Corruption remains the main issue bedevilling the image of the Jubilee coalition government of President Uhuru Kenyatta; it came to power more than two years ago promising 'open governance' in Kenya. And the source of corruption is Chinese aid.
This
is ironical since President Xi Jinping has launched a sweeping campaign against
graft at home. Wang Jiarui, head of Communist Party's international department,
has been frank enough to say as recently as 08 September that "being in power
as long as the party had -- since 1949 -- had bred a corruption problem".
Speaking to a group of Chinese and Western academics and diplomats, in Beijing, Wang admitted a home truth. "The Communist Party is keenly aware one of the reasons its predecessor, the Nationalists, lost the Chinese civil war in 1949 was because of the terrible corruption under their rule, costing them public support".
This
confession is no solace to President Kenyatta, though as evidence is piling up
to show that for China practice and precept are not two sides of the same coin.
A study by the Development Research Department of the African Development Bank
highlights the flipside of the Chinese aid.
China provides aid and development finance through "a not very
transparent and poorly understood approach"', it says.
These observations have assumed an added significance after a taped conversation surfaced putting the spotlight on the way the Chinese businessmen have been bribing their way through the Kenyan system. The 'taped-conversations' related to the Sh 17 billion upgrade of Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH) into a 1,000-bed hospital complex. It featured Herbert Ocholla Ojwang -- a former aide to former Prime Minister Raila Odinga -- and a Chinese businessman.
As Carloine Wafula reported in Daily Nation, (May 11, 2015), the bribe amount was around Sh 850 million. It works out to five percent of the project cost, which appears to have become the norm. The scam surfaced because Ojwang felt cheated; he was 'edged' out by the Chinese when they found "new patrons".
The
Chinese tender to build a rail-road also ended up in a scandal. Various
parliamentary watchdogs have discovered that China Road and Bridge Corporation has
inflated the cost. This almost tore the ruling coalition apart.
Like elsewhere, where China has emerged as the 'big daddy' of concessional finance, in Kenya too, its businessmen and their middlemen have mustered "the art of taking care of the monetary interests of people in authority, most often senior government officials, highly connected politicians and parliamentary committees".
Naturally,
therefore, there is a growing concern that the rise of China as a significant
source of finance presents "a threat to improved governance" in Kenya and other
African countries.
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