[kictanet] Crowd Sourced Citizen Report Cards + strategic inefficiency is what creates a large number jobs

Tue May 7 05:39:30 EAT 2019

Jimmy

Great post! Thanks for sharing and double thanks for that Atlas of Kenya.
The possibilities are immense.

On the sugar issue. Let me add my two cents.

It's not that sugar cannot be sustainably grown in Kenya. Three reasons I
know of that make it impossible to grow sugar sustainably in Kenya.

1. It is grown in the wrong region!! This may not be the politically
correct thing to say here but here goes. The coastal region of Kenya can
grow sugar in about half the time it takes to grow it in the western
region. Political expediency and environmentalists opposed to the Tana
Delta project has made this impossible to achieve.
2.  Leadership and Diversification is another one. Take a look at the
Kenana case study in Sudan.
https://www.ide.go.jp/English/Data/Africa_file/Company/sudan04.html
3. Sugar barons. Need I say more?

@Jimmy, information like what you have shared will debunk some of these
issues and make for better exploitation of resources in this country.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

*Principal*

*AHK & Associates*

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim
<http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim>

13th Floor , Delta Towers, Oracle Wing,

Chiromo Road, Westlands,

Nairobi, Kenya.

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely
mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the
organizations that I work with.

On Sat, May 4, 2019 at 11:47 AM Jimmy Gitonga via kictanet <
kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

> This is what I think about the two issues.
>
> We need Citizen Report Cards. We need to find a way to do this by crowd
> sourcing not just the information, but the funding as well. At some point,
> Kenyans who are wealthy enough to offer patronage to citizen worthy causes
> and projects. This is the same for the seed funding required to develop
> local, indigenous ideas that have a potential to benefit all of us.
>
> The first obstacle we must get rid of is the “get rich quick” mentality in
> the “startup" fad. Sadly, we are mostly suspicious of one another in this
> country so few are willing to give money to a visibly worthy cause because
> the said startup entrepreneurs will probably line their pockets and not
> succeed in fulfilling the “social contract”.
>
> But if we went past these small issues, we can build web portals that
> visualise a lot of public data such as the KNBS census and household data.
> I did some work with Mzalendo Trust where a report was done on the Women
> representatives in the 11th Parliament. It was released as an infographic
> that really was a score card -
> http://info.mzalendo.com/media_root/file_archive/WP-Contributions_11th_Parliament.pdf
> .
>
> We did some research on what the baseline issues should be in the counties
> these women represent. We found the Kenya Socio-economic Atlas invaluable -
> https://www.kenya-atlas.org/. We were able to see that Kenya should
> really be divided around its climatic predispositions and state funding
> should flow with these conditions in mind.
>
> I asked myself, why can’t the Kenya Atlas be made interactive and
> up-to-date? As it is, it is a fantastic source of data for socio-economic
> policy development. After talking to the program manager at CETRAD and
> remembering some conversations with a commissioner at the Commission on
> Revenue Allocation, I think that this is a worthwhile thing to pursue.
>
> This then informs and frames the issue of strategic inefficiency. Just by
> looking at the Kenya Atlas, one could quickly understand why sugar cane
> growing in Kenya will never be sustainable compared to the COMESA region.
> The inefficiencies in the sugar sector do keep a lot of farmers busy but
> these jobs are not sustainable.
>
> We have a lot of the information and most of the tools that we can use to
> make Kenya strategically efficient in this region for our benefit. If sugar
> from Sudan and maize from Malawi are cheaper to buy than to grow and the
> fact that we have a larger source of educated human resource and are
> leading in financial services means we have things we can trade in with our
> neighbours, to our benefit. The cheap and unnecessary political animosity
> we seem to encourage with our COMESA exemptions would be dissipated.
>
> These types of information can be disseminated as Citizen Report Cards
> with the added benefit of civic education that would result from
> discussions around the reports. After the Women Representatives report
> card, Parliamentarians began using the Mzalendo score cards in their
> re-election material.
>
> Best Regards,
> *Jimmy Gitonga*
>
> *Web Software Design and Development *
> *LinkedIn: Jimmy Gitonga | Twitter: @Afrowave*
> ______________________________________
>
> *Web*: afroshok.com
>
>
> Indeed, Crowd Sourced Citizen Report Cards could lead to increased public
> sector accountability. Currently this gap is being filled by Twitter, in a
> crude way, but the potential is clear.?
>
> How do you see the PPP arrangement with MSMEs looking like conceptually?
> Hopefully not to be financially sustained by Government, keeping in mind
> the reality of cartels / MNC lobbyists / tenderpreneurs who will quickly
> hijack it, establish themselves as gatekeepers and turn it into a rent
> seeking charade?
> I am of the view that the data should be provided for free to anyone (e.g.
> via secure government APIs) and MSMEs should find their own ways of
> "monetizing" it by creating innovative value-add propositions e.g. unique
> methods of analysis to yield forensic or predictive insights, independent
> content publishing or journalism.
>
> Crowd funding via voluntary donations could also come into play to provide
> additional financial sustenance and maximize public ownership/goodwill
> around the initiative.
>
> The open model will keep cartels away because there is real work and real
> value creation involved with no "assured income" and no gatekeepers to
> collect rent. Incidentally, these difficulties will attract real
> entrepreneurs, so it's a great way of screening.
>
> I think the idea (or different flavors of it) is worth piloting e.g. at a
> progressive County or Ministry (perhaps in partnership with a local
> University or TVET institution). Let's see what happens, now that the idea
> is in the public domain. Great potential for creating new jobs and for
> inspiring an R&D culture that focuses on solving real-world problems.
>
> Have a great evening!
>
> Brgds,Patrick.
>
> Patrick A. M. Maina[Cross-domain Innovator | Public Policy Analyst -
> Indigenous Innovations]
>
>
> On Fri, May 3, 2019 at 5:13 PM Patrick A. M. Maina <pmaina2000 at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> Noted Muraya & thanks for clarifying.
> True. Public projects should have public oversight unless there are clear
> compelling reasons, in public interest, to the contrary.
> So, if I understand you correctly, the role of MSMEs would be to:
> 1. Create public information web portals and keep them updated regularly.
> 2. Collect accurate updates on government projects (e.g. go to project
> sites take photos and conduct contractor interviews every month; also
> collect data from relevant agencies) and update the data to the portal.
> 3. Conduct analyses on data and publish fairly objective
> scorecard/dashboard reports for all eligible government projects.?
> Is that similar to what you had in mind??
> What would the SME business model look like to avoid a rent-seeking type
> arrangement that in itself would be subject to corruption (which would turn
> the whole idea into a big mess)?
> Though I support the idea of initial seed capital from gov, I think the
> SMEs would have to sustain themselves independently afterwards for it to
> make sense e.g. through ads or some indirect synergies where the portal
> adds value to their core business.
> New Media businesses (independent publishers) for example might use this
> to boost their traffic/engagement (and advertising revenues).
> Govenment could spice it up by creating a whistleblower bounty program
> where people who help identify corruption are paid x% of funds recovered (a
> graduated scale can be used, with hard capping). There would of course be
> need for smart rules to ensure the bounty program itself is not turned by
> cartels into a racket to fleece the gov.
> I think you're on to something...
> Brgds,Patrick.
>
>
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