44th Commencement Ceremony Speech by the Alumni Representative, Dr. Kati...

EPISODE 6 OF MS PRESIDENT SEASON 2 ON PERIOD POVERTY

Some thoughts on research, data analysis and evidence based decision making

About three weeks ago, I was in a #SalzburgGlobalSeminar discussing “Global innovations on youth violence, safety, and justice.” Two of the sessions that I sat through were on community-based research and on data. As a firm believer and practitioner of evidence-based policy decision-making, I was challenged to think about these issues more deeply, hence these personal reflections.

Data in evidence-based decision-making is often used to measure performance, structure incentives, and allocate resources while informing public courses of action. Setting up an anti-corruption agency (i.e., allocation of resources and course of action) with the hope of deterring high-end corruption (structure incentives) because corruption is too rampant (performance) is one such example. Determining the course of action and allocation of resources is often political. On the other hand, the process of measuring performance, while political, is often hierarchical as the data is generated by international agencies, bureaus of statistics, and researchers. Even when the research process is done in consultation with community members, the ultimate interpretation and presentation of the analysis are often from the researchers’ cultural nuances, definitions, biases, or vested interests.

 

Bribery, for example, is the primary consideration when designing the bribery index and, in turn, is a primary determinant of the corruption rankings among countries in the world. In cultural contexts where it is informally acceptable to give money or gifts for a public service rendered, as a way of expressing gratitude, bribery as a measure of corruption becomes very problematic. It means that, as long as corruption is measured using the bribery index,  some countries will never exonerate themselves from being the most corrupt countries in the world because their way of life integrates “transfer of value in the context of an official action.” 

 

Selecting an indicator or a set of indicators to measure performance also means that many factors that perhaps make more sense to a community or tell the whole story as experienced by community members are also left out. Corruption seen through the prism of bribery or another definition like nepotistic appointments to public positions may not be a significant or a relevant measure of corruption in a communal culture like the Somalis in my country who select leaders based on clans. However, personal experiences of denial of essential services like access to health facilities or misuse of resources that cause harm to community members while unfairly enriching others may be a more relevant, tangible, and relatable definition of corruption to them. Therefore, in measuring corruption, the latter indicators should matter more than the former indicators to validate these lived experiences and contexts, whether I agree with them or not from a research point of view. 

 

It is therefore important to remind ourselves that data is never neutral. Data can create illusions of rationality, yet beneath it, mask underlying fundamental differences of interpretation, purpose, and power among the various stakeholders situated on both sides of the spectrum, such as researchers (with an academic outlook) and communities (with lived experiences). Scarcity of resources is at the root cause of relying on other people’s data, hence depending on their interpretation of what is or is not important. This means that the real experts – those with lived experiences and whose perspectives should matter most in giving meaning to the data or indicators to measures performance are often ignored.

 

As a researcher, I must be committed to presenting the community’s outlook with honesty and respect. Taking human-centered approaches to data and research that: truly regards multiple community definitions and perspective; that seeks to have a collaborative as opposed to an extractive data relationships; that considers lived experiences as equally important as academic perspectives; that is empathetic to community welfare above researcher interests, and; that promotes social trust and community realities, must be embedded within research and data analysis if it is to lead to mutually benefiting and just evidence-based decision-making processes.

Anticipating Risks, Enhancing Resilience: What Role for Foresight in Fra...

S3:E02 | My childhood in Kariobangi – Dr. Katindi Sivi on #DDwithMaqC

Dr. Katindi Sivi - Complexities surrounding youth involvement in violence

Freedom in foresight – the reason why children make the best futurists!

I am in the business of futuring, and I am glad that in my part of the world, it is catching on and with a lot of excitement. One of the greatest difficulties I have encountered as I facilitate these processes is what it entails for people or organizations to fully utilize the available intelligence - especially the non-mainstream, seemingly obscure gut feeling or ostensibly disparate information – to effectively increase insights. 

The inability to do so is orchestrated by the fact that all human beings have a particular worldview they use to filter things, including information. The tendency is to reject whatever is not congruent with those filters. These relatively narrow mental constructs are based on past and the conventional lenses they use to view the world. However, one other crucial reason is that they come to these processes with self-serving biases that incline them to gather and process information to advance their perceived self-interest or support their pre-existing views. To be politically correct, they seldom voice all their standpoints, cynicisms, fears, or assumptions, without which the process short-circuits the creation of robust futures that enable strategic decision making.

To guard against these blind spots, it is imperative to consider:

1. Joining these processes from a place of complete honesty, awareness, reflection, and the openness to learn just like children view the world with wide-open eyes and a sense of wonder and curiosity
2. More honest analyses of the data we collect, including the emerging weak signals we often dismiss to re-conceptualize our ideas and get multiple views, just like children are open to having more than 'the right answer' to a question 
3. The effective use of human intelligence tacked away in gut feelings just like children bluntly say what they think, however illogical
4. Inviting those people we rarely interact with, the ones who are not like us – the authentic dissenters or devils advocates - with the intention to value those outside views just like children are un-inhibited and open to playing with everyone
5. Highly abstracting sensitive situations and role-playing them to literary 'put oneself in another's shoes' and increasing empathy while creating a much more open interaction, just as children often experiment with anything in their context to imagine different fantasies, aka possibilities!

 

Mentorship matters

I will never forget how terrified I was when I was about to graduate from campus. I wondered what it was that I could offer the world and get paid, never mind that I had picked out my undergrad course on a picky ponky basis because there was no career guidance. The fright of having to face the uncertainty of my future without help was so bad that I had to get treated for ulcers. 

 

After graduation, I was fortunate to get a three-month internship position in one of Kenya's leading thinktanks, and where I eventually got to work for the next eleven years. The whole office had insanely intelligent people. Half the time, I wondered what they were going on about, primarily because they dealt with a subject that was entirely out of my depth - Economics. I had also come from a seriously flawed education system – one where I could ace it in class but one that rendered me dysfunctional when I stepped out to apply that knowledge in the workplace. I was inadequate in many ways, but my work environment provided the space to grow. The tonnes of literature I had to read through, the debates I listened to, the many places I visited, the people I interacted with, but most importantly, my colleagues who graciously handheld me out of my 'not knowing' without judgment – all gave me an opportunity to learn, unlearn and re-learn. Because of that, which was extended to me, I am a firm believer in providing that space for others.

 

As fate would have it, I came into contact with what would eventually become my life's calling – foresight. The organization had just completed a project on Kenya's possible futures in the coming decade, and I was in charge of the countrywide dissemination process in 300+ workshops. Traversing the country and facilitating community dialogues helped me understand my history and get in touch with my heritage. It also knocked out a lot of assumptions I had previously made during my sheltered school life. I got to experience the strategic power of foresight firsthand when three of the four extrapolations panned out in seven years - even if the project's intention was not to predict the future. The fact that we had an opportunity to proactively design policy decisions beforehand was revolutionary. From this experience, foresight became that thing that had to be transmitted to others – especially in a continent that needs to get its act together on many levels, operates largely from two-dimensional time perspectives, and has the fewest number of futurists. 

 

Through LongView Futures Foundation, we are now running Africa foresight Lab, which fosters foresight literacy among young Africans. The 10-week action learning training program is offered three times a year. It is designed to accommodate a maximum of 30 young people from 30 countries, learning for three hours every week for three months to understand the basics of futures thinking. This first cohort is very special because we have designed foresight projects together in the past. They came on board to deepen their knowledge on the subject and help test the tools and methodologies, and ensure that they are fit for purpose in the African context. The team comprises 17 individuals from 12 countries – who are now on week 7 of learning. They are in the process of designing futures perspectives on the areas that are of most concern to them. We hope to share the outcome of that process at a later stage. We hope that they will use the knowledge gathered to transform their spheres of influence because collectively, we will influence Africa's futures one cohort at a time.

Dr. Katindi Sivi

Time for organizations to hit the reset button: Using scenarios to stress test your strategic plans

A lot of organizations have been trying to pick up from where they left off before the COVID-19 lockdown. This means most of them want to continue with business as usual with the hope that the effects of COVID-19 are a passing cloud and that somehow, things will get better. Most do not fully acknowledge that something has fundamentally shifted. Whatever is going on has lasting future implications on how organizations are structured, how they deliver goods and services, as well as their relationships with their employees, customers, and other organizations or sectors in general. The reason why it is vital to revisit your strategic plan is that it is based on certain assumptions about the future, and these assumptions need to be reconsidered with the hindsight of the new realities. 

 

The banking and the insurance sectors have been forerunners in coming up with a process of creating buffers that prevent their systems from collapsing if there are extreme shocks that adversely affect their operations like financial crushes. Through robust risk analyses, they can plan for uncertainties brought about by complex conditions. From the point of view of long-term resilience and sustainability, organizations also need to guard against the adversities of unforeseen circumstances in the future. Stress testing is deployed by futurists to explore the impacts organizations would face or the stresses the systems in the organizations would go through if certain scenarios were to occur. The idea is to test the fortitude of the strategic plan and, if necessary, to develop organizational work plans or amend the strategic plan so that it becomes more robust and/or flexible to future uncertainties and more inclusive of the emerging concerns.

 

In a stress testing process, we choose relevant and viable sets of scenarios and conduct a SWOT analysis of the strategic plan's performance in each scenario. This process brings out how various components of the plan (like the strategic goals or program strategies) would perform under various circumstances or eventualities while surfacing the trends with the highest future impact on the organization. These issues are then mapped out in what we call a heat map – which is a color-coded matrix that indicates the performance of the different components of the plan against the various stress factors identified in each scenario. The color code also shows the impact of the stress on the organization or on the organizational system. Abysmal performance means a very high impact of the stress and that the particular components of the plan are not viable or feasible in the future hence a red color code; marginal performance means the medium impact of the stress and that the components of the plan are somehow viable or feasible, but they need strategic enhancement hence an orange color code; while good performance means that there is no negative impact of the stress and that the components of the plan are feasible or viable hence a green color code. Apart from the color-coding aspect in the heat map, the reason why an impact and the performance of the plan's component warrants a particular color code should be indicated as it helps surface the assumptions made and enhances participants' clarity on the issues.

 

At the analysis stage, organizational members have an opportunity to zoom in on the problem areas with the highest potential impact on the organization and identify strategic interventions that would help them to be more prepared and agile in their responses. The heat map also shows certain patterns e.g., strengths in the program side of things and weaknesses in the institutional side of things – and such patterns clearly show the areas that need more work. Ultimately, a stress test should generate both internal interventions that strengthen the institutions' response to external eventualities but also it can help identify external strategies such as lobbying for certain laws or collaborating with certain partners to proactively work towards creating futures that help avert the scenarios that would cause the highest levels of impact on their organizations.

 

 

 

 

LongView Consult was privileged in October 2020 to work with a global organization - Publish What You Pay - on such a project, and this is what the client said about the process. 

 

"You have taken us on our first journey of futures thinking at PWYP, and I hope this is the beginning of a new approach in our work. I also wanted to say that I have received really good feedback….."

Elisa Peter, Executive director 

Publish What You Pay

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Katindi Sivi

Afri-Futurist, founder and Lead consultant @ LongView Consult

www.longviewconsult.com

How foresight can help persistent public policy failures

I was invited last week to speak about effective inclusion – a subject that many have worked on for long with mixed results - and I felt it is essential to write a short article on why futures is imperative in fostering participation and inclusion in the public policymaking process. Policymaking is the mechanism through which the government identifies a public problem and puts a framework to address it. It is assumed that once the policy is implemented, the quality of life of the citizen will improve – mainly through laws and regulations that facilitate addressing the issue or through funding towards the achievement of the goals intended by the policy. Traditional policymaking is linear and includes identifying the problem & framing it, policy formulation, policy adoption, policy implementation, and policy evaluation. The process, in my view, is counterproductive at many levels, hence the need to infuse futures thinking. This is why.

 

At the identification of the problem & framing stage, the challenges are often identified from incidences that have occurred. There is usually little analysis of the root causes of the problems or their function within the whole system. Interestingly is also the fact that policy development is made to address the current problem in the future, but seldom is there any thinking that goes into how the issue will evolve in the future. The lack of analysis at this systemic and futures level makes people have single-sided definitions of the problem instead of the holistic view in which issues could be looked at – making it essential to ask, whose definition is adopted when a policy is crafted? On many occasions, the official policy then ends up being biased and mainstreaming stereotypes that keep policymakers locked inside obsolete assumptions that continue to surface long after the policy is done. 

 

The policy formulation stage entails designing an approach to solving the problem. While lobbyists might be successful in getting progressive suggestions to politicians, the threat of political interpretation and the vicious fight by conservative forces to maintain the status quo gets in the way of what should be objectively done about the issue or how to address changing circumstances. It is also important to note that politicians are trying to resolve a problem they may not personally experience while living in their ivory towers – so in essence, they are not the wearers of the shoe. That is why policy proposals are sometimes so abstract and thus impractical. At the adoption level, it is usually the same politicians, with many vested interests and selfish ends, deciding the legitimacy of the policy. It is a no brainer that the public good is most times sacrificed for short-term expediency. There are incidences where good policies make it to the implementation stage, but the bureaucratic nature of government institutions makes execution slow or obstructed by lack of funds, misappropriation of resources, ethnicization, elite & other captures, among many other challenges. Monitoring and evaluation to check if the policy was successful in resolving the issue is rarely done. Even when we manage to tick the boxes, it is the executor of the service that checks themselves, which makes it hard to be objective. 

 

So how might foresight help?

Policy challenges are much more complex and must be treated as such. Comprehensive research (without political manipulation of data) into the state of affairs, which considers past and present systemic evolutions, can establish the facts impartially. Honest multi-stakeholder views with very diverse groups (not those stage-managed political gimmicks) to ensure honest feedback on the issue, correct biases, and to understand intersectional impacts are crucial to foster empathy, inclusion, buy-in, collaboration, as well as to generate trust. Both the quantitative and qualitative data are necessary to complement each other and, in a sense, complete the analysis loop.

 

Due to the volatile, uncertain, rapidly changing, and ambiguous context within which the policy issues to be addressed occur, it is imperative to understand the possible future evolutions. This is where a combination of futures methods like trends analysis, scenarios building, horizon scanning, etc. all play a part in simulating long term probable outcomes. This kind of analysis helps design strategic responses and anticipate behavioral incentives and tradeoffs required for successful intervention and creating the necessary changes. Policymakers even get the advantage of genuinely co-creating solutions with the affected populations and in realistic ways – which demolishes the traditional top-down approach to policymaking and appreciates the context-based location of those impacted by the issue. 

 

Based on the two previous processes, policy adoption and legitimization is therefore predicated on the basis of genuinely making the most strategic decision in terms of cost-benefit analysis, public good, and authentic change or results. The collaborative nature of the process can enable the loosening of self-preserving tendencies among institutions because of the trust created with stakeholders. The government can be free to create an enabling environment where other actors step in to take their space. They can efficiently work together because of the elaborate process that fosters the creation of policy ownership and still keep each other accountable because of very clearly stipulated expectations. It is also possible to collect feedback to the most granular levels and from multiple angles because of the multiplicity of actors enabled to participate in the policy implementation process. 

 

Of course, issues of time to do such a laborious process, the political will or mandate, as well as the culture clash between politicians, bureaucrats, and organizations or ordinary citizens, are often cited as reasons why this process is impossible. However, the benefits far outweigh the constant tragedy of the effects of bad policies, and an ineffective policymaking process. 

 

Why we should consume forecasts with caution

The uncertainty of not knowing what lies ahead is disarming in many ways because it renders us powerless. One way to navigate that ambiguity is to use historical data to forecast the future. The predictions help create some certainty about where the future is headed and, in some way, make things less obscure. Various modelers, for example, had anticipated future COVID-19 infection cases, death, and recovery rates. BMC public health projected that Kenya would reach 1,000 confirmed cases by 14th April 2020 (33 days after the first confirmed case) and 4,000 cases by 21st April 2020 (40 days after the first confirmed case). The Ministry of Health numbers were similar, projecting “1000, 5,000 and 10,000 cases of Coronavirus by early, mid, and late April 2020, respectively ceteris paribus[1]”[2]. In hindsight and according to WHO data, on 14th April, we were at 218 confirmed cases, and by 21st April, we were at 291 confirmed cases.[3]

Other interesting examples of data forecasts include those made at the beginning of the year. GDP was expected to grow to 6% following consistent growth in the last five years, which placed Kenya among one of the fastest-growing economies in Sub-Saharan Africa. The expected growth was attributed to continued government spending of 25% of GDP on infrastructural ‘development’ projects, high remittances of 2.9% of GDP, a solid consumer base which accounts for about 80% of GDP, and increased foreign direct investments due to ease of doing business and high macro-economic stability. The continued extraction of oil from Turkana County and other exports, trade, and anticipated higher investments in the big four sectors - health, housing, manufacturing, and agriculture were also expected to boost the economy significantly. The investments would result in savings on health care, increased access to housing, and enhanced food supply (also propelled by expected favorable weather), which would then bring down the cost of food and reduce the cost of living hence lower inflation rates of about 5%.

Unfortunately, the forecasts have had the opposite results, primarily due to the unforeseen effects of locusts and COVID-19 (events that were completely out of anyone’s know or control). Between April and July 2020, the economy was projected to decline to 1% as government investments “slowed down significantly, and civil works were delayed by global supply disruptions and the limited supply of labor associated with COVID-19”[4]. Remittances declined by 20% between January to April 2020[5]. FDI was projected to contract by 25 to 40 percent in 2020, and the adjusted inflation was projected to increase to 6.5%. Labour force participation declined from 75% to 57% due to job losses meaning that the consumer base had considerably shrunk. Export revenue was expected to reduce by a minimum of 25% (USD 1.5bn), while trade with China was expected to decline by about 40%. The COVID -19 pandemic coincided with the start of the maize planting season, the primary staple food. Following a sharp decline in maize production in 2019 due to early-season drought, the unresolved locust pandemic as well as floods in 2020, food stocks are likely to decline, and food prices considerably increase thus a high cost of living.

The point this article makes is not that forecasts are bad but how they are presented and in turn consumed is a big problem. Modelers present forecasts as future facts instead of indicative possible future trajectories that could happen. When the future does not pan out as predicted, people mistrust data or downplay its importance and, therefore, do not use it to plan or prepare for various eventualities. Forecasts are also inadequate by themselves because they emanate from the fact that data projections are linear. They map historical and current data to show future patterns – which is not necessarily how life works. Past trends can indeed continue in the future but not always. Data analysts try to incorporate assumptions into forecasts to bring out other variations of the trends - hence terminologies like the base case, low case, or high case scenarios. However, these data patterns usually consist of stand-alone parameters which, when interpreted by themselves to discuss multifaceted societal issues, will obviously give a false picture of the whole. This means that the interconnectedness of stand-alone parameters has to be explored together because that is how life works hence an analysis of multi-sectoral patterns, their relationship to each other, and the ensuing implications of those multiple relationships.

There is also a dire need to unpack the reasons why a trend moves a certain way and uncover other factors that would affect the course of that trend in a different way from the current norm.  Understanding these push and pull factors altering patterns enables people to get a more accurate picture of how the future might unfold, which is seldom incorporated in predictive data. Tracking the evolution of these underlying aspects altering data patterns, some of which are not quantifiable but qualitative in nature, is particularly painstaking but important because it points to where the change is likely to happen in a more precise fashion. This way of processing data removes the blind spots that keep people locked inside some obsolete assumptions of what the future looks like and which blocks them from seeing emerging realities that eventually become the main cause of their strategic failures.

Ultimately, data and trends are only meaningful when they are innovatively processed, and important insights are extracted to enrich people’s understanding of the issue. However, the value of data, trends, and patterns is in the analyzed and leveraged information to enable evidence-based strategic decision-making, organizational agility to manage risks, and positioning for resilience. 

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[1] Latin word meaning all things remaining constant

[2] Ministry of Health website: 

[3] This fact is not meant to belittle the gravity of COVID-19 in any way

[4] World Bank. (2020). Turbulent Times for Growth in Kenya: Policy Options during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Kenya economic update, 21

[5] From 259,392.71 in January to 208,217.73 USD thousand in April 2020

Building a shock-resistant planet in a world of such great difference

I had a rare opportunity to speak with innovative people questioning whether global immune technologies seeking to find systemic solutions to global pandemics can help build a shock-resistant planet. Such technologies include those that "can detect a novel pathogen in the air, water, or soil of the Earth and rapidly sequence its DNA or RNA"[1] to neutralize the pathogen before its damaging effects begins, and in a sense entirely bypass the limitations we have seen with governments in managing diseases like COVID – 19. This conversation can be retrieved from https://bit.ly/2ZNiSqU. 

I live in a continent that shoulders one-quarter of the global disease burden, has less than 2% of the world doctors, invests less than 1% of global health expenditure, and is among the continents with the lowest access to healthcare services in the world. While these impressive innovations towards "precision medicine" seek to prioritize preparedness, prevention, and confinement of disease outbreaks, I often wonder the extent to which such innovations can genuinely be global in a world of such significant difference.

The global health sector is predicated on an exploitative model that prioritizes profits over people. As such, it has built a curative system that is mostly available to those who can pay, and which has proved to be unsustainable with occurrences of global pandemics like SARs and COVID-19, especially among the poor. For any such system to work optimally, it must avail health as a public good and a right while collectively working towards the achievement and maintenance of good health through preventive healthcare that is inherently less costly. This value-based health system would have to centralize the needs of people to produce consistently superior outcomes at the lowest cost. This means universal access to high-quality medical care, patient safety, convenience, cost containment, and ultimate satisfaction in services rendered for the collective wellbeing of all to remove the threat of global infections effectively.

Problem-solving technological innovations have been vital in making enormous strides in the health sector. However, technology has not been without its challenges. A first critical concern is the relationship between humans and machines. Weak collaborations between people and machines resulting from technological misuse - which occurs when people overly rely on automation inappropriately, or technological disuse - which occurs when people do not fully appreciate the benefits of automation, have become increasingly costly and catastrophic in as far as they compromise people's safety. WHO acknowledges that the diffusion of innovations is a major challenge because of: user perceptions - on the benefits of change, on uncertainty levels, on compatibility between values and current needs, as well as on simplicity of use. This means that the process of acceptance and diffusion has its own pace, rules of the game, and complexity level. For the successful and accelerated interface between humans and technology, trust becomes a critical factor. Just as trust aids relationships between people, it also guides and influences reliance and use of the said technology, its mastery, and the extent one feels a sense of security when using the technology, especially in complex and uncertain situations. This means that the way certain technologies are introduced is critical in building or undermining trust.

A predominant characteristic of the health model that has been pursued over time is the top-down prescriptive approach of creating solutions by the 'power holders' because they have the resources and the capacity to do so. The only problem with this approach is that it now has to create solutions for cross-border challenges that manifest differently in different cultures and communities. As such, automated systems have to genuinely understand the users' unique situations in different parts of the globe to design truly inclusive and adaptive systems. This can only be achieved through new processes that are mutually collaborative and participatory – to co-design and co-produce unique gap-filling solutions that value diversity and incorporate indigenous knowledge to build true resilience. Therefore, the system's effectiveness will only be achieved with the dismantling of hierarchical, bureaucratic, and egocentric institutions and constructing transformative ones that are responsive and agile enough to bring about the needed change. The only question here is, are the beneficiaries of the current global order able to shift to the required paradigm?

References 

Berwick, D. M. (2003). Disseminating innovations in health care. Jama, 289 (15), pp. 1969-1975.

Hoc, J. M. (2000). From human–machine interaction to human–machine cooperation. Ergonomics, 43 (7), 833-843.

Lee, J. D., & See, K. A. (2004). Trust in automation: Designing for appropriate reliance. Human factors, 46 (1), 50-80.

Porter, M. E. (2009). A strategy for health care reform—toward a value-based system. New England Journal of Medicine, 361(2), 109-112.

Porter, M. E. (2010). What is value in health care?. New England Journal of Medicine, 363(26), 2477-2481.

World Health Organization. (2006). The world health report 2006: working together for health. World Health Organization.

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[1] for more information visit the Atlantic Council website. 

Resist the status quo bias

In Kenya and Africa at large, politics is a filter through which many, if not all, things are perceived. However, when COVID-19 took over our lives in March, politicians who claim to have all the answers, momentarily went suspiciously quiet while the media fumbled to get enough news items. At that point, COVID-19 was beyond political maneuver and beyond anybody’s control – evidence that politics is not everything. Given the magnitude of uncertainty or the looming impact of the pandemic, one would imagine that we would be rational enough to suspend selfish interests and focus on minimizing the ensuing devastation of the pandemic. Strengthening our health systems, critically working through economic recovery, revamping people’s welfare, and reducing debt, as we help flood victims, among other crises, should be the natural order of things. Instead, we are back to the politics – of reviewing the Constitution, fostering tribal unity, or ousting those threatening political party interests, etc. Just as quickly as we forgot about the locusts, we have pretty much moved on from the issue of the Coronavirus to amplify non-issues.

Kenyans must internalize one thing – that the political agenda has nothing to do with resolving critical life issues. Instead, it has everything to do with maintaining the privileges of the powerful and their beneficiaries. For that to happen, the systems of power, like the Constitution and the electoral system, have to continuously be recreated to align with these interests. The dominators also have to legitimize the process by crafting a generalized acceptance. By framing these trivial political issues (in comparison to the unaddressed issues) as urgent and life-threatening to the dominated group, they work at building a narrative that suspends logic to achieve consensus. That is why for example, the so-called ‘Luhya leaders’ have no problem defying the COVID rules or spending so much money flying across the country to meet and claim tribal solidarity (which by the way could easily have been done through zoom). The narrative portrayed is that a lack of urgent tribal harmony will lead to political decimation faster than a COVID related decimation. The narrative is crafted to make the community believe that the urgency applies to them, while all this time if the peasants truly mattered to the politicians, the resources would have been consolidated to help flood victims. The same applies to the proposal to review the Constitution in the middle of the current crisis – it is crafted to literary imply change. However, it has nothing to do with changing the fate of poor Kenyans, most of whom are economically desperate at this point. It is about entrenching political dynasties and maintaining the status quo. 

What Kenyans must understand is that the constant messaging through imagery and metaphors translates the trivial agenda into urgent beliefs and priorities for the dominated group, hence reinforcing the abnormal values, ideas, and practices as the norm. Before long, we are all (including the so-called elite) sucked into this endless but redundant game of analyzing and reanalyzing the logic of their political agenda, which is further amplified by the media. We do not realize that our engagement only gives politicians the social consensus they need to keep dominating and continuously taking us for a ride. Stephen R. Covey said, “most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.” Kenyans have to collectively decide what important and endeavor to change the priorities.

Dr. Katindi Sivi

African futurist 

How COVID-19 has destroyed the false narratives we tell ourselves

All African countries, including Kenya, latched onto the ‘Africa rising’ narrative peddled in the early 2000s after a series of labels and terminologies like the hopeless continent, basket case, or lagging. The reason for the Africa rising narrative was the economic growth of between 2.5% and 5% experienced by several countries, and which was higher than what was experienced even in developed countries. Unfortunately, economic growth, measured in gross domestic product (GDP), is an accounting system that calculates the value of production (of both goods and services) in a given period while GDP per capita divides that value by the total population. GDP, therefore, does not really indicate the sustainability of the sectors driving the economy or the wellbeing of the population, and that is why two countries with the same GDP can have different poverty and inequality levels. 

The Africa rising narrative has been good for many African politicians because it made their regimes look good, as they ranked higher in various global indicators. Many countries, including Kenya, went as far as rebasing their GDP in 2013, in an attempt ‘to capture a more accurate estimate of the size of the economy.’ As a result of the rebasing exercise, Kenya increased its per capita income from $994 to $1,246, which indicated an improved economic performance, often mistaken to mean higher standards of living. The implication of this ‘growth’ was that Kenya was no longer categorized as a low income but as a low middle-income country way before the projected timeframe stipulated in Vision 2030. By rebasing, Kenya became one of the largest economies (fourth) on the continent. The Africa rising narrative also promoted the idea that the continent had a growing middle class. This group is associated with more affluent lifestyles of increased consumerism of luxury goods, and it was projected to rise to 42% of the population by 2060.

All these ‘look good’ efforts did not change the fact that the growth was largely based on the export of primary commodities that are vulnerable to global shocks and foreign direct investments whose profits are largely repatriated to the home countries of the companies. It did not change the fact that only one-third of the population had wage employment or the fact that the so-called middle class in Africa (defined as those earning between USD 2 to 20 per day, and which constitutes the poor in other countries of the world) is only one salary away from poverty. 

COVID-19 has destroyed this false sense of privilege among urban households and exposed the blatant lie of Africa’s socio-economic demarcations, particularly those categorized as non-poor. It has exposed the precarious nature of their jobs vis-a-vis consumer behavior, which does not coincide with perceptions of a middle class that should sustain domestic consumption and growth in the future (even when out of an income for some time). The fact that this crisis is driven by the loss of income (projected to affect 75% of the population in Kenya) rather than rising food prices that have characterized previous global crises buttresses the vulnerability of urban households. As such, the resilience of rural households will be much higher compared to their urban counterparts because of expenditure patterns. 

What is my point? The stories we tell ourselves matter. By choosing these singular narratives of entire hopelessness or escalation of a continent’s economies, we legitimize false realities and build our future on falsified hopelessness or faulty hope – what Chimamanda refers to as the danger of a single story. This calls us to train ourselves to see things beyond the surface, to question interests and the assumptions that we make about the narratives we observe, read or hear about, and creatively make linkages. 

Dr. Katindi Sivi

African futurist 

Thriving in Turbulence...How do we handle disruption?

My youngling (she is three) keeps saying, “when conona vinus ends, we shall do ….”. Like her, we say it loud or deep-down wish that we could miraculously snap out of whatever this is and get on with life as we knew it. It is hard to come to terms with the fact that there is a breaking of the norm because human nature dislikes change and the disruption of known patterns and routines we effectively control. However, whether we like it or not, life will never be the same again. The question is, how do we cope with the uncertainty of not knowing the full impact of COVID – 19 on our personal lives or in the future? How do we adjust to significant, life-altering changes we have no control over?

First, we must expect and accept that this and many other disruptions will be part of life. It will be helpful to spend time anticipating some of the things that could change and processing possible responses. This is not for purposes of deepening the panic but for purposes of preparedness, which helps navigate unexpected challenges better than when one is in denial. Second, there is no use trying to fit square pegs in round holes. We need to throw out most of the standard rules that may have worked in the past, with the understanding that new situations require different responses. This realization calls for a willingness and openness to unlearn, learn, and re-learn. The third is the adoption of a beneficial mindset that keeps us away from obsolete assumptions, which often block us from seeing emerging realities. Hope is vital, but we must be cautious about being too optimistic, believing the future is always positive and, therefore, not entirely paying attention to possible interruptions. Too much pessimism, always believing that the future is bleak, will cripple us from seeing the many opportunities we could take advantage of. On the other hand, believing that the future is given and so passively approaching it with the belief that we cannot do anything about it, makes us play the victim. Forth, we must create new rules for this new season or adapt to the ones that work for us. 

Being agile enough to quickly adjust to possible solutions before a crisis happens means that we proactively catalyze the required action to survive and thrive. Ultimately, we must accept that the Covid-19 disruption will re-shape the social, political, and economic structures as well as alter how people think and behave forever. It is imperative for all of us to move away from what used to be and consider what our society might come to look like – we have a chance to collectively re-set a preferred alternative to what was not working in the past. 

Dr. Katindi Sivi

African futurist and founder of LongView consult. 

Set me free: The story of Ajem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UUUyY2nS9jtBeLLut53JaKqA&feature=player_embedded&v=NuhovSZLTts

Enemy of the state? with Katindi Sivi-Njonjo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT-bjOASnNs&feature=share

Kenya: So Rich Yet So Poor, Is Turkana Selling Its Due?

Article featured in the Star newspaper on 29 November 2013
see: http://allafrica.com/stories/201311290270.html

Imagine a place that is linked to the origin of humankind; is one of the world's leading archaeological sites and is now a World Heritage Site; has preserved wildlife fossils, which include the giant tortoise and the 20-foot long crocodile; is home to one of the smallest tribes on earth who still wear goat or fish skins and accessorize with fish bones or fish teeth; has the world's largest permanent desert lake which is also the world's largest alkaline lake; has an island with scenic crater lakes each harbouring its own kind of animal species like flamingos, crocodiles and tilapia; has sand dunes that measure over 40 feet high that are surrounded by palm trees; has a forest;is rich in wild life; has commercially viable oil deposits and a lot of water. Well, what do you think about this place? I think it is too good to be true. I think it should be one of the world's biggest attractions.

Unfortunately it is not. The people from this place, when compared to a Kenyan of average status (which is not that great), are two times poorer; fifteen times less likely to get a formal job; thirteen times less likely to earn more than seven thousand two hundred shillings (Ksh 7,200) per month; four times less likely to learn how to read and write; seventeen times less likely to have a primary education; sixty three times less likely to have a secondary education or above; three times less likely to have access to clean water; sixty three times less likely to have access to sanitary facilities; eighty two times less likely to live in a house with a cemented floor or a mabati roof; three hundred and thirty six times less likely to live in a house with stone/brick walls; thirty four times less likely to cook with cooking gas (LPG), bio fuels or electricity; and no chance on using electricity.

These are a lot of 'less likelies' for such a rich place but regrettably, these are the contradictions a person born in Kotaruk/Lobei in Loima Constituency, Turkana County, has to live with. 

While on one hand the opportunities and resources in this county can be a blessing and thus the county has the potential to make incomparable sums of money to kick-start economic growth, eradicate poverty, raise literacy levels, improve health indicators, ensure food security, access to clean water and sanitation, create jobs to increase household incomes and purchasing power, enable the transfer of technology, improve infrastructure and encourage the flourishing of other related industries; on the other hand, these resources could be a curse.

World over, the resource contest for opportunities by the elite most often leads to poor governance, high corruption, a culture of rent-seeking, devastating health and environmental consequences at the local level and intensified conflict to divert attention as the resources are looted. This might be already happening in Turkana County.

The southern part of the county is under siege with armed militiamen from the neighbouring Pokot community recently holding three police camps hostage. While it may be assumed this is the usual age old difference over land, pasture, water and cattle, it is important to interrogate the extent to which there is political will to ensure that the abundant resources here mutually benefit all the people of Turkana.

Recently some companies prospecting for oil in Turkana County  applied to be exempted from paying taxes both to their country of origin and the Kenyan Government. They are known to have built a few schools, health centres and sunk a few boreholes in Turkana County. On the basis of these they argue that they should be allowed to extract Turkana County oil without paying their dues to either the County Government or the National Government. Should this be allowed? Corporations are known to spend little money on local communities in what is commonly known as 'Corporate Social Responsibility', then proceed to extract valuable natural resources worth billions of dollars after which they leave. In most of these cases the local communities are left worse off because they were not skilled enough to take up the opportunities provided. The infrastructure left often collapses and the unchecked extraction of natural resources leads to extreme environmental destruction.

It is important that the Turkana County Government is cognizant of their role in providing adequate social services to improve the welfare of their citizens. Sustainability and equitable distribution of resources should therefore be at the forefront otherwise the custodians of the birthright of the Turkana people will be sold off for the proverbial 'bowl of soup' and the owners forever remain condemned to poverty and lack.

Katindi Sivi-Njonjo is an African Futurist, a Social Researcher and Policy Analyst, a Gender Budgeting Practitioner and the Programme Director at Society for International Development (SID) - East Africa. Katindi was instrumental in the recent launch of "Exploring Inequality in Kenya" Report by SID East Africa and The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS). For more information about the report, please visit: http://inequalities.sidint.net/kenya/