The
row over the government’s ambitious plans for a new regional port on the island
of Lamu shows the benefits and the problems of the devolution provisions in
Kenya’s new constitution. Plans for the port are part of a $20bn development
that includes an oil refinery, new highways and railways that will link the
area to Southern Sudan and Ethiopia. It would be one of the biggest regional
integration initiatives in East Africa.
From
the point of view of government and business interests in Nairobi, the project
is essential for the development of the region. The government forecasts that
Kenya’s GDP growth will rise to 5.7% in 2011 according to finance minister
Uhuru Kenyatta – at least 1% higher than last year – and that the country’s
fast-expanding service sector will continue to make up more than 60% of
national income.
The
Lamu project is crucial to keeping that momentum going, according to the
business lobby. Local people, especially fishermen, see it differently. They
complain that they were not consulted about the project’s environmental impact,
and worry that outsiders will benefit most from the promised jobs. They hope to
use some of the powers in the new constitution to get their
case across to county authorities and central government, some 450km away in
Nairobi.
Under
the old order, the government’s development agenda was unquestioned.
Administrators and planners routinely expropriated land for what they deemed to
be essential infrastructure investments. The Bajun in Lamu, merely claim their
soil was used to settle landless up-country Kenyans without any consultation.
This has become a major cause of
political friction. The new constitution promises to curtail the exigencies of
“big government”.
Part
of the devolution plan was to redraw provincial boundaries so they cut across
ethnic fault lines, making the new elected county administrations both
multi-ethnic and accountable.
In practical politics, it will still prove immensely
difficult to balance the interests of marginalised minorities against the
central government’s grand development plans.
A
two-thirds majority approved the new constitution last August, and the
promoters of the new fundamental law promised checks and balances, a genuine
distinction of powers held by the three arms of government, and the devolution
of powers from the centre to 47 elected county governments, which are due to
receive about 15% of the national budget.
There will be also be a new upper house of parliament, the
senate, to oversee county affairs. All these measures are to be implemented
over the next five years: the current parliament still needs to pass some 50
pieces of legislation required by the new constitution.
The
new bicameral legislature will not be established until after the next
elections, which are due march in 2013.
How the Lamu development is managed will be a critical test
of the new constitution. For Nairobi policymakers, the idea of a second port
that has a far greater capacity than Mombasa’s Kilindini port is a timely one.
Kilindini
has become a bottleneck for the region. Its annual maximum capacity is 25m
tonnes of cargo, but increasing demand from Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and the
eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is estimated at 35m tonnes a year. The
Lamu port, which will cost $3.5bn, will by contrast have a new refinery and
three berths, compared to Kilindini’s one.
The new port is also designed to be the terminal for the
planned oil pipelines from Southern Sudan and Uganda, while serving as a
massive junction for highways and railways linking Kenya to Southern Sudan and
Ethiopia, a project as grandiose as the Kenya-Uganda railway was in its time, a
century ago.
The
$20bn Lamu Port-Southern Sudan-Ethiopia Transport Corridor (LAPSSET) could help
to rapidly modernise the East African economies. Both China and Japan are
enthusiastic about the plan: China is offering to finance the construction of
the port.
But there are problems with getting
the people of Lamu to accept the port. They were not consulted during the
planning and so regard the plan as yet another imposition from officials in
Nairobi that may at the same time threaten their livelihoods.
The
site of the proposed port, in Manda Bay, serves as the main fishing grounds for
25,000 fishermen. The inlet creeks within the bay are the only spawning grounds
for prawns and lobsters along the Kenyan coast. Dredging up of the coral reef
will, say environmentalists, destroy the delicate ecosystem on which the
fishermen and their communities depend.
Although
the building of the port, highways and railways will create new jobs and
economic growth, many in Lamu fear it will be at the cost of destroying the
local fishing industry and some of the tourism industry, which are currently
the key providers of jobs.
Few would argue against improving the infrastructure in the
area: the questions are where and how. With an East African regional population
of close to 125m and a market heading towards closer integration, governments
are determined to modernise roads and railways – many of which have not been
substantially improved over the last 50 years.
In
Kenya, the government plans to build 64,000km of new roads at a cost of some
$4.5bn. It plans to raise money through bond issuances and use finance from
Chinese companies, which are already building the eight-lane Nairobi-Thika
highway.
In the new dispensation, it will be
the local politics of development that will provide the bigger dilemma.
Investors – both local and foreign – are puzzling over a future with new
devolved government structures. Soon after the passing of the new constitution,
there was talk of counties formulating independent tax systems and imposing new
taxes on goods in transit.
The
fears proved unfounded and were sparked by a misreading of the provisions for
devolution, which allow counties to raise funds through property taxes and
county levies but not via income or value-added taxes, which remain the
preserve of the central government.
Economist David Ndii, who helped draft the clauses on
revenue allocation and finance in the new constitution, says that many
businesses have misinterpreted the real objectives of devolution.
He
added that many Kenyans wrongly regard the new constitution as federalism, not
just devolution.
“It is a decentralization of service delivery rather than
of raising revenue,” he explains. “Many investors have not read the
constitution. That’s what is creating all the confusion.”
Aside from such misunderstandings,
the new county authorities will still provide an important channel of
communication to central government, and will even have substantial funds of
their own to launch new development projects. For both the counties and the
government in Nairobi, the Lamu project will be one of the first high-stakes
tests of the new system.
By
Murigi Benson
