Chamas are the underestimated road to financial success

Poverty eradication one of the key agenda of our government, from the day the union jack was lowered and the Kenyan flag raised. From the years of our founding father Mzee Jomo Kenyatta to the current president Uhuru Kenyatta, the need to eradicate poverty and lift living standards of Kenyans has been the number one goal for successive governments. However, over 50 years later and millions of Kenyans are still living in abject and piteous state of poverty. Today an average person is no better off than he was in 1963. Where were we as other countries like South Korea pulled an economic miracle and uplifted its citizen’s livelihoods? From billions of government sponsored projects to billions of dollars donated as aid, the number of Kenyans living on less than a dollar a day has been increasing rather than decreasing.

I do not want to discredit the laudable efforts made by successive governments and other development partners on poverty reduction.  Nonetheless, I am of the opinion that we need to have a paradigm shift on matters poverty reduction, this is in terms of how and who is spearheading the fight against poverty. Government grants and donor aid has not been very successful and this is why I think we ought to change tact or at least supplement.