Devolution Perfect Opportunity for Achieving the MDGs

By Richard Ogeda

Researchers and Development Practitioners working on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have concluded a review and planning retreat in Dakar Senegal.

This will culminate into the 13th United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) summit in September, eleven years after the UN Millennium Declaration of September 2000. The MDGs summit brings together World leaders, researchers, economists and development experts to discuss progress on the Millennium Development Goals. Unknown to many Kenyans, Kenya is among 10 countries in Sub Saharan Africa originally selected to prove the concept of the MDGs in 2005. Kenya was also honored to host the pioneer experimental site at Sauri in Siaya county, and later in 2006 opened up another site at Dertu in Garissa County.

 The MDGs, involves eight international development goals which were officially established at the UN millennium summit in September 2000, and documented as the UN millennium declaration. The MDGs are still considered to be the most widely accepted treaty signed and adopted by 192 UN member states and at least 23 International organizations.

The eight goals, touching on food security, education and gender issues, health, environment and global partnerships were broken down into 21 quantifiable targets with 60 indicators to guide implementation and time bound achievement, which was settled to be the year 2015. Simply put, these goals can be summarized to mean ensuring that basic human development is achieved, in this case, simply ensuring that every human being is able to put food on the table, can generate income for other wants and needs, and is enlightened enough to understand and promote health and environmental issues. Essentially, they were aimed at creating a healthy, enlightened and wealthy society by the year 2015.

Five years after the UN Millennium Declaration, in 2010, even with the pioneer experimental site, Kenya was ranked 16th out of 28 countries which were assessed with regard to eradicating hunger, Goal 1 of the MDGs in a report disclosed that about 4 million Kenyans were on food aid at the time.

The ranking at position 16 probably makes less sense, but the score card gave Kenya 37 percent, a straight D, meaning that we have not done ‘well’, actually failed the test! Even though this scorecard was on food security I would presume that the grades that Kenya would score even in the other goals may not be any better. Take for example in Goal 2 of the MDGs, The Free Primary Education initiative declared in 2003 was an important step towards achieving MDG 2 (Universal Primary Education) but it is also dogged with a lot of challenges including issues of quality and corruption in disbursement of funds, so this would probably score a C minus! Remember we had fifteen years and now twelve years are gone, and so we remain with three years of the initial fifteen year timeframe to achieve the goals.

The most disappointing aspect of this scenario is that the first pilot site for the implementation of interventions aimed at achieving the MDGs was established in Kenya at Sauri in Siaya County, and at the local level, the local community at the implementation site can be described to be at worst in Grade B plus. In Sauri, hunger is a forgotten issue as the residents today produce in surplus and are able to sell the excesses, donate food to feed their children in primary schools, make contributions to build health facilities etc. Here, the MDGs are almost all virtually achieved. Indeed this should act as a loaded repository on how integrated development can be achieved.

Back to Devolution of Governance being an opportunity to achieve the MDGs. Devolution has the potential to generate healthy inter-county competition in the use of available natural and human resources in the counties, and also in the innovative use of both generated and devolved funds from the central government. But remember that this may be realized only if the electorates are careful to elect innovative County Governors who are development conscious and have a passion for innovations to steer development.

 It is a fact that each of the 47 counties is endowed with their unique God given resources which if well exploited and utilized, the residents will be able to put food on the table and have money in their pockets (or bank savings) and be able to attend to other wants and needs such as educating and clothing their children, and accessing adequate health care. These are the basic essentials that if one can have, then at a personal level they will have achieved the MDGs. The worrying trend is that most of those gunning for the posts of Governorship in a majority of the Counties are tested and failed politicians who do not have the grasp of basic development, let alone knowledge of the MDGs and vision 2030! We may lose this Golden opportunity.

Electorates, it is therefore high time you selected and identified Governors who would put together a team to carefully identify and put your resource endowments towards the development of your County.  

For example, In the Meru region, miraa has been described as the green gold. This is a resource that the residents of Meru County can exploit scientifically and use to steer development in that area. What we see now is the blessing turning to be a curse as children drop out of school to work on miraa farms. Similarly in the Lake Victoria region which is a fishing hub, the Counties such as Siaya, Homabay, Kisumu and Migori can harness the fish resources to spur development. In Garissa, the livestock is a great resource and in Mombasa tourism is the resource. Ideally, every locality has something to exploit and develop.

The writer is an educationist and development practitioner with the UN millennium project