Lucky Those British Choppers Happened to be in Kenya

Apparently some tourists were rescued by helicopter when there was flash flooding in the Samburu area. The British Army and Airforce helicopters just happened to be in the area because they 'train' there. It's lucky they were able to rescue the people in the tourist areas. None of the tourists were reported as having any injuries. An elephant research centre was not so lucky. The BBC article doesn't mention if there were any non-Britons or non-tourists involved.

In other areas, six people are reported to have been drowned and five others are missing. The AllAfrica.com article doesn't say if there happened to be any British helicopters there. Livestock, homes and properties have been destroyed in many areas, including Samburu. Many people have been displaced. Interestingly, Kenyan helicopters were also involved in the airlifting of tourists in Samburu. Perhaps it's easier to spot white faces against the muddy background.

One of the deaths was in Mogotio, where flooding a couple of months ago displaced several hundred, many of whom are still living in tents. Another person died and one is missing just outside Nakuru town, in Kaptembwa. Three people were killed by flooding further North. While many have already been displaced in Western province, many more are threatened with flooding as rivers are close to bursting their banks. Exact figures are unclear but the number is said to be 'below 2000'. But thankfully the 600 tourists (although this number includes tourist lodge staff) said to be affected are all OK, having lost only their luggage.

Many areas are being warned to prepare for more flooding and other hazards that come with the very wet conditions, such as cholera, malaria and other water related diseases. Farmers have been holding off sowing crops in many areas because the rain has been too heavy and those who have planted are in danger of losing their crops. Maize seeds are being distributed in some areas, although this is unlikely to benefit many people for some time. Let's hope those British helicopters and emergency services will still be available if and when disaster strikes.

Do Wealth and Power Exclude Wisdom?

To quote the late comedian Linda Smith, "I don't mean to sound racist, but rich people are weird." The very good climate change blog, climateprogress.org has an article about Bill Gates and his maunderings on climate change and related issues. The guy seems to know very little about climate change and all his information seems to come from corporate funded mouthpieces like Bjorn Lomborg.

Gates seems to think most of the current worries about climate change are pointless and that none of the proposals made by activists and experts should be considered. But he thinks that there will be a technological solution or two to the problems of clean energy, energy efficiency, etc (one of those solutions being nuclear, which he thinks is 'as good as' renewable).

This would sound very familiar to Gates-watchers. He advocates technical solutions to health problems, diseases such as HIV, TB, malaria, cholera and rotavirus. He also advocates technical solutions to problems like food shortages, food insecurity and low levels of food production (in the form of biotechnology). And for climate change, he advocates bioengineering. He's certainly consistent, so far.

Despite all his money and his rich and influential friends, Gates seems to be very misinformed and is falling behind on his knowledge of current research, but read the climateprogress.org article for the full details. He's into 'altering the stratosphere to reflect solar energy', filtering 'carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere' and 'brightening ocean clouds'. Do we really want this lunatic to be let loose on the only life supporting planet we know of?

There's also a very strange article on allafrica.com purporting to be about poverty eradication that is really about a deal between the richest man in the world (Gates) and one of the richest and most rapacious corporations in the world (Coca-cola). The Gates Foundation is providing most of the capital, over 10 million dollars, to allow 50,000 Kenyan and Ugandan farmers to sell fruit to Coca-cola for 'fruit-juice' production.

The article is very short on detail and I don't see why Coca-cola can't get these farmers to sell fruit to them without the help of Gates. But is it really a good thing that these farmers are going to sell their healthy food products for what will be a very low price to an organisation that will convert them into an unhealthy and very expensive beverage?

Coca-cola is better known for covering otherwise beautiful areas with their revolting logos and other excrescences, for marketing harmful products to people who are starving and in need of fresh water, for polluting water supplies and using up water supplies in areas where water is scarce and for maintaining a very poor record of corporate social responsibility (see corpwatch.org for further details).

Rich people and organisations are weird, but they can also be sinister, completely undemocratic and downright inhumane. I'm not calling for a law against being rich or even curbs on how rich people can be. But I think rich people and organisations should be subject to the same laws as other people and organisations. And poor people should be protected from the excesses of the rich and powerful. Why should a handful of very rich people and organisations be able to dictate the future of the planet and the futures of all its inhabitants?

How Much Can We Steal From Africa and Call it Aid?

HIV/Aids, TB and Malaria, sometimes called the 'big three' diseases, receive amounts of money way out of proportion to the number of people affected by them. Neglected tropical diseases (NTD) affect more than 500 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa; that's more than half the entire population of the African continent.

But the thing about the big three is that they require a lot of research, a lot of money and a lot of work just to reduce the massive burden they represent. Whereas, NTDs are mostly caused by parasites and can be prevented and treated easily and cheaply. It is estimated that $200-400 million a year over five years could reduce NTDs significantly.

You think a few billion dollars is a lot of money? Well the determinants of all these NTDs, along with TB, malaria and, to some extent, HIV/Aids are environmental. They relate to people's physical environments, especially water, sanitation, food and food security, housing, air quality, etc.

Compare this few billion dollars to the plans to invest around $80 billion in hydroelectric power in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Investors will only be interested in this project if some of the electricity generated will go to Europe. What a surprise. And some of the money going into this project will be aid money. Some will be public money from other sources but the 'private' money involved will only be available, you can be sure, if it is guaranteed to make a return.

Bear in mind also a $400 billion scheme to supply solar electricity to Europe, generated in African countries. And the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of oil, gas and other natural resources extracted from other African countries every year. The amount needed to reduce NTDs and even the 'big three' is puny in comparison.

Ironic as it may seem, many of the NTDs are caused by parasites that thrive in hydroelectric dams; these are ecological disasters and this has been recognised for decades. For how long can we pretend that these expensive projects are for the benefit of Africans when they clearly are not? And for how long can we refuse to attend to programmes that could benefit the whole continent of Africa?

Good water and sanitation, food security and other basic benefits are the way forward for development, not the continued extraction of the continent's wealth at the expense of its people.

SODIS in Salgaa, Nakuru

Photo: A selection of male condoms and one female condom.

I arrived in Nakuru on Tuesday and hope to be here for some time. Yesterday I went to Salgaa, in the district, to see some of the work ICROSS is doing there. Food was being distributed among HIV positive people, who are in especial need of good nutrition in order to ensure their antiretroviral drugs work properly.

Food is in short supply in many parts of Kenya right now but even when there is plenty of food, HIV positive people don't always have access to it because they have little money and can't always reach the market. Sometimes the government meets its obligations and supplies a little food. At other times the food must be supplied by NGOs and other parties. After the food was distributed by ICROSS volunteers and local care workers we went to visit some of the recipients.

The main work I hope to be involved in is a solar water purification method called SODIS. Water is exposed to sunlight for a number of hours and the combined effect of ultraviolet light and heat kills many of the pathogens. This means that people can avail of a cheap method of water purification which helps reduce incidence of water borne conditions, especially ones that result in diarrhea, which affects millions of people every year and is responsible for about 20% of deaths among children.

The main targets for promotion of SODIS, in addition to children, are people with HIV. They are particularly susceptible to any conditions and reducing water borne diseases should make a big difference in reducing the number of pathogens they are exposed to.

The efficacy of SODIS has long been demonstrated and ICROSS was one of the pioneers of the method and of the controlled trials. Despite this, a recent paper questioning the effectiveness of SODIS on the ground in Bolivia has been published. This has attracted a lot of attention because the authors suggest delaying promotion of the method until further research has been carried out.

Proponents of SODIS, including myself, would disagree, as the method has undergone many successful trials. Work with the method is at a very advanced stage. What needs to be questioned is a trial where the results are so poor. Of course, advocating the method is a long and difficult process and everyone involved has much to learn. But SODIS does work; how well supported the communities adopting it are is an entirely different question.

But more on SODIS presently.

Alms for the Rich

Every year, pneumonia kills more under fives than HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria. But huge amounts of money are poured into these three diseases, much of it going towards HIV/AIDS alone. Pharmaceutical companies are speculating on these three diseases, which could make them enormously rich. Well, they are already rich but what they have now will be nothing compared with what they could make if they develop a cure for any of these.

Billions of dollars of aid money goes into disease research but only a fraction of it goes into dealing with treatable and curable conditions, such as acute respiratory infections and diarrhoea. Pharmaceutical companies are not betting on these because there are generic products available for them, products that don’t represent enough of a profit for them.

The number of people who suffer from intestinal parasites of some kind is estimated to be in the billions. This is closely related to malnutrition and nutritional deficiencies, something that may also affect billions of people. But cures for these have been around for a long time. And as no big institutions are interested in speculating in them, they receive very little money.

Don’t we in the development community look like fools, spending most donor money on a few diseases while ignoring the ones we could really have an impact on? There are people on antiretrovirals who are dying because they don’t have enough food or clean water. Are pharmaceutical companies willing to distribute pills without ensuring that there people have access to clean water? That’s how it appears, anyhow.

Some of the biggest sources of donor funding ever, the World Bank’s Global Fund, the President’s Emergency Fund for Aids Relief (PEPFAR) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, concentrate on more or less the same areas. The work done by each fund overlaps with other well funded concerns. There is very little money left for diseases and social problems that have existed for a long time.

I am not suggesting a conspiracy by big business to make sure that most donor money is spent on them. This is no secret. The money may be called donor money but it is being used as a de facto subsidy for pharmaceutical and other products. Industry lobbyists make sure that national and international laws favour their products and interests, often blocking moves by generic producers to launch far cheaper products.

Those who stand to gain from generous donor funding want all the money to be spent on them. The fact that more and more people are becoming infected with preventable diseases is irrelevant, except when this fact can be used to help squeeze out a bit more donor funding. If donor money ever becomes available in large amounts for presently neglected diseases, you can be sure that there will be companies soaking it up.

If you visit towns and schools in Kenya and Tanzania you will meet people who know more about avoiding HIV than they do about diarrhoea and colds. Some people can get hold of expensive drugs and condoms free of charge, but they can’t feed themselves or their families. There are children here who could tell you more about safe sex than many Western adults.

HIV in Kenya spread among people who had poor health, education, infrastructure and social services. Public spending was reduced in response to structural adjustment policies, starting in the 1980s. These policies are still in effect and many social indicators have been disimproving constantly for the last three decades.

Despite the concentration on HIV, large numbers of people in Kenya work without any security, for very low wages. Men often spend much of their time away from their families. Many people are reduced to exchanging sex for money, food or other commodities. These circumstances can all result in transmission of HIV and other diseases, in addition to their being social problems in themselves.

If donor money is used to chase after a few current obsessions, conditions for people will continue to decline. HIV is only one problem and whether infection rates go up or down, Kenyan people will face more and more problems as the years pass. This is because all but the most fashionable issues have been the recipients of donor funding and the ultimate recipients have been wealthy companies, not poor people.

The Right to Trivia

On Friday the 9th of January, newspapers announced that the government was warning that up to 3 million people faced starvation because of growing food shortages. That's more than 10% of the population. By the following monday, the number had risen to 10 million, in excess of 25% of the population. There was no analysis of why the figures had changed so profoundly.

Yesterday, Friday the 16th, famine was not to be found, unless you count passing references in articles on unrelated matters. There is mention of millions facing starvation on page 6 of The Nation in an article on senior politicians spending large amounts of public money on a trip to the inauguration of the president of a foreign country. These politicians were not invited so taxpayers (which doesn't include politicians, because they don't pay tax) are going to pay for an expensive trip to watch the event on TV.

Perhaps they don't trust their own media to cover the event adequately. Their own media is far more interested in signs of disagreement in the coalition government. That's front page news today. After all, these signs of disagreement are so hard to discern, right? There is a a small amount of interest in various scandals that involve various politicians and other senior public figures but interest in these is currently waning.

But there is little interest in the matters that affect individual people, especially poor people. For example, why do water supplies only reach wealthier neighbourhoods and where does the water sold to poorer people at such high prices come from? Where did all the recently imported maize, intended to avert famine, go to? What has been happening to fuel that has been distributed to outlets, allegedly, but doesn't seem to have reached them?

One quarter of the country's population facing starvation didn't make the front page today. Nor did the fact that child death rates are up, again. Child death rates have been rising almost constantly since the 1980s, so this is not a recent trend. It's a trend that cannot be blamed on the HIV epidemic, the water, fuel or food crisis, global warming or any other issue. There is a long running crisis in health, education and other social services.

Of course, it's difficult to assess figures like those from the UN 2009 State of the World's Children report, showing that 121 out of every 1000 live births recorded result in death, mostly in the first year of a child's life. Difficult to assess because an estimated 40% of births are not recorded. The figure could higher or lower but it's difficult to know how many births have not been recorded!

It's not that political wranglings are not important or that the coalition shouldn't be urged to settle their differences and start running the country, these are important. But it's because of their failure to run the country that child mortality and maternal mortality figures, to name but a few, are so high. It's because of the government's failures that people are starving, have no water, are dying of preventable diseases.

Behind the shortage of maize, in addition to the cartels that may or may not exist, there are government plans to sell and/or lease land so that foreign countries can grow sugar for biofuels and food crops for their own people. This is land that is currently farmed by Kenyans or, at least, owned by Kenyans. It could be used to grow food.

The government says it is building a port in Lamu with the money they make from the land. This port will take many years to build, as Raila Odinga reminded us when he gave a figure of five years for enhancements to Mombasa Port.

So what's wrong with using the land to grow food that should be available after one season? In five years time, if the port is really built, will Kenya have any money left to import anything through a new port in Lamu?

More importantly, how many people will have died, unnecessarily, by the time this 'vital' port is built? Water and food cannot wait till political wranglings are sorted out. These wranglings, in many cases, date back to the earliest days of the Kenyan Republic. Death from lack of water and food is very fast. Some will already have died by the time the politicians who went, uninvited to party in the US, have returned.

It's not politicians who die in civil unrest, famine or epidemics; politicians children don't die of preventable diseases and their wives don't usually die in childbirth. They are completely divorced from the pain, although they may see it all on TV. That's if the media bothers to cover it. And if they are not watching US TV, in the US.

The press who appealed so recently to the electorate to protect them from government excesses is now little moved by the plight of ordinary Kenyans. Millions of people facing starvation and children dying in large numbers should be front page news, so should reportage covering what the government intends to do about it. And when the government says what they intend to do, their actions need to be followed until they show some result. Why is the press so obsessed with triviality?

Of course, government wranglings can turn to riots and many lives can be lost. But far more people die from malnutrition, starvation, water shortage, preventable disease and various other things than from civil distrubances. When these issues have been resolved there will be time enough to cover the many political farces but meantime, perhaps the press will reconsider its priorities.

Water: the hi-tech and the low-tech

For many years before coming here I was employed as a consultant, working on IT projects. I'm not a computer expert but the work related to the information and data rather than the technology. The work was often interesting but many of the projects seemed to be rather pointless or to miss the point.

For example, there were too few social workers in a local authority and they had too much work to do. Therefore, a lot of mistakes were made and the people who were supposed to benefit from social work either didn't benefit or suffered adverse consequences.

Another example, people didn't have enough money to pay certain bills or they had the money but they hadn't received the services. The result was that the authority didn't get the revenue they expected, but they also didn't know that their constituents were not getting the services and that that is why they were not getting the revenue.

You might think that more social workers and better investigation services would help with both of these problems. But a number of years ago, someone must have told the UK government that all their problems would end if they were to 'e-enable' everything. All they needed was ‘e-delivery’, 'e-government', 'e-payments' and anything else that you put 'e-' before would be miraculously transformed and would never cause problems again.

Well, I accept that you can do a lot with technology but only with certain sorts of problem. And it’s just one tool, depending, like any tool, on how it is used. Now, water services in some parts of the UK are terrible, not because people can't report faults in their area using their palm top. The people who live in the worst affected areas were unlikely to have palmtops. The problem was with the infrastructure.

If technology is a solution to administration and communication problems, why is it not a solution to infrastructure problems? Some of the water infrastructure in the UK dates back more than a century and the technology goes back a lot further than that. Apparently the water companies like spending money on certain sorts of technology, it makes for great publicity. But they are not so keen on other sorts of technology. So pipes continue to leak, bills continue to go up and more and more people have problems with their water supply.

Well, there is little comparison between London and Nairobi. Indeed, there are far worse places than Nairobi, but as a densely populated city where more than half of the inhabitants live on less than 2 dollars a day, the problems here are extreme enough. The water infrastructure is not as old as that in London but it was built for a much smaller population and doesn't even extend to many of the most densely populated areas. Most of these places have no running water, no electricity and no proper roads.

Other infrastructures are similarly dilapidated and oversubscribed. There are some fortunate (and relatively posh) areas where there is always water at the turn of a tap. But there are other areas where water is an expensive commodity that requires either a lot of work, a lot of money or both. Of course, if you have the money, you can avoid the work. But if you don’t have the money, and many people don’t, then you are in big trouble.

So, I didn't know whether to laugh or be angry when I heard the Prime Minister, Raila Odinga, announcing his plans for 'e-government'. This is the PM suspected of trying to rig the last elections. Perhaps he and the President, Mwai Kibaki, who was 'e-lected' under highly suspect circumstances think that 'e-government' is one where there can be no rigging or gerrymandering? Odinga went on to talk about the many possibilities of ‘e-enabling’ and the benefits people could expect.

I don't know whether the election chaos was caused by politicians, the police, the army, civil servants (and the Electoral Commission of Kenya is certainly getting a lot of the flack), business people or other interested parties. But 'e-enabling' the election process, or any other aspect of the administration of the country, will not cut corruption, inefficiency, lack of resources, accessibility or anything else that matters.

And if people don't have water, there is no abstruse technological process that will give them access to it. The technology required is so simple that it is not even called technology. I'm not saying there are no complications, just that Nairobi is not waiting for some spoddy geek to come along and sort it all out. There is a water authority here already, with engineers and other experts. They need to be enabled, whatever that involves, not 'e-enabled'.

When people have adequate access to water, food, education and other social services, then it will be time enough for the 'benefits' of high technology. That high technology, also, can wait until the country is able to afford it. If there is not enough money to improve the water supply, nor is there enough money for technological frippery.

I'm quite sure there are Western companies falling over themselves to supply technical equipment and services, there always are. No doubt they were behind Odinga’s speech. Well, they are finding it increasingly hard to palm their innovations off on Western countries, who are just beginning to realise that they have long been hoodwinked by glossy brochures. I hope the leaders of Kenya are not swayed by promises of modernisation and technological enhancements when there are far more basic and more important things to worry about.

Finally, I hope that these leaders will not be hoodwinked into believing that privatisation will solve all their problems with public utilities and services. They only need to ask some of their neighbours about their experiences of privatisation. The word Biwater springs to mind when anyone mentions water privatisation in developing countries, but other words spring to mind too.

PS: I got completely distracted from what I wanted to talk about! There is a cheap and simple method of purifying water in areas where there is plenty of sun. It’s called the Sodis technique (Solar Water Disinfection). It costs little or nothing, it’s accessible to most people, no matter how poor, it’s sustainable and it provides many benefits. Just check out the manual!

Exposing water in clear plastic water bottles to the sun for up to six hours reduces or eliminates micro organisms because of the effects of ultraviolet radiation and the rise in temperature. In strong sunlight, where high temperatures are reached, the water can be purified in as little as one hour.

Of course, you need to be careful about certain things. Small bottles need to be used, no bigger than about two litres, the bottles need to be kept clean and when they get too scratched they need to be replaced. Also, you cannot remove chemical contamination by this method.

But it is a true empty pocket scheme in a place like Kenya, where many areas are strewn with used plastic bottles. Now that they have a value when kept clean and usable, perhaps there won’t be so many of them thrown out along with other household rubbish.

I was pleased to see an item about the Sodis technique on national television yesterday, just after I returned from a meeting about water and sanitation in Kibera. There isn’t much space in Kibera, (unless you include the well watered golf course next door) but there is enough scope to put bottles out in the sun to provide drinking water for the family. The only problem is that it is so simple, people are not very impressed with it!