank employees will be held personally liable should they fail to discharge their KYC and AML duties.case in point; Family bank employees for the NYS scandal. Family Bank managers to be probed over Sh791m NYS scandal |. There is also a bill in anti corruption bill in parliament that seeks to award whistleblowers 15% of recovered funds Corruption Whistleblowers To Get 15 Percent Of Recovered Wealth
 
pingli-nywee said:
What you dont remember is we have a new constitution not those colonial type constitutions like tanzania's and the rest.Kenya's growth is dependent on institutions not one individual(s) like Uhuruto!Kenyas grows on stronger as we go on with the implementation of our constitution!If you guys are waiting for Magufuli to take you to Canaan on his own,you are up for a rude shock!It has been tried before in Kenya and it has failed,I mean every citizen and state institutions too have a role in the success of a nation,keep looking up to your president alone it will be a long way down from there my friend!
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You are right, depenging on one person and not corective responsebilities it will not help us tanzanians, constitution is very important.
 
kombwe said:
You are right, depenging on one person and not corective responsebilities it will not help us tanzanians, constitution is very important.
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Its a very important document my friend.Our relatively new constitution is a document I look at with pride,it has all the solutions to our problems.The only factor remaining is the human factor sans implementation.It was a long process drafting the constituton.I remember one of my uncles who was one of the delegatesHe came to our home afraid to go to his house to his wife and children with a black-eye which he got because he was a proponent of a contencious clause proposed in the draft constitution.
 
Why Ndii is wrong on what Magufuli presidency means for Uhuru’s reign
The Opposition and its sympathisers have of late been conjuring up images of a country collapsing because of runaway corruption and looting.

DNUhuru0910t.jpg

President Uhuru Kenyatta waves to his supporters at Muthurwa Market in downtown Nairobi on October 9, 2014. FILE PHOTO | NAION MEDIA GROUP

In Summary
  • On media freedom, Tanzania is on record as having deported six senior Kenyan journalists following what some considered to be unfavourable media coverage of the government.
  • Dr Ndii essentially argues that Kenya is doomed because of corruption and Tanzania is on course to overtake Kenya’s economy in size in five years at most on the basis of its political stability and clean government.
  • The shouts by the Opposition and the likes of Ndii on the NYS have nothing to do with corruption but their fear of its successful impact on the ground and its implication on the 2017 election in favour of the Jubilee administration.
An interesting phenomenon is playing out in the United States’ current electoral season. Contrary to every known elections playbook and conventional wisdom, a media celebrity with little regard for truth and facts and barely concealed contempt for minorities and women, is slowly emerging as the Republican Party’s presidential front runner.

Mr Donald Trump’s campaign is seen by many pundits as playing to the fears of white working class Americans who feel increasingly economically irrelevant and culturally eclipsed by changes in demographics and the global economy. Trump has cleverly exploited these fears as a tool to rally an electoral base around a certain platform.

Playing into fear is not a novel concept and has been a powerful political strategy with mass appeal for politicians globally. In Europe, the rise of the far right is attributed to its fear mongering against immigration and Islam to secure electoral victories. In Africa, the tribe card has been cynically used to create a siege mentality and ensure ethnic capture in certain communities.

We are of late witnessing a more sophisticated use of fear mongering to pit Kenyans against one another as we prepare for the 2017 elections. The Opposition and its sympathisers have of late been conjuring up images of a country collapsing because of runaway corruption and looting.

Kenyans have been repeatedly scared into thinking that our economy is on the verge of collapsing as plunderers have a free reign on the national treasury. Like many sophisticated forms of propaganda, the invocation of plunder and grand corruption is meant to create fear and anxiety rather than to identify a real problem.

Dr David Ndii’s article published in the Daily Nation of January 2, 2016 titled “What Magufuli presidency means for Uhuru’s reign” is representative of the targeted and deliberate campaign to perpetuate fear of the Jubilee Government.

Dr Ndii essentially argues that Kenya is doomed because of corruption and Tanzania is on course to overtake Kenya’s economy in size in five years at most on the basis of its political stability and clean government.

GROSS VIOLATIONS

Sadly, this theory is not supported by facts. First, with regard to Tanzania, our southern neighbour is not as politically stable as Dr Ndii would have you believe. The main opposition party in Tanzania refused to concede defeat complaining bitterly of election rigging. Businesses were closed in major towns like Zanzibar and Arusha after fears of violence.
The election commission annulled the local elections in Zanzibar citing gross violations of the electoral process.

The Opposition party Civic United Front (CUF) said that annulling the result was a ploy to re-run the election it had won. In Kenya it would be difficult to fathom a scenario where election results of one major regional block are summarily annulled thus violating a people’s fundamental right of electing a government of their choice.

But in Zanzibar contested elections are the norm, not the exception. Following the elections of 2000, the army and police shot into crowds of protestors, killing at least 35 and wounding more than 600.

Government forces, accompanied by ruling party officials and militias, also went on a house-to-house rampage, indiscriminately arresting, beating, and sexually abusing residents. Approximately 2,000 temporarily fled to Kenya. Yes, Tanzania is no stranger to Post-Election Violence.

One of the true tests of a democracy is a peaceful handover from a ruling party to the Opposition which Kenya underwent in 2002. Tanzania is yet to experience this and after last year’s close and contested elections, many pundits are now calling into question whether CCM would ever accept handing over power to the Opposition.

On media freedom, Tanzania is on record as having deported six senior Kenyan journalists following what some considered to be unfavourable media coverage of the government.

Further, Freedom House states that only five radio stations have national reach in Tanzania and all are viewed as sympathetic to the ruling CCM. Contrast that with President Barack Obama’s statement that Kenya is one of the places on this continent that truly observes freedom of the press with fearless journalists and courageous civil society members. Outside South Africa, Kenya is probably the only country in sub-Saharan Africa with uninterrupted independent ownership of the media stretching back the last 50 years.

Regarding the Kenyan economy, Dr Ndii and the shrill voices in the Opposition have overlooked to mention the tremendous progress made in the last three years of the Jubilee administration.

In 2014, Kenya rebased its economy and is now the 9th largest economy on the African continent having been elevated to middle income status with a GDP of $53.3 billion and GDP per capita of $1,246.

Kenya is one of the very few African economies that can boast of the extent to which it is diversifying economically. In 2014, the country registered GDP growth from multiple sources including manufacturing, which contributed 9.21 per cent, wholesale/ retail trade 10.18pc, transport and communication 9.33pc and agriculture 25.94pc.
ECONOMY ALL-STAR

In an editorial piece by Bloomberg titled “the 20 fastest growing economies this year”, Kenya is cited as an ‘economy all-star’ by virtue of being the 3rd out of 20 countries with the highest growth projection for the year 2015.

This is echoed by other reports and publications, which hype Kenya as a rapidly growing economy. In a February 2015 article by Fortune Magazine, on the new world of business, Kenya was singled out as one of seven outstanding emerging markets worth investing in globally. Worth noting is that it was the only African country on the list.

That is not all. A recent report by Deloitte and research firm Africa Assets also found that private equity firms prefer Kenya to other African countries owing to its prospects of growth and open market policies with a high inclination to the financial sector.

Similarly, for the same the reasons, in the 2014 Ernst and Young attractiveness survey for Africa, Kenya was reported as one of the three top investment destinations in Sub Saharan Africa and the most preferred in East and Central Africa. It is also worth noting that a recent survey released in 2015 by the Intelligent Community Forum reported that Nairobi is Africa’s most intelligent city.

In the field of Information Technology and Telecommunications, Kenya has been a global pioneer and world leader in telecommunications technology, particularly with the M-Pesa technology, the mobile banking service that allows people to make payments and transact via cell phones. The uptake of the technology has grown exponentially over the years. In the year 2014 mobile money transactions in Kenya hit $26 billion while mobile subscriptions currently stand at 32.8 million people.

There’s more good news. In the recently released 2016 World Bank Ease of Doing Business Index, Kenya jumped up 28 places and was declared the 3rd most improved country.

According to the report the improvement was largely due to the introduction of Huduma Centres which have brought different government services in one place across the country; have helped accelerate the pace of reforms, removing some of the red tape that investors have been struggling with in their bid to access public services. In addition, Huduma has received numerous awards both nationally, regionally and globally which is unprecedented in the public service sector.

COMPETITIVE HUMAN CAPITAL

Studies have shown that Kenya is also very competitive in terms of human capital. It ranks at the top in terms of adult literacy rates. The adult literacy rate in Kenya is 87pc, Uganda is at 73.2pc and Tanzania is at 72.9pc. In comparison to other East African countries, meanwhile, Kenya has the highest public expenditure in education at 17.7pc, compared to second place Uganda, which spends an average of 10pc.

Tanzania is ranked even lower. Education plays a major role in increasing productivity and economic growth and reducing poverty and inequality.

Studies comparing the state of primary schools in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania conclude that a child from a poor household in Kenya is more likely to succeed than a child from a wealthy household from Tanzania or Uganda.

Tanzania exhibits the worst performance among the three East African countries. Kenya also ranks on top in terms of enrolment of students in higher education, followed by Uganda and then Tanzania. The Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) 2013-2014 ranks Kenya 44th in quality of education out of 148 countries. By comparison, Rwanda ranks 51st, Uganda 82nd, Tanzania 100th, and Burundi 143rd.

Like the right wing campaigns in the West, it is clear then that the fear mongering strategies from the Opposition on the status of the Kenyan economy are not supported by facts on the ground and neither do investors nor international institutions share the same bleak outlook.

The Opposition leaders seem to be clutching at straws and using anything and everything to discredit the government and our economy in order to score cheap electoral points.

For many Kenyans, it is worrying that that this campaign of misinformation and propaganda is from those who are supposed to provide an alternative recourse to the government.

OUTLANDISH STATEMENTS

It should also be mentioned that it is a tad disappointing for a PhD holder (from Oxford no less) to make outlandish statements without crosschecking his facts. With regard to the defamatory insinuation that I bought my house with cash from the proceedings of corruption, had Dr Ndii bothered to make some basic preliminary inquiries, other than relying on rumour mongering, he would have established that the house didn't cost anything near what they have been spreading out there and that is mostly financed by a government mortgage at an interest of 5pc for the next 15 years.

On matters pertaining to the National Youth Service, Dr Ndii conveniently forgot to mention that this is the first time in the history of this country that corruption money has been recovered and assets frozen as a result of whistleblowing by a government official.

I understand that such an admission will render their rumour mongering campaign null and void, but choosing to ignore the facts doesn't change the truth. The shouts by the Opposition and the likes of Ndii on the NYS have nothing to do with corruption but their fear of its successful impact on the ground and its implication on the 2017 election in favour of the Jubilee administration.

In conclusion, to make the case that Tanzania will overtake Kenya in five years because they have done away with serving meals during meetings and such token gestures does not constitute economic transformation.

Unlike Kenya, Tanzania's constitutional review process failed. This failure means that Tanzania is yet to undertake fundamental institutional and structural changes brought about by a people driven constitutional review process.

It is that kind of constitutional and governance re-engineering that lays the foundation of economic success. In this regard Kenya is miles ahead of Tanzania.
The book of Ecclesiastes says that ‘There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens’. This is not the time or the season for electioneering and selling ourselves to voters.

There will be time enough for that in 2017. Right now, leaders need to be reminded that they have a mandate from the people of Kenya (both as government and Opposition) which is by far more important.

It is time for them to show some maturity and conduct themselves on the high plane of dignity and decorum to seek ways to build and unite our nation. Let us put a stop to this needless rumour and fear mongering. The fact that Kenya is on the rise and the Jubilee Government is on the right track is plain to see and not in question.

Anne Waiguru is a former Cabinet Secretary for Devolution and Planning

Why Ndii is wrong on what Magufuli presidency means for Uhuru’s

MY TAKE

The funny thing is the comment section is busy asking Anne Waiguru whether she wrote the piece herself!

nomasana, MK254, sam999, NairobiWalker, hbuyosh, msemakweli, simplemind, Kimweri, Bulldog, MK254, Kafrican, bagamoyo, Ngongo, AbTitchaz, mtanganyika mpya, JokaKuu, Ngongo, Askari Kanzu, Dhuks, Yule-Msee, waltham, Mzee Mwanakijiji, Mwananchi
 
Why are you discussing Tanzania always,Do you think Tanzania is discussing you as well?,
Let me tell you"We dealing with ourself to improve our status but not focusing someone else,and if we would want to compare better to compare with high economy countries but not Kenya ",Of course Kenya is at higher compared to Tanzania but we are facing the same problems", also Tanzania is most populous in East Africa ,we focus to use man power to develop our country "
 
mi sio mtu wa siasa sana, hata mambo uchumi yamenipita kushoto kwa kweli, ila nimepata kuelewa vitu vingi through this discussion.
 
pingli-nywee said:
Hiyo lugha uliyotumia hapo juu Balokola labda itakuwa ni kiinglishi duh!Yu toku vere vere guudi!
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The same way you speak your undefined Swahili and still defend it as a KENYA'S SWAHILI ..
Guess the same rule applies " TANZANIA'S ENGLISH" Hahahaaaaaa
 
Enter Magufuli, and Kenya’s control of region is now history

The turn that our politics has taken in recent years does not inspire confidence in Kenya's long-term stability.

SATURDAY MAY 7 2016

In Summary
  • The desperate helter-skelter we have been treated to since losing the Uganda oil-pipeline project to Tanzania now confirms that Jubilee administration has become the victim of its own propaganda.
  • Land has been grabbed all along the LAPPSET corridor and the speculators, who are of course powerful people, are waiting patiently to reap big time on compensation.
  • Investors can come to Tanzania with the confidence that when they encounter the corruption and bureaucratic obstacles, the man at the helm can be relied on to deal with it.”


More by this Author
My first column this year, “What Magufuli presidency means for Uhuru’s reign” seems to have wounded the egos of many a patriotic Kenyan who evidently cannot contemplate that Kenya could lose its pre-eminent economic perch in the region.

The article holds the record of the number of comments that this column has elicited on the Nation website at 215 (the “cruel marriage” column is a close second at 204).

My principal objective, demonstrating the economic cost of our cycles of political violence, was lost to many of these patriots. They went off on several tangents, many of them denigrating Tanzanians, none more hubristic and vociferous than citizen Anne Waiguru.

The desperate helter-skelter we have been treated to since losing the Uganda oil-pipeline project to Tanzania now confirms that Jubilee administration has become the victim of its own propaganda. They have over-indulged the Kool-aid.

The LAPPSET project of which the pipeline is part, has three fundamental problems.

First, the project is not financed. All along, the government has maintained that it would finance LAPPSET using public-private partnerships. To date, the project has not secured any investors. The key to attracting private investment, a public project must show a revenue stream from which the private investors will get their return on investment. The main reason why the project has not secured any private investors is because it has not been able to show bankable revenue streams.

The only component of the project with a bankable revenue is the oil pipeline. The other component with revenue potential is the port. However, for this revenue to be realised, the port needs transport infrastructure to evacuate the cargo to its destinations. But the government has for reasons best known to itself failed to prioritise this infrastructure.

The second problem is high political risk. As has been pointed out, the project traverses a historically marginalised region with flammable political grievances. Oil pipelines are vulnerable to sabotage. Should these grievances escalate — the pipeline would provide a very easy target.

And as this column has observed recently, the turn that our politics has taken in recent years does not inspire confidence in the long-term stability of this country.

The third problem is corruption. LAPPSET corruption began from day one, with the speculative grabbing of land in Lamu. It is one of the grievances underlying the Mpeketoni terror attacks. This is not limited to Lamu.

Land has been grabbed all along the corridor and the speculators, who are of course powerful people, are waiting patiently to reap big time on compensation. There is more. I read in the newspapers recently that companies fronted by Arabs and Chinese had already been set up to take stakes for Kenyan and Ugandan big men, respectively in the pipeline venture.

This is the project terrain that the pipeline investors have been looking at. It should not surprise that they were motivated to seek an alternative — the Tanzania route. We may want to ask the question as to why the investors had not made the decision before? The answer in my view is, Magufuli happened.

I observed in my previous article that: “Whether by design or happenstance, Magufuli’s crusade is signalling zero-corruption tolerance. What’s more, his signalling is credible, as it is backed by his record of integrity and performance.

Investors can come to Tanzania with the confidence that when they encounter the corruption and bureaucratic obstacles, the man at the helm can be relied on to deal with it.” The investors were weighing their options. Magufuli’s zero-corruption tolerance tipped the balance.

Two years ago, I argued in this column that LAPPSET should have been prioritised over the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR).

If you put together the $4 billion that we are spending on the Mombasa- Nairobi leg of the SGR and the $2.2 billion Eurobond money that has been stolen and squandered, it would have been enough to finance the construction of the Lamu port and both the pipeline and the highway from Lamu to Lokichar.

I also argued that the better project would have been to route a new railway from Lamu to Thika and then onward to Nanyuki where there is an already existing line, thereby connecting the Lamu Port to Nairobi so that it can serve both the “Northern Corridor” and the envisaged South Sudan/Ethiopia markets.

Before my Northern Kenya friends object, they should consider that the LAPPSET infrastructure only passes through the region. What Northern Kenya needs more is infrastructure connecting it to the rest of Kenya — for example, a branch line from Kitui to Garissa on my proposed routing would connect Garissa to Nairobi by rail. I have asked several government officials involved in these decisions about these alternatives and drawn a blank on every occasion.

EXISTING METRE GAUGE

It stands to reason that if we had put the SGR on the Lamu-Thika-Nanyuki routing, a pipeline on the route, with a railway line under construction to boot, would have been a much stronger proposition than the proposed LAPPSET routing further north.

Why did the government not put this alternative routing on the table? My take? What to do with all the land that speculators have acquired on the LAPPSET route.

Talking railways, Tanzania is also fast-tracking the central line railway project, also known as the Dar-es-alaam-Isaka-Kigali/Keza-Musongani project. The central line is an existing metre gauge railway that runs from Dar-es-alaam to Isaka, a town just about 100km south of Mwanza. For Rwanda, Burundi and the eastern DRC, the route is 25 per cent shorter than the Mombasa route.

Unlike our SGR, there is good publicly available information on the project. The project even has a website (www.dikkmrail.com). Traffic forecast is the core of any transport project. The traffic forecast for the central line is posted on the website. It makes for interesting reading. As is good practice, it gives three scenarios a “conservative case” “base case” and “optimistic case”.

A project is considered low risk if it breaks even at the conservative or low case, acceptable risk if it only achieves break even with the base (or realistic) case, and high risk if it only breaks even in the optimistic case. The conservative case the freight traffic is projected at 8.5 million tonnes per year. This rises by 4.4 million tonnes to 12.9 million tonnes in the base case. Included in the increase is diversion of 50 percent of the transit cargo from Mombasa. Where will that leave our SGR?

For starters, the SGR is not financially viable. A dishonest feasibility submitted by the contractor, the shoddiest I have ever seen, posited that the Mombasa-Nairobi line would break even with 5.5 million tonnes of freight at a tariff of 8.3 US cents per kilometre per tonne. This is hogwash.

PAYING FOR EUROBOND

The figure works out to an annual revenue of $230 million. At $ 4 billion, the cost of capital alone calculated at the rate we are paying for the Eurobond (6.75 per cent), is in the order of $270 million, more than the entire so-called break-even revenue. Moreover, even the tariff is unrealistic. The Rift Valley Railway’s revenue figures for last year work out to an average tariff of 5 US cents per tonne per kilometre.

As part of the central line project, the existing Mwanza-Isaka section, which connects Uganda to Dar-es-Salaam through the Lake Victoria, is also being upgraded.

The question Uganda has to contemplate is whether to invest in our overpriced SGR with its doubtful financial viability or to sit back and let Tanzania to complete the central line project.

Uganda has invested more heavily in the RVR concession. With transit freight to Rwanda, Burundi and DRC more or less off the table, the economics of Uganda investing in our SGR does not look good. If Ugandan cargo is not guaranteed either, does it make sense to progress the SGR beyond Nairobi?

In the larger scheme of things, President Magufuli is good for the East Africa Community. The Uganda pipeline and the central railway line project will integrate Tanzania into the EAC in a way that it has not been in the past. By so doing, President Magufuli is reconfiguring the EAC’s political and economic architecture.

Our economic dominance in the bloc has not been built on superiority of any kind, but on the historical misfortunes of our partners —Tanzania’s socialist policies and Uganda’s political troubles — undermining their economic capabilities. But they have rebuilt these capabilities. The weakening of our exports to Uganda in recent years, for instance, is a reflection of Uganda’s growing manufacturing capability.

Above all, East Africa and indeed Africa as a whole needs honest, capable leaders, leaders who will raise the bar, not least by demonstrating to citizens what the cost of mediocre, corrupt, tribalist leadership actually is.

ndii@netsolafrica.com

CC:

nomasana, sam999, NairobiWalker, hbuyosh, msemakweli, simplemind, Kimweri, Bulldog, MK254, Kafrican,Ngongo, Ab_Titchaz, mtanganyika mpya, JokaKuu, Ngongo, Askari Kanzu, Dhuks, Yule-Msee, waltham, Mzee, mombasite gabriel , Juakali1980 , Boda254 , mwaswast, MwendaOmo, Mwanakijiji, Iconoclastes ,oneflash
 
Hotuba aliyo itoa Jana Arusha bwana Magu
Kuna kitu kinamkera kutoka Kenya
Anajua hawa walivyo tudharau na amepania kuleta heshima
 
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