This
document (edited) reveals the inside story on how an American, sponsored by the
Ford Foundation, came write one of the most hated policy papers in Kenya’s
political history: the Sessional Paper No. 10 of 1965. 2015 is also the 50th
anniversary of the paper’s adoption by the Kenya parliament. The paper
virtually turned Kenya into a capitalist society and paved the way for those in
power to plunder the fruits of Uhuru for themselves rather than sharing it with
the general wananchi. It is arguable that Kenya could have been anything other
capitalist. There is a strong belief that capitalism was a conspiracy between
western powers and the then Kenya government.
As the East African countries approached
independence their second major concern, after that of finding the means to
take effective control of government, was the development of their societies.
World Bank missions to each of the three major East African territories, in
their extensive and influential reports, made a strong case for establishing
economic planning systems and project development units.
In
the summer of 1962, Professor Ben Lewis of Oberlin College visited East Africa
as a Foundation consultant and received inquiries from all three governments
about the possibility of the Foundation’s supplying economic advisory
assistance. The only firm request, however, was from Kenya. The government was
by no means convinced that it wished to establish a planning process at the
time, as was indicated by the initial response to the submission of Edgar
Edwards’ curriculum vitae: Treasury replied that Edwards was a bit more senior
a man than would be needed for what they had in mind. Edwards accepted the post
nevertheless and arrived in Nairobi in August 1963.
At
the time the Foundation agreed to supply this advisor, it felt that first
attention should be given to the work of the East African Common Services
Organization (EACSO), to which a grant of $45, 000 for economic consultants had
been made in November 1962. Supplementary to this regional focus, the
Foundation anticipated that it should be prepared to offer limited high-level
assistance to the planning agencies of the three countries.
Within
six months of his arrival, Edwards had convinced both the Kenya Government and
the Foundation that a substantially greater effort than either had anticipated
was necessary, or at least desirable. A rather rudimentary 6-year plan was
produced in early 1964 by Edwards, Oliver Knowles, a Treasury official, and
Michael Roemer, an M.I.T. Fellow in Africa. It was anticipated when this plan
was adopted that it would be superseded by a revised plan once more economic
planning competence was available and following greater elaboration of the
policy objectives of the Government. Work on the revision had already begun
before the 6-year plan was published. The first plan proved useful in
negotiations with potential donors, which was the original government impetus
for the exercise, but it also provided a framework for ministers and permanent
secretaries to define their work and coordinate their efforts with other
ministries. Most importantly, a Development Committee of the Cabinet,
established before independence, became an active forum in which major economic
issues could be discussed by the effective decision-makers.
In
July 1964, a new Directorate of Planning within the Treasury was officially
established with Edwards at its head, an arrangement that made the Foundation’s
representative distinctly uneasy. It was one thing to provide advice on
economic planning issues, but for a Foundation employee to be responsible for
the planning mechanism was outside the boundaries of its own definition of its
assistance. There is also some question about the legality of supplying foreign
countries with a person in a position like this under the American tax law
governing philanthropic assistance. This potential difficulty was overcome when
Kenya became a republic on the anniversary of its independence, and a Ministry
of Economic Planning and Development (MEPD) was created. Edwards became senior
advisor to the Permanent Secretary of MEPD and, in mid-1965, he left Kenya to
return to Rice University.
The
creation of a separate planning ministry was typical of many newly independent
African governments. Resentment of the Ministry of Finance, or the Treasury as
it was commonly known, was widespread among the new leaders because it was seen
as an obstacle to development. The creation of a new ministry, with a degree of
autonomy from the purse-string mentality of Treasury officials, was thought to
be progressive; besides, it was popular with the Bank and other donors. This
mood lasted less than a decade, however, and most countries have now recombined
planning with finance.
By
the time the Ministry was created, a staff of five Foundation advisors was
working on planning in Kenya: three Americans, one Dutch and one Swedish. The
first Minister was Tom Mboya, whose remarkable intellectual capacity and
leadership skills added greatly to the impact of planning in the country.
Philip Ndegwa joined government as a planning officer at about the same
time.
In
1965, the Kenya government proposed and Parliament adopted a far-reaching
policy document entitled Sessional Paper No. 10, African Socialism and its Application to Planning in Kenya. Much of
the first draft of this paper was written by Edwards, a fact that has since
aroused critical comment in some foreign publications. Before it reached Parliament,
however, it was intensively reviewed and revised, first by an informal group
chaired by Mboya with Mwai Kibaki, Ndegwa, Knowles and Edwards as members, and
then by the Ministers sitting in the Development Committee. Sessional Paper No.
10 summarizes Kenya’s objectives as follows:
1.
Political equality.
2.
Social justice.
3.
Human dignity, including freedom of conscience.
4.
Freedom from want, disease and exploitation.
5.
Equal opportunities.
6.
High and growing per capita incomes, equitably distributed.
To
some extent, the document represents the Government’s answer to the insistent
voices in Parliament, led by Oginga Odinga and Pia Pinto, demanding more
radical social change. The Sessional Paper sought to elucidate its philosophy
that dignity, justice and equity need a firm basis of economic growth.
At
the same time an extensive revision of the original 6-year plan was underway,
examining a number of important policy issues, including such key social
policies as family planning, primary education and anticipated employment
problems.
By
this time the Foundation’s interest in planning had obviously deepened.
Economic decision-making was recognized to be a critical task for new
governments staffed by leaders who had had little opportunity to gain training
and experience in the field. The Foundation’s advisors were clearly making
important contributions by helping establish sound procedures for the
consideration of development projects, and by advising on economic policy. The
planning process was seen to be a continuing activity that would require
competence unavailable locally for several additional years. The need for
additional attention to plan implementation procedures, provincial and district
planning and ministry-level planning was also recognized.
In
Kenya, the combination of Mboya’s dynamic and effective leadership and the
concentration of economic competence in his Ministry made planning a force in
Government that commanded the respect but sometimes also the envy and
resentment of other ministers and civil servants. Their response to this
imbalance took several forms. Perhaps the healthiest, from a developmental
point of view, was to seek to develop planning competence in their own
ministries, a process strongly encouraged by Mboya and his advisors. The
Ministry of Agriculture sought to build up a strong internal planning unit with
advisors from a variety of donors, one of whom was supplied by the Foundation.
The effort enjoyed only limited success at the time and a new attempt, which
will be discussed later, is currently underway.
In
another case, the Minister of Education requested the assistance of MEPD in
drafting an educational policy paper without the concurrence of his own
permanent secretary. This led to a struggle that went all the way to the
President of the Republic before it was resolved and the draft policy paper was
scrapped.
In
late 1967, the Development Committee of the Cabinet was abolished. One can only
assume that this move was made in order to curb the power of Mboya and the
MEPD. Thereafter, although chapters of subsequent development plans were
discussed with appropriate ministerial staffs, and plans were approved by
Cabinet, there was little serious discussion of critical economic issues in the
plans by economic ministers as a group.
Perhaps
the key ministry that successfully resisted genuine participation in planning
was the Ministry of Commerce and Industry; to this day, there is no effective
professional planning and project evaluation unit in this Ministry. Major
industrial investment decisions have, however, had to receive approval of MEPD
and the Treasury, so cost benefit analysis has not been wholly omitted from the
industrialization effort.
Another
serious disappointment to the planners was the failure of an attempt to
institute cooperation between the private sector and the government through the
Planning and Development Advisory Committee (PADAC). PADAC met occasionally in
early years but its meetings were generally unproductive.
There
is no question but that the meaningful planning activities of the Government in
the first few years after independence were essentially conducted by expatriate
staff and advisors. Several excellent young Kenyan economists, notably Philip
Ndegwa, Harris Mule, the late Serjit Heyer, and Parmeet Singh, participated in
the work and rapidly gained competence in the process. But the systematic
professionalization of the planning process and the development of Kenyans to
staff it could be said to have started only in October 1968, when a scheme of
service for economists was inaugurated. This established a governmental career
ladder for economists, statisticians, and planners that paralleled the path of
advancement of other career civil servants. In 1971 there were 51 established
posts in the Economic Service, apart from economists employed by parastatal
corporations, but MEPD estimated that the actual requirement for government
economists was 73. Only 25 qualified local officers were available for these
posts.
The
minimum entry qualification for the Economic Service was an upper second-class
honours degree in economics or statistics, or its equivalent. In order to
enlarge the pool of qualified entrants, the Foundation supported the creation
of a Bachelor of Philosophy (B. Phil.) program at the University College
Nairobi in 1969 (690-0156). This was a one-year postgraduate program requiring
at least a year of relevant government experience before admission. The content
of the B. Phil. program was specifically geared to the development problems
facing the Kenya Government. For several years the Economics Department at the
University was cool to what they regarded as an excessively “applied” program,
but it is now well integrated. This year (1977), for the first time, master’s
degree students and B. Phil. students are taking the same course of instruction
with the masters candidates remaining at the University for an additional
year.
More
recently an agreement has been worked out with the Canadian government under
which 6 to 8 members of the Economic Service are offered master's degree
scholarships to York University in Toronto each year. By 1979 it is anticipated
that between 30 and 40 Kenyans will have received York M.A.s.
The
assassination of Tom Mboya in the summer of 1969 was a tragedy of great
national importance, which also set back the growth and development of the
planning process in Kenya. Indeed, it is notable that after a period of shock
and suspended progress, planning not only survived but has continued to play a
leading role in affecting the course of Kenya’s development.
In
1970 Edwards, who by then had served as an advisor to the government for four
years and was on the Foundation’s staff in New York, and Ben Lewis, who had
also joined the Foundation on a full-time basis, undertook a comprehensive
review of the planning process in Kenya. They described the Foundation’s basic
objective as “to assist substantially in the establishment of a lasting,
effective planning process, indigenously staffed, widely spread and used
throughout government,” and found it to be an objective broadly shared by the
Kenya government. The report noted that the Government’s initial objectives in
seeking Foundation support were considerably more modest but implied that the
Foundation had the grander design in mind from the beginning. In fact, as we
have seen, the Foundation’s objectives also evolved from more modest
aspirations, although Ben Lewis had had the larger picture in mind since his
pre-independence visit.
A
description of this program would not be complete without a word about the
character of the relationships between the advisors and the Foundation, and the
advisors and the Government. The Foundation has had a general policy that the
professional loyalty of an advisor assigned to a government is to the
government itself, and that no matters of a confidential nature are expected to
be divulged to the Foundation’s representatives. Edwards and subsequent
advisors adhered strictly to this policy, a fact that continues to be fully
appreciated by the Kenya Government. In addition, the advisors supplied by the
Foundation were not considered to be a team and, although there was often a
recognized senior economist among them, there was no designated team leader
Throughout the life of the program, no professional meetings were held in which
only Foundation advisors were in attendance, and no attempt was made to
coordinate the views or advice of the advisory staff.
The
Foundation also cooperated in minor ways with the new East African Staff
College. This program, ably led by Guy Hunter in 1964-5, sought to train
high-level government administrators and both public and private sector
managers from all three countries. It became a peripatetic institution, holding
courses in each country in rotation. The Foundation was asked to consider
contributing to a permanent site for the College, and to finance a research
arm, but both ideas ran into government or university resistance before they
could be seriously entertained for funding.
From
time to time the Foundation supplied consultants or project specialists to
facilitate the staff work of special investigatory commissions in Kenya. John
Seal, for example, was the principal staff man for the Ndegwa Commission, which
undertook the most far-reaching revision of public service rules that has
occurred in independent Kenya. Consulting services were also provided to the
Commission under a Foundation contract with API, a California-based consulting
firm headed by Edward Rubin, erstwhile staff development advisor in
Tanzania.
As
the decade of the 1960s drew to a close, the Foundation’s support for public
administration specialists diminished rapidly. The main task of the
Africanization of the public service and the establishment of procedures and
institutions for its maintenance had essentially been accomplished. No great
satisfaction was felt in the level of performance of the public service but the
machinery was in place for the Kenyans to make use of as they wished.
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