Politics
The Truth About the ‘Single Source of Truth About Kenyans’: The National Digital Registry System, Collateral Mysteries and the Safaricom Monopoly
13 min read.That the Kenyan state has been strengthened by the rise of Safaricom is probably most evident in the doubling of the population of formal taxpayers in this same period. Yet, it is also clear that this relationship has defeated the NDRS’s goals for addressing the weaknesses of formal credit provision for ordinary Kenyans.
Kenyans walking to work on Nairobi’s Haile Selassie Avenue on the 16th of June 2016 were shocked to find that a pile of well-worn identity cards and driver’s licences had been dumped during the night on the pavement outside the Jesus is Alive Ministries’ church. The identity cards were those that Kenyans mistakenly call the second and third generation IDs – one, dating from 1995, is laminated, and the other, issued after 2011, is printed directly onto plastic. Both types of cards were produced by Thales, a French parastatal, so they are administratively identical. On the front side, they present the card’s serial number, the holder’s identity number, full name, date of birth, sex, district of birth, place of issue, date of issue, signature, thumbprint; on the reverse are the functional categories of colonial indirect rule: district; division; location; sub-location.
None of the cards in the pile were the third-generation or digital IDs that Kenyans have been promised for a decade: the polycarbonate sheet, laser-printed with solid colour images and etched holograms containing, critically, a machine-readable chip and a full set of digital finger and iris biometrics.
In 2007, the main archives of the National Registration Bureau (issuer of ID cards) contained the scanned records of the inked fingerprints of 14 million Kenyans. In an attempt to bolster the identity card system and the integrity of the register that authenticated applications for cards, the KNCHR called for the fast-tracking of a biometric database – the Integrated Population Registration System (IPRS). In 2009, the development of that system was awarded, apparently without controversy, to a consortium from the Ukraine called EDAPS.
The third generation card was first announced publicly in 2007 in the wake of an investigation by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) into accusations of widespread corruption and discrimination in the issuing of IDs. The commission’s concerns were split evenly between the general complaint about the cash bribes officials demanded to perform basic administrative services and the more specific accusation that Somali-Kenyans were being systematically denied identity cards and their basic rights as citizens. Behind both worries lurked fears about the fragility of the laminated card, and its susceptibility to forgery. The notorious weakness of the cards had much to do with the seven-digit identity number and the vulnerability of the registry that was being used to authenticate claims for citizenship.
In 2007, the main archives of the National Registration Bureau (issuer of ID cards) contained the scanned records of the inked fingerprints of 14 million Kenyans. In an attempt to bolster the identity card system and the integrity of the register that authenticated applications for cards, the KNCHR called for the fast-tracking of a biometric database – the Integrated Population Registration System (IPRS). In 2009, the development of that system was awarded, apparently without controversy, to a consortium from the Ukraine called EDAPS.
The appointment of a contractor for the production of the third generation cards was not so simple. The 2005 Anglo Leasing scandal – where the Mwai Kibaki government was notoriously implicated in the payment of a massively inflated tender to a British shell company for printing passports – loomed in the background of the call for tender for the new identity cards. The processes were fraught and contested, especially as losing bidders could bring show-stopping appeals to the newly established Public Procurement Oversight Authority after 2007.
The call for tender for the new cards was issued in May 2009, specifying a “third generation ID Card” with the establishment of an “elaborate infrastructure supported by appropriate software modules, including installation of live data capture equipment both at the headquarters and in the field offices, personalisation centre and a centralised database production facility, complete with the necessary biometric and facial recognition features”. The government allocated $10 million to the project, and the international biometrics giants all submitted proposals. In September that same year, the whole process came to a sudden halt when NADRA, the Pakistan identification agency (who were making Kenyan passports) raised a successful protest about the decision of the tender board.
Thales continued printing the laminated cards after the tender collapsed, but in July 2011 the cabinet refused to endorse their ongoing production, and the issuing of the indispensable IDs stopped completely, prompting something of a national emergency. The Ministry of Immigration and Registration of Persons issued a second tender in 2011 but that succumbed in the same way when the French ID contractor, Imprimerie Nationale, protested its exclusion on the basis of the tender board’s sloppy paperwork. With the 2013 election looming, the ministry had little choice but to restore Thales’ contract to print the backlog of two million – rising quickly to four million – of the new plastic (not laminated but also not third generation) cards.
That was the situation, at least as far as the ID cards were concerned, when Mwende Gatabaki arrived to join the Office of the President from her job at the African Development Bank in Tunis in February 2014. Gatabaki was chosen as the architect of the new plan for identification and information-sharing – the National Digital Registry System (NDRS) – as she had extensive experience working on the networking requirements of the cumbersome Kenyan parastatals and the large donor organisations in East Africa.
Clean, complete, correct
The plan to register the entire Kenyan population “afresh” was first made public at the ConnectedKenya conference in Mombasa in April 2014. It was presented by Gatabaki, who was tasked with assembling a new government agency that would unify the different functions of birth and death registration, the registration of aliens and refugees, and the issuing of identity cards, which were all spread across the detached Departments of Civil Registration, Immigration, Refugee Affairs and the National Registration Bureau.
The Act establishing the new service had already been passed in 2011. It called for a new co-ordinating agency that would develop a unique identifier for every person, manage all issues related to citizenship and immigration, and maintain a comprehensive and accurate national population register. Gatabaki’s plan drew on the heightened public concern around national security in the wake of the September 2013 attacks on the Westgate shopping mall. It lay out a potentially revolutionary reorganisation of the entire Kenyan state around a “single source of truth”. The new database would link together existing and new registries of population, land holdings, companies and moveable assets. Gatabaki argued that the new database and registrations would be significantly cheaper than the cost of upgrading existing but separate projects of registration and identification underway in the separate departments. To do all of this required a break from the existing forms of paper registration and a new set of purely digital biometrics for every person in the country.
Gatabaki’s emphasis on a compulsory national round of digital registrations was controversial, to put it mildly, because many Kenyans – especially those supporting the CORD coalition that was kept from power – were still furious about the biometric debacle staged during the previous year’s national elections when the biometric voter identification kits supplied by the South African firm, Face Technologies, failed.
This initial presentation made no mention of a new digital ID card, but the following day the CEO of the state ICT Authority explained that the government was preparing to spend nearly $100 million on the new database and that the new ID cards would have a chip or magnetic strip that would allow police officers on patrol to confirm authenticity.
Gatabaki’s emphasis on a compulsory national round of digital registrations was controversial, to put it mildly, because many Kenyans – especially those supporting the CORD coalition that was kept from power – were still furious about the biometric debacle staged during the previous year’s national elections when the biometric voter identification kits supplied by the South African firm, Face Technologies, failed. The official enquiry into this debacle, accusations of corruption and other ongoing controversies over the enormous cost and licensing of the biometric kit dominated public debate until the end of 2015. In Kenya, biometric registration is the main arena of a bitter struggle over state power, and it was hardly surprising that the opposition leaders immediately responded to the move to register all afresh by claiming that it was a scheme to rig the next elections.
Political mistrust was not the only serious problem, however; over the previous decade, the procurement processes for the long-promised identity card had repeatedly collapsed into a mess of conflicting corruption allegations.
Indigenising capital
Gatabaki’s project aimed, chiefly, at replacing the unreliable and limited paper-based population register with a digital biometric database. The new biometric system would have established a single official identity for all adults in Kenya for the first time and it would have allowed real-time, remote biometric authentication. But it was also motivated by an effort to create a new kind of property by registering collateral in moveable assets, such as vehicles, farm animals and companies.
Meanwhile, the EDAPS consortium had been busy working to build the IPRS, linking together the main repositories of identification and citizenship status. EDAPS first built the IPRS connections between the National Registration Bureau’s ID card database and the Ministry for Immigration and Registration of Persons (MIRP) passport and aliens registries. In 2010 they began to incorporate new data from the birth and death registries managed by the Department of Civil Registration. The following year, 2011, they built automated two-way links between the IPRS and the databases maintained by the two newly established credit reference bureaus (CRBs).
This relationship allowed the CRBs to do real time confirmation of the identity of the new applicants for credit (using automated queries against the linked civil registration and ID card records). Much more importantly for the broader political economy in Kenya, and the fate of the NDRS, it also pushed blacklisting data into the IPRS itself. The listing of defaults inside the state’s IPRS – what the Credit Information Sharing Association of Kenya (CISKenya) described as negative information – provided a simple, effective and real time sorting and coercive tool for the new mobile credit providers looking for instant decision-making systems. This simple link had the effect of separating Safaricom, with its troves of data on millions of users’ spending behaviour, from the broader alliance of formal lenders who were looking to build database profiles that would differentiate customers based on sharing positive (payments) and negative (defaults) information.
Safaricom – the monopolistic telecommunications firm that has created the globally distinctive system of mobile money known as M-Pesa – was able to develop simple forms of virtual reputational collateral using its own automated assessment systems and its own identification and authentication processes. The state’s existing population register was sufficient for its needs, where the banks’ credit information sharing (CIS) processes – with their demanding templates of data and very high errors of identification – faced continuous failures and material resistance.
The failure of the new digital identification scheme was the result of a conflict between the formal banks and Safaricom. It was also a struggle between different types of credit markets. On the one hand, the banks wanted to build credit reporting systems and new government registration arrangements that would allow individuals and firms to formalise non-fixed assets, such as vehicles and livestock, which would then act as new forms of collateral for further borrowing. The advocates of these assets registers and of the banks’ universal credit reporting systems were opposed by Safaricom (in practice more than in public) and eventually by the leaders of the Kenyan state, who championed a simple and effective system for delivering unsecured, high-interest micro-loans that did not require collateral registers.
As Safaricom’s monopoly status became painfully obvious after 2010, the banks’ advocates increasingly argued – and with good reason – that the most serious weakness in the Kenyan economy lay in the difficulties that small businesses faced in securing credit.
The advocates of the biometric plan justified it by appealing to the need for certain and secure identification, for stronger national security (and policing) and better tax coverage and recovery, but what distinguished it from the already existing plans for population registration was the effort to build a new kind of asset register – a database describing real, not informational, collateral assets. The National Digital Registry System plan proposed a joined-up architecture of state databases that brought the management of private collateral into the core of the state’s business. Aimed at the interests that the established banks had in the development of reliable, accurate and complete credit histories, it was also a radical effort to address the informational void that surrounds property on the African continent.
As Safaricom’s monopoly status became painfully obvious after 2010, the banks’ advocates increasingly argued – and with good reason – that the most serious weakness in the Kenyan economy lay in the difficulties that small businesses faced in securing credit. Policy makers argued that thousands of these small firms possessed moveable assets – buildings, vehicles, equipment, products, animals – that could provide secure collateral for formal credit when provided with the right administrative and information processing tools. This was the idea behind the NDRS – a centralised data exchange that would make information from the discrete registries (for example, of companies and vehicles) available to lenders. At the same time, this kind of centralised data hub would offer non-bank lenders a quid pro quo for sharing information about their customers’ servicing of existing loans. This idea – that the NDRS would, finally, make it easy for financial institutions to appraise borrowers – was at the heart of the Gatabaki proposal. “A central repository of personal and corporate information will facilitate banks in their credit appraisal,” as the Central Bank governor explained in endorsing the project in October 2014, “This should not only ease access to credit but also reduce costs of credit, given the lower search costs.”
In fact, of course, that integration never happened. Instead, the Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA), in alliance with Safaricom, developed its own separate scoring mechanism that drew on data from Safaricom’s transaction database specifically to identify borrowers who did not meet the initial basic criteria that were derived from Safaricom airtime purchases. The resulting scorecard worked only too well and – combined with the basic identification and simple blacklisting supported by the IPRS – it meant that CBA and Safaricom could issue M-Shwari loans without any need to look up or report data to the credit bureaus; the credit information templates of credit sharing were too cumbersome and too slow and would have ruined the rapid decision-making that is one of the attractions of Safaricom’s mobile lending.
From the outset, the CBA, like many of the other non-bank credit providers in Kenya, used credit information sharing only as a last resort in the effort to recover outstanding loans. After 120 days of non-payment, the bank reported delinquent M-Shwari debtors to the credit bureaus. These records, almost all of them negative reports, rapidly inflated the population covered by the CRBs from 1 million people in 2014 to 4 million the following year. This expansion was the exact opposite of the reputational collateral that the bankers had long used to justify credit sharing; it measured, instead, the dramatically augmented pool of those denied formal credit at any cost.
By the time that Gatabaki announced the NDRS project in April 2014, the effort to create a technological platform to foster reputational collateral for ordinary Kenyans had effectively failed. Over the following year, the balance of informational power shifted decisively towards Safaricom and CBA. Few people made the argument publicly, but the telecom giant had clearly come to exercise monopoly control over the heights of the Kenyan economy. Their interest in micro-loans – while profitable and useful to borrowers – did little to make formal credit available to individuals or companies. The CIS system was working only as a blacklist available to Safaricom on the IPRS platform and, far from working as a solution to the problem of asymmetrical information for other lenders, it simply encouraged local banks to deny ordinary Kenyans credit.
The Safaricom monopoly
Gatabaki’s scheme faced resistance from within the state, not least because the World Bank’s Kenya Transparency Communications Infrastructure Project (KTCIP) had been pouring money into the renewal of the old IPRS. As the NDRS was being debated, the Bank was busy upgrading the IPRS, supporting digitisation of the existing land and company registries, strengthening the administration of the fifty newly devolved county centres of government, and connecting all of the divisions of the state to an accounting database. The KTCIP overhaul reduced some of the pressure for repair of the existing state information systems, but it does not account for the collapse of Gatabaki’s scheme, which would in fact have been bolstered by the same processes. The real reason lay in the ascendancy of the highly simplified information systems controlled by Safaricom, the explosive growth of M-Shwari mobile loans offered by the CBA and the decline of the political influence of the other established banks.
During the year that the NDRS was being debated, Safaricom converted its M-Pesa monopoly over pre-paid customers and financial transactions into the wildly successful M-Shwari microcredit product. In the process, it transformed the Commercial Bank of Africa – substantially owned by the Kenyatta family – from a bespoke bank providing services to the elite to one of the most profitable banks in the world…
Two financial relationships were key to this influence. The first was the joint ownership of Safaricom between the British telecorp Vodafone and the Kenyan state, which gave the state a double-dipping interest in the company’s enormous profits: first as shareholder and second as tax collector. By 2017 the state was earning Sh60 billion in tax and licence fees, and an additional Sh12 billion in dividends – a total that meant a tenth of the revenues raised by the state came from a single firm.
During the year that the NDRS was being debated, Safaricom converted its M-Pesa monopoly over pre-paid customers and financial transactions into the wildly successful M-Shwari microcredit product. In the process, it transformed the Commercial Bank of Africa – substantially owned by the Kenyatta family – from a bespoke bank providing services to the elite to one of the most profitable banks in the world, offering credit and banking facilities to the majority of adult Kenyans – most of whom were very poor. During 2016, 35 million Kenyans used mobile banking to conduct 1.5 billion transactions for a combined value of Sh3.5 trillion. The number of wretchedly but newly employed field agents servicing this finance industry rose by 10 per cent to 165,000 individuals in the same year. And Safaricom exercises a textbook monopoly over the field, controlling 65 per cent of the SIM card subscriptions and 84 per cent of the mobile banking transactions.
By the end of 2016, M-Shwari was an even purer monopoly of the mobile credit market than its M-Pesa parent. It was being used by 16 million customers to take out 64 million small loans with a total value of $1.4 billion. One in five Kenyans were borrowing from M-Swari in a normal month. A highly simplified, stripped-down informational architecture that exploited the very limited capabilities of the Simcard Toolkit and the IPRS (the opposite of the integrated, interoperable and real-time biometric system proposed for the NDRS) was key to the explosive successs of the Safaricom-CBA product.
In contrast with the NDRS, the M-Shwari loans imposed no new identification process on borrowers. For loans of less than sh2500, M-Shwari relied only on the original M-Pesa paperwork – sight of the national ID and a completed application form – that each customer is supposed to have submitted to load the M-Pesa menu and the IPRS blacklist. This frictionless simplicity – turning ignorance and convenience into effective instruments of profit – is now internationally called the “tier-based Know-Your-Customer” procedure. It is intrinsically the opposite of the “clean, complete, correct and secure” registration process that Gatabaki envisaged for the NDRS. It is important to note that it is an instrument of monopoly power because Safaricom can control its risk exposure by relying on the data it owns about users’ purchases of airtime and their relationships with other users. That information – and possible histories of impersonation and PIN-swopping – is not available to the firms’ competitors. It is only in the final decision of blacklisting borrowers that Safaricom reports unpaid M-Shwari debts to the CRBs, effectively blocking those borrowers from future credit and their competitors’ access to future customers. In the short, in the three-year life of M-Shwari, the number of Kenyans – most without any prior connection with the formal banking system – added to the blacklist shared between the CIS and the IPRS has reached three million people (a tenth of the adult population). And nearly 400,000 of those blacklisted have been denied access to future credit for failing to settle debts of less than sh200.
In the years since the demise of the NDRS, Safaricom’s relationship with the Kenyan state has only grown more intimate. The company was an immediate beneficiary of the 14 per cent cap on interest which the Kenyan Central Bank imposed on formal lenders in September 2016 – not least because CBA successfully defended the argument that the 7.5 per cent monthly fee on M-Shwari was an administrative charge and not interest. (The effective interest rate offered on M-Shwari loans approaches 140 per cent over a year of borrowing, but this rate – ten times the legal limit imposed on the formal banks – was still much lower than the returns demanded by informal money lenders.) Safaricom has taken on many of the trophy projects pursued by the Kenyan state since, including a national CCTV surveillance network in 2016, and an e-citizenship project that takes up many of the goals of online convenience that motivated the NDRS.
That the Kenyan state has been strengthened by the rise of Safaricom is probably most evident in the doubling of the population of formal taxpayers in this same period. Yet, it is also clear that this relationship has defeated the NDRS’s goals for addressing the weaknesses of formal credit provision for ordinary Kenyans, especially for firms and for individuals looking to invest relatively large amounts in productive investments. In place of the revolutionary, panoptic over-reach of Gatabaki’s National Digital Registry System, Kenyans have the simplicity and efficiency of M-Shwari. In comparison with the goals of full credit reporting and asset registries, this looks very much like the old pattern of skeletal registration and brutal administration that Africans have long had to endure.
Keith Breckenridge was also published in The Journal of African Studies on the same: “Breckenridge. K. (2019), The failure of the ‘single source of truth about Kenyans’: The NDRS, collateral mysteries and the Safaricom monopoly: Journal of African Studies, Vol. 78 Issue 1, pp 91-111”. It can be accessed here
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Politics
Drought Management in ASAL Areas: Enhancing Resilience or Fostering Vulnerability?
Rather that jumping from project to project in search of a short-term response, there is a need to embrace practical and proactive long-term solutions to the challenges of recurring drought in the ASALs.
Kenya’s arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs) occupy 80 per cent of the country’s landmass and are inhabited by nearly ten million people who rely on livestock rearing and seasonal small-scale farming for their livelihoods. ASALs are known for the variable environmental conditions that result in periodic drought, floods, animal disease outbreaks, and social instability due to conflict and historical marginalisation.
In the 1970s, ASALs experienced periods of prolonged drought nearly every four years, with the government and donor agencies developing various programmes through international and local NGOs to address the crises. The focus was on humanitarian aid to enhance food security through food relief aid to vulnerable populations. But due to the temporality and inefficiency of food aid, these agencies promoted farming as an alternative to livestock production and as a means of ensuring food security.
In Isiolo County, irrigation schemes were introduced along the Waso River and in other small centres such as Malka Daka and Rapsu. However, the projects failed largely due to flooding, and also because pastoralists re-invested the proceeds from farming in livestock and abandoned farming altogether.
Irrigation scheme at Rapsu
Humanitarian interventions and the food security approach were dropped in favour of livestock development projects in the 1990s. These involved the development of water infrastructure such as boreholes and water pans, the establishment of grazing blocks and the implementation of livestock restocking programmes following periods of severe drought.
Between 1990 and 2000, the Arid Lands Resource Management Projects (ALRMP) emerged as the scaffold for the management and development of the drylands. The projects ranged from water infrastructure development and rehabilitation, to early warning bulletins, contingency planning, range re-seeding, livestock feeds, and vaccination.
The National Drought Management Authority (NDMA) took over from Arid Lands Development Projects in 2005. The NDMA’s focus is predominantly on the early warning bulletin, drought intervention, contingency policies, and capacity building. Although the NDMA is not oriented towards development projects, key policies such as Ending Drought Emergencies (EDE) form a significant segment of the NDMA’s work.
Drought Response Program in Isiolo
Between 2009 and 2019, social protection programmes based on cash transfers—such as the Hunger Safety Net Programme (HSNP) and livestock insurance—made their appearance. The HSNP was initially implemented in Marsabit, Mandera, Turkana, and Wajir. In 2019, the programme was upscaled to include four other pastoral counties: Isiolo, Samburu, Garissa and Tana River.
In 2010, Kenya became the first African country to implement KLIP, an index-based livestock insurance programme where the government purchases the policy on behalf of the beneficiary and disburses the pay-out as a safety net to cushion against drought events. The government first piloted the programme in Marsabit County and by 2016 had expanded the scheme to Isiolo, Mandera, Wajir, Garissa, Kajiado, Turkana, Tana River and Samburu counties.
The paradigm shifted from livestock development to enhancing “resilience” through programmes such as the Drought Resilience and Sustainable Livelihoods Programme (DRSLP), the Regional Pastoral Livelihoods Resilience Project (RPLRP) and the Resilience and Economic Growth in Arid Lands (REGAL-AG) project. “Resilience” projects aimed to accelerate economic growth by promoting the development of livestock market facilities and regulatory frameworks, developing the capacities of individual and community enterprises and promoting investments in livestock value chains in five pastoral counties (Marsabit, Isiolo, Garissa, Wajir and Turkana).
Finally, the Kenya Climate-Smart Agriculture Project (KCSAP, 2017-2026) has recently taken the lead. The implementation of KCSAP in ASAL counties enmeshes improving water systems (boreholes), livelihood support, contingency emergency response, and value addition in agriculture.
Cattle watering at Dogogicha borehole (Range water infrastructure development project)
In the period between 1970 and 2020, massive investments were made to mitigate the effects of drought in Kenya’s ASALs. What I have presented here is simply a snapshot of the billion-dollar investments made in drought management. Although some of these projects have contributed to improving the resilience of pastoralist communities, others have increased their vulnerability and inequality because of the manner in which droughts and related catastrophes are handled. Following the severe drought that affected the entire Horn of Africa, including Kenya, in 2011 a policy framework was developed to end drought emergencies. But can these continuous policy shifts and the massive investments in drought management end drought emergencies in Kenya?
End drought emergencies by 2022?
Ending Drought Emergencies (EDE) is a policy framework developed to strengthen drought management institutions and infrastructure. It emerged from the regional drought and disaster resilience summit held in Nairobi by IGAD member states and regional actors. The conference aimed to respond to the drought cataclysm that had affected the entire region resulting in an estimated US$12.1 billion in drought-related losses between 2008 and 2011.
Although some of these projects have contributed to improving the resilience of pastoralist communities, others have increased their vulnerability and inequality.
In Kenya, EDE is a distinct part of the Vision 2030 sector plan for drought risk management with the stated aim of ending drought emergencies by 2022 (MTP III). EDE aims to prioritise inclusive economic growth and reduce poverty by integrating various pillars of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Regional Drought Disaster Resilience and Sustainability Initiative (IDIRSI). However, in September 2021, Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta declared the ongoing drought a national disaster and called for local and international interventions.
Is Kenya’s roadmap for ending drought emergencies realistic? Can Kenya achieve its vision of ending drought emergencies by 2022? The same development visions and plans that aim to integrate ASAL areas into the broader economic transformation continue to push pastoralism to the periphery. Mobility is central to how pastoralists exploit variable range resources. However, insecurity, restricted park and conservancy enclosures, and mega-development infrastructures impede pastoral mobility, fostering vulnerability among the pastoralist communities rather than enhancing their resilience.
Which way forward
Despite the massive investments in humanitarian aid, pastoral development projects, resilience building and “climate-smart” approaches to drought mitigation, pastoralists remain susceptible to shocks and stresses brought on by droughts. There are remarkable discrepancies between the value of the investments made and the results achieved in attempting to end the drought emergency.
The same development visions and plans that aim to integrate ASAL areas into the broader economic transformation continue to push pastoralism to the periphery.
Both failures and successes are evident, but there is an urgent need to close the gap between the levels of investments in drought management and the impact on vulnerability and resilience. As one research participant commented, “stop subsidising failures” and instead focus on supporting the existing institutions and infrastructures that have been put in place to counter drought events. One example is the livestock market facilities and abattoirs in the rangelands, which, according to some of my research respondents, have created “drought millionaires” but have had a limited impact on the lives of pastoralists. These failures are due to a lack of a sustainable and favourable framework. To foster resilience—the ability to withstand climatic shocks and bounce back better—there is a need for a collaborative effort by all the actors, including the state, Civil Society Organisations, international actors and the pastoralists themselves. In summary, three points are essential to reflect upon.
Recognising failures and successes
The government and humanitarian organisations have developed numerous drought management policies, programmes and projects. Handling drought emergencies requires a process of un-learning, learning, and re-learning by revisiting historical interventions and policies. This will help to uncover successes, the ramifications of drought responses, and the unintended structural conditions created by such interventions. Drought response must include considering other factors such as seasonal stress, access to resource infrastructures, and the population’s social-economic dynamics that influence how drought is perceived and managed—all these help in recognising and embracing drought as a management failure rather than as a cyclical absence of rain.
Pastoralism as a reliable profession
Pastoralists are “reliability” professionals acting in “real time” by galvanising different networks, solidarities and resources. Sometimes, reliability is generated by negotiated access to restricted areas such as parks and conservancy areas and through adaptive mobilities and collective solidarities in the form of a moral economy. Collective solidarities help pastoralists to deal with labour deficit, insecurity, and access to resources. Although these practices of collective solidarity are sometimes stratified between people with networks, wealth, and other resources, they remain central to how diverse livestock owners navigate dry periods. External projects that aim to enhance pastoral resilience must recognise the existence of reliable institutions that help pastoralists to manage precarious conditions such as drought. Recognising pastoralists as active managers of drought crises and real-time coordination between pastoralists, state and development NGOs will enhance reliability and adaptive containment of drought emergencies.
Proactive approach
Policies that deal with drought management—such as early warning and contingency planning—are sometimes linear, progressive, and reactive. In contrast, drought events are very much unpredictable and require considerable multiple knowledge and open-ended approaches.
To contain drought emergencies, there is a need to embrace the participatory, relational, and open-ended perspective. In the words of one of my research respondents, “there is a need to move from the ‘policy’ classroom to the ‘field’ classrooms”. For instance, livestock market infrastructure is in place in most parts of the rangelands, but unfortunately, some of it is derelict. Instead of jumping from project to project in search of a short-term response, there is a need to embrace practical and proactive long-term solutions. These could provide stability in the rangelands, especially during dry periods, to help pastoralists exploit unevenly distributed resources. One suggestion could be integrating pastoralists’ safety net and the moral economy with the social protection projects in pastoral areas.
There should be a “pause” moment to rethink and reflect on how to embrace the drought emergencies and build forward better by turning the drought crisis into an opportunity for sustainable and reliable livelihoods in the ASALs and beyond.
Politics
China, Oil and the South Sudan Resource Curse
South Sudan remains heavily reliant on oil revenues but the extraction of this resource has resulted in major environmental damage and great human suffering.
South Sudan is caught between a rock and a hard place, heavily dependent on the revenues generated by a resource whose extraction is having a negative impact on the country.
China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) operates the Dar Petroleum Operating Company (DPOC) and Greater Petroleum Operating Company (GPOC) consortia that produce all of the country’s oil. CNPC started operating in Sudan in 1996, long before South Sudan became an independent state in 2011, without putting in place proper waste management systems and undertaking environmental audits.
While oil production generates over 90 per cent of the government’s budget, the issue of waste management and accountability has been a continuing challenge. Major environmental damage has been reported in the oil fields, jeopardising the lives of those who live in the oil producing states.
“They don’t care about waste management and environmental protection. They want it cheaper, and the agreements are opaque so I don’t know what they signed, in terms of service delivery and environmental care,” said an analyst who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The source also claimed that DPOC and GPOC are “sabotaging” the regulations developed by the Ministry of Petroleum to avoid their corporate social responsibilities towards the communities and the country. “They [DPOC and GPOC] don’t want the implementation of these policies and recently rejected a comprehensive environmental audit saying they are Western ideas, American ideas.”
In the 90s, aware of the impact that oil extraction would have on local communities, the Sudanese government took the draconian measure of ordering the Sudanese Army to evict the civilian population to make way for exploration and production.
“When South Sudan gained independence it was a new responsibility. The whole point of fighting was to do things differently from the old Sudan. The first thing would have been to change things, but the country couldn’t stop oil production. It was young and needed money to continue running its business, to provide basic services and continue with developmental projects,” said Dr Bior Kwer Bior, founding Executive Director for Nile Initiative for Health and Environment, a member of South Sudan’s Civil Society Coalition on Natural Resources.
Today, the decision to continue with oil production has come to haunt the country in terms of the impact on the environment and on the health of local populations.
“Whenever there’s oil extraction obviously there will be impact on the environment. Normally there are safeguards that are put in place to protect the environment. There should be a plan for protecting the environment, an accurate environmental management system, baseline assessment before you start production, and good ways of waste management,” noted Dr Kwer.
According to article 28 of the South Sudan Petroleum Act, contractors must submit an application to the Ministry of Petroleum for a permit to undertake exploratory drilling. The application must include an environmental and social impact assessment. Regarding transportation, treatment and storage, the Act requires that “detailed information on all relevant issues [. . .] including economic, technical, operational, safety related, commercial, local content, land use and environmental aspects of the project” be provided. The Act further clarifies that “The Ministry shall grant a license on the basis of an evaluation of the application, including the environmental and social impact assessment, and the technical competence, experience, history of compliance and ethical conduct and financial capacity of the applicant and the contractor, as well as safety related aspects.”
However, since its enactment in 2012, the provisions of the Act have not been fully implemented and the country continues to engage with the oil companies without proper environmental and social impact assessments having been undertaken.
Environmental impact
A report released by the Nile Initiative for Health and Environment, recorded that over 218 children were born with deformities as a result of oil pollution in the oil-producing states of Unity and Upper Nile.
The organization says it collected the data from the birth registries of the health facilities in Pariang, Unity State, and from media reports of cases in Upper Nile State. Its tally may undercount the true figure because of the absence of health facilities and road networks in the areas where oil fields are located.
Local populations lack awareness of the dangers of the chemicals and waste materials dumped on their doorsteps, which contaminate the water in the wells and ponds that are used by the communities.
“The topography of Pariang in Unity State is a low land. The water from the crude oil, the waste water, is dumped in local ponds, flows all the way to local streams and this is what is causing diseases,” Dr Kwer said. “As a consequence of oil production, waste is hazardously dumped in the areas, and the containers that used to contain the chemicals are in the hands of the communities being used for drinking water,” he continued.
The water discharged with minimal treatment contains toxins such as hydrocarbons that have had a negative impact on communities in the oil producing regions of Upper Nile State, Unity State, and the Ruweng Administrative Area, which by itself produces over 80 per cent of South Sudanese oil. “The impact is huge and negative, towards the communities, and the land, animals and the air. The processes were not satisfactory to us. First of all, the level of oil spills, in which pipe breaks spill crude oil into the soil [and] the containers of chemical materials which find their way to communities and are being used for domestic activities,” Charles Judo, Chairperson of the Civil Society Coalition on Natural Resources (CSCNR), said in an interview.
Judo observed that although oil production in South Sudan started on the wrong footing, “The government has now agreed to conduct an environmental audit, not only to assess the environment but the social impact of the oil activities. And as a member of the civil society I want to see in the future that all the processes are open and transparent to the public.”
Diplomatic impact
At its meeting in May 2021, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), renewed for another year the arms embargo, travel ban and assets freeze imposed on South Sudan in 2018. The UNSC also extended for a further 13 months the mandate of the panel of experts tasked with overseeing those measures. The arms embargo prohibits the supply, sale or transfer of weapons, as well as the provision of technical assistance, training and other military assistance to the territory of South Sudan.
Having previously abstained, this time the Chinese government voted for the arms embargo. Economic analysts said that China’s vote was in retaliation against the decision taken by the government of South Sudan to put in place restrictive measures to improve accountability and transparency in the oil sector, in particular the undertaking of an environmental audit and the implementation of the human resource policies developed by the South Sudan Ministry of Petroleum.
The Chinese government had previously abstained but for the first time voted for the arms embargo.
“The Chinese companies recently have seen some line ministries as a threat, and there have been debates with the Ministry of Petroleum, saying they are not happy with the policies the government is trying to impose on the oil companies and that they should be treated exceptionally because they were supporting South Sudan even during the dark days,” said a source who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter. “They said the environmental audit is expensive. They want samples only taken in one area while others should be skipped.” It is deeply concerning that the Chinese want to dictate what the country should do with its resources.
Contribution by the civil society
The role of civil society is to amplify advocacy efforts and share information to ensure that accountability and transparency are priorities. “Issues to do with monitoring and evaluation of whatever is related to oil, starting from the signing of the contracts, starting [upstream] to downstream. Whatever agreements are about to be reached, civil society ensures there’s transparency,” Judo said.
Some of the concerns raised by citizens include lack of access to timely and reliable information. “The civil society should be empowered to create awareness about agreements reached by the government and other stakeholders, from exploration, production and selling. The role is to ensure the process is flexible and known to all the South Sudanese citizens,” Judo added.
It is deeply concerning that the Chinese want to dictate what the country should do with its resources.
The National Audit Chamber of South Sudan recently issued a report indicating that the 2 per cent share of net petroleum revenues have not been transferred to the oil producing states to finance service delivery and development projects as foreseen in the Petroleum Revenue Management Act 2013 and the Transitional Constitution 2011. The central government has instead reallocated the funds for other use.
“As civil society we are aware and concerned about all these issues. So far, we have been hearing about the processes of signing the agreements but we have never been involved, not only at the signing but also starting from the initial processes and negotiations. There was no transparency and we never had access to contracts to see and compare with other companies. We have never seen the contracts, but from the output, we are not happy about the agreements with the Chinese companies,” said Judo.
Community awareness
Outbreaks of unknown diseases, stillbirths, deformities in new-borns, miscarriages and infertility have been recorded among populations living in oil producing regions yet there is little awareness within these communities of the dangers they face.
The oil companies support development projects such as schools and hospitals but this is part of their corporate social responsibility and not enough. Communities in Pariang County in Unity State and in Paloich in Upper Nile State have held several demonstrations, accusing the oil companies of making empty promises. In August 2020, there was a demonstration over the lack of employment opportunities for local people that had been promised in the Memorandum of Understanding between the government and the oil companies. “They don’t keep their promises but only concede and don’t deliver. Communities need services to be provided to them and this remains key,” said a concerned citizen.
Resource curse
The reconstituted government of National Unity is tasked with the responsibility of reforming the sector and eventually joining the Extractive Industry and Transparency Initiative (EITI) to help the country control and manage well the revenues generated from its natural resources. In so doing, the needs of the communities living in and around the oil producing areas must be prioritised to ensure a do-no-harm approach. In particular, it is crucial that the issue of waste management is addressed as a matter of urgency. The government must also ensure that environmental audits are undertaken before production begins in new oil fields to avoid further environmental degradation.
Outbreaks of unknown diseases, stillbirths, deformities in new-borns, miscarriages and infertility have been recorded among populations living in oil producing regions.
There is also a need to establish accountability mechanisms to ensure that resources are used properly and that the communities in the oil producing regions receive their share of the oil revenues as stipulated in the law.
Further, the government and civil society organizations must educate the communities concerned about the benefits and the challenges that come with oil production activities in their regions, including how relocating to other regions can help them escape the health ordeals that they are currently facing.
It will not be easy to bring order to the sector, especially after more than three decades during which the oil companies explored and produced crude oil without proper government oversight. However, environmental degradation and human suffering must be put to an end as they negate the whole idea of producing oil to fuel development and render the resource a curse rather than a blessing for South Sudan.
Politics
The Crisis in Ethiopia and its Implication for Marsabit County
A lengthy destabilization of Ethiopia’s regime reverse the gains made by security partners and countries in the fight against Al-Shabaab, and create a crisis that Kenya is ill-prepared to face.
From southern Ethiopia to northern Kenya, scenes of euphoria broke out after the swearing in of Abiy Ahmed as Ethiopia’s new prime minister on 2 April 2018, when the incumbent Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn resigned unexpectedly. Abiy came to power as the country faced civil unrest, particularly in the Oromia region. In his maiden speech, Abiy promised sweeping changes, from judicial reforms, to the establishment of high-level structured bilateral cooperation with Kenya to the signing of a peace accord with Eritrea to end 20 years of a frozen conflict. Eighteen years after its closure, the border between Eritrea and Ethiopia was reopened and siblings were reunited with parents and grandparents for the first time in almost a decade. Phone links were re-established.
A New Dawn
A new era seemed to have emerged in the Horn of Africa’s most populous country and largest economy following decades of civil wars, drought and famine. Ethiopian youths had high expectations of an improved economy and better working conditions under Abiy’s leadership. In particular, for the larger Oromo population, which had never had one of its own as head of government, the coronation of Abiy was laden with tremendous hope for this historically marginalized majority group. Abiy won the Nobel Peace Prize after the peace settlement with Eritrea, electrifying the country and the region. Yet amid all the positive reforms, tensions were brewing within and outside Abiy’s administration as the northern Tigrinya region went to the polls against the federal government’s directives. Dissenting Oromo voices and opposition leaders were detained. Vocal local musician Hachalu Handessa was assassinated in broad daylight.
All these events happened in the blink of an eye, jeopardizing the developments initiated by Abiy in fewer than two years. Slightly over one year into the conflict with Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) insurgents, the intensifying hostility between the federal government forces and the Tigrinya political leadership has produced a dire humanitarian crisis, from malnutrition and food insecurity, the displacement of populations, disease outbreaks to restrictions in the delivery of food aid. The current volatile situation in Ethiopia will have a devastating ripple effect on the neighbouring countries, particularly Kenya, which borders Ethiopia to the south.
The spillover
From the Italo-Ethiopia war, through the persecution of the TPLF to Ethiopia’s security operation in early 2018 targeting civilians, the ensuing refugee crises have been felt in the Moyale region of Marsabit County. The movement of people from Ethiopia to the Kenyan side of the border takes different forms, from human trafficking, displacement of people due to ethnic conflict or targeted government operations, to “flushing out” of local militia affiliated to Oromo in Ethiopia. The Moyale-Nairobi road has been the route for human trafficking and a smuggling hotspot for those seeking “greener pastures” abroad and those running away from political persecution.
Of the other countries that share a border with Ethiopia, the influx of refugees into Sudan has been the largest, with arrivals into countries like Somalia being modest. Conversely, with the escalation of ethnic fighting and the federal government fighting different factions in new fronts, the situation is fluid, and there is the possibility of people fleeing to Kenya to escape the growing conflicts. Northern Kenya already hosts two of the world’s largest refugee settlements, Kakuma to the northwest and Dadaab to the northeast. A protracted and bloody ethnic conflict causing a steady flow of displaced populations would likely have severe impacts on Marsabit County. The porous borders with Kenya would enable displaced populations to cross into Moyale Sub-County, putting pressure on a region that is already facing drought and resource problems. An influx of refugees from Ethiopia could increase pressure on the county’s scarce resources and provoke a humanitarian crisis that local authorities are not equipped to handle. This would put colossal pressure on public utilities like hospitals, increase food insecurity, cause disease outbreaks and a surge in COVID-19 infections.
The current volatile situation in Ethiopia will have a devastating ripple effect on the neighbouring countries, particularly Kenya, which borders Ethiopia to the south.
Kenya being the passage for Ethiopians seeking a better life abroad—in South Africa and elsewhere—the influx of people running away from the crisis will increase human trafficking, which will have a devastating impact on the rights of refugees. The people being trafficked usually pay colossal amounts of money to traffickers to get into Nairobi, transported either by lorry or by van like sacks of potatoes. Immigrants risk their lives in search of better lives and livelihoods and the influx of refugees might affect the rights of refugees as the human traffickers may take advantage of the vulnerable displaced populations. Additionally, the crisis has potentially serious effects on Kenya’s stability and security as it could weaken counterinsurgency efforts against the potent Al-Shabaab jihadist group. Kenya has taken a number of initiatives against terrorism and terror-related activities including security and political measures, and creating awareness and sensitization among the locals. These initiatives could be derailed if the militant group makes a comeback into the border counties.
The intensification of conflict and spill-over into Ethiopia’s other regions like Oromia and Ogaden may oblige Abiy’s government to withdraw Ethiopian forces from Somalia, severely weakening the AMISOM forces. This would splinter the containment model put in place by the Ethiopian government against Al-Shabaab. The security vacuum created will allow the infiltration of Al-Shabaab and other militant groups, and create conditions favouring local recruitment. AMISON was officially scheduled to wind up its operations by the end of the 2021 but the international community has requested an extension of the term from the European Union. The deployment of Ethiopian military personnel remains a lynchpin of the AMISON mission in Somalia; retracting Ethiopia’s contingent could erase the gains made over the years in the fight against the terrorist group. The withdrawal of Ethiopian troops would also bolster the Al-Shabaab, enabling militants to spread their tentacles into the vast and volatile parts of Marsabit County.
An influx of refugees from Ethiopia could increase pressure on the county’s scarce resources and provoke a humanitarian crisis that local authorities are not equipped to handle.
The political crisis will exacerbate the ethnic and political situation in border counties like Marsabit, Mandera, Wajir and Garissa, among others. Marsabit County has in the past experienced severe ethnic conflict, from the Forolle massacre, the Turbi bloodbath, the Moyale clashes to the current ethnic clashes in Saku Sub-County. The primary triggers of the ethnic conflict revolve around land and boundary issues exacerbated by the influx of small arms and light weapons through the porous Kenya-Ethiopian border. The ease of access to light weapons will be further accelerated by the Ethiopian crisis, enabling a steady flow of guns and other armaments. This could inflame the already fragile situation in Marsabit County. Considering that electioneering in this region instigates ethnic conflict, the infiltration of light weapons might aggravate these ethnic clashes.
Given that Kenya and Ethiopia have several bilateral trade agreements and other trade arrangements at various levels, the crisis in Ethiopia is likely to affect trade between the two countries. Private firms and local traders on the Kenyan side of the border are likely to re-evaluate their business operations, which will affect income tax and cause layoffs. This will have direct bearing on the revenues generated by the state from the export and import of goods. On the flipside, there will be an inflow of illegal goods and products into Kenya, finding their way into the local markets and thus affecting the business environment in Kenya. Such a shadow market system distorts the local market and trade flows, and results in low sales as people shift to cheaper goods. An intensification of ethnic conflict implies disruption of transportation of goods along the Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia corridor. Similarly, hard drugs like cannabis sativa could find their way into the lucrative drug market in Kenya.
In brief, a rapid de-escalation in the complex ethnic conflict is vital not just for reinstating equilibrium in Ethiopia, but also to ensure that Kenya is not destabilised. A lengthy destabilization of Ethiopia’s regime will reverse the gains made by security partners and countries in the fight against Al Shabaab, the most lethal terrorist group in the Horn of Africa as well as the economic achievements and bilateral cooperation between these two countries. Should the de-escalation emerge as a result of political diplomacy leading to equitable power sharing, Kenya will not have to deal with a crisis it has not prepared for.
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