Ocampo comes tomorrow
on Colm in Kenya (Kenya), 03/Nov/2009 18:16, 34 days ago
You may have read recently thePopes speech at the end of the Vatican’s 3-week love-in on Africa about the continent still suffering from the materialism of colonialism. You may also have read Kevin Myers, a journalist and historian with a regular opinion piece in the IrishIndependent, who wrote an article headlinedAfrica's real problem today is it does not have enough of the 'colonial' values of materialism.Further to this piece Myers said on Today FM–Drivetime21/10/09 - that Africa has failed to create a culture of materialism andentrepreneurship.Working in SCOPE provides an alternative reality. On Monday, we got a call from a group of 24 small micro/small business women who wanted finance and business training. On Wednesday we started training a group of 14 business people and this week we had 5 groups of between 9 and 21 people seeking business training.Indeed, SCOPE are one of several groups offering business training to groups and individuals and there is an ever increasing number of Micro-Finance organisations offering finance to small businesses.These customers orbeneficiariesof these products and services are essentiallyentrepreneurs– individual people trying to earn income through setting up their businesses. The reason for this is that theKilifiDivision has only 4% of the labor force in wagedemployment. Therefore, setting up and running your own business is the only way to earn money. So from my 7 months I would say Kenya, and Africa by a recklessgeneral-ism, is far from short on willingentrepreneurs. The more prudent question I think, from my experiences, is that are these willing individuals capable of becoming successfulentrepreneurs? And again from my experience, the key determent in finding a positive answer to this question is education. Kenya is trying to improve education; it currently provides free primary school education that is partly funded from foreigndevelopmentaid budgets. However, theequivalentamount of aid for education and indeed more, goes missing from the from government coffers.  This government is run by those who more or less stole the 2007 election. Rampant institutional corruption and powerful impunity erode a lot of efforts to attract private investment and improve education levels.If there’s one thing that has held Africa back – and Kenya to be specific – is the impunity of rule from behind protected piles of corrupt money its not the lack ofentrepreneurialspirit of the majority.AsRichardDowden, a hugely respected journalist with 30 years plus experience working in Africa explains in telling the story of when thecolonialistswere in charge, the locals saw them from outside the walls of secured mansions from where they ruled with reckless impunity serving their own needs. The push for independence was to take down those walls and open‘the house’ to the greater public. However, when independence came and the elected leaders took charge, they then took over the secured mansions and kept the walls up. The point is that Kenya/Africa did grasp the materialistic society as presented to them my the Colonialists i.e. a selected minority of the powerful elite who have big houses, fast cars and designers clothes.And it’s this materialism that remains from the imperial days and not that of which the Pope speaks. Perhaps Africa needs a democratic, market driven educated society to allow existing and futureentrepreneursflourish. Then there will be more than just 4% of theKilifipopulation in wage employment. For Kenya, a major step in achieving this hopefully arrivestomorrow.