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MUGA: Affirmative action for Northeastern Kenya long overdue

None should have to pay a steep price for an accident of birth – geographical or biological.

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by The Star

Coast28 June 2022 - 20:49
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In Summary


  • The region's economic disadvantages are in fact just a reflection of something more fundamental: the powerlessness of ethnic minorities.
  • You cannot claim to be a true democracy if the groups within your country who have little effective influence over the electoral process are disregarded.

When judged by some basic indicators for provision of government services – infant mortality rates, literacy rates, public infrastructure, life expectancy, etc – this region is by far the most neglected and disadvantaged in the country.

Many of the promises being made by the leading presidential candidates during the ongoing campaigns are simply laughable. They are every bit as ridiculous as the promise made back in 2013 that every schoolchild would have a laptop if a certain candidate was elected president.

However, there is one promise recently made by the former Prime Minister Raila Odinga, which surely deserves the attention of whoever gets to serve as our next president. And that is the promise of affirmative action policies directed towards the uplift of Northeastern Kenya.

The people of that region have a triple disadvantage when it comes to all matters of economic development.

First, they are geographically remote from the rest of the country. To get from one town in that region to another, you drive for hours through an unforgiving semi-arid landscape. I think it can be said that there is no part of Kenya that has been so rarely visited by those from other regions than Northeastern Kenya.

Second, this inhospitable environment has in recent years been made even more hostile by the presence of al Shabaab terrorist militia cells, famous for dividing passengers on any random bus they accost into 'locals' and 'outsiders' – and promptly murdering all such 'outsiders'.

And finally, the indigenous communities there are traditionally herders. So even with a well-intentioned government, it is not at all easy to provide government services to people given to moving about that vast landscape in search of water and pasture for their livestock.

Still, none of this justifies the tragic neglect that this region has been subjected to by consecutive governments.

For when judged by some basic indicators for provision of government services – infant mortality rates, literacy rates, public infrastructure, life expectancy, etc – this region is by far the most neglected and disadvantaged in the country.

But these economic disadvantages are in fact just a reflection of something more fundamental: the powerlessness of ethnic minorities.


There are relatively few people living in Northeastern Kenya, and the communities indigenous to those parts do not command the kind of voting power that would compel presidential candidates to address their priorities.

Presidential politics in Kenya revolves around the 'five big tribes' – Kikuyu, Kalenjin, Luhya, Luo and Kamba – and all other communities only come in as 'swing vote zones' or as a 'top up' after the political coalitions created from within those five tribes have been settled.

Any presidential candidate can easily cruise to victory even if they do not get a single vote from that region.

Right now, there is a terrible famine in the horn of Africa – a region that stretches all the way down from Somalia to Northeastern Kenya.

If the votes in Northeastern Kenya were truly valued by the leading presidential candidates, would we not be seeing them “flagging off” mile-long convoys of heavily loaded trucks taking relief food to that region?

Indeed, might the government not have called into service the Kenya Airforce to use its massive transport planes to make urgent deliveries to get the whole effort off to an early start?

There was a time when such powerlessness would have been seen to be merely an unavoidable consequence of the practice of democracy. But modern democratic theory has a special place for the rights of ethnic minorities.

The key word here is 'inclusion'. You cannot claim to be a true democracy if the groups within your country who have little effective influence over the electoral process are disregarded.

In my younger days, a not-so-uncommon sight at the entrance of government buildings was of passers-by being asked to lend a hand in carrying a wheelchair-bound fellow citizen up the stairs that led to the reception desk.

Public sympathy was required if the man or woman in the wheelchair was to gain access to the government services they had a right to.

Nowadays the requirement for 'wheelchair access' in all buildings is so standardised that it is not something anybody bothers to remark on.

As with the developmental needs of Northeastern Kenya, the logic here is that none should have to pay a steep price for an accident of birth – geographical or biological.

And that what is required in all such cases is structural solutions – not an expectation of charitable support.

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