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In the picture, some children in Kenya are waiting to get food.

Kenya is a country in Africa. Although its economy enjoys the leading position in eastern and central Africa, there are still 53 percent of its population live below the poverty line. Its severe poverty is mainly caused by undiversified economy, social inequality, government corruption, health problems and water crisis, while poverty also worsens these factors in turn. Fortunately, Kenya’s government has made many efforts to address the poverty problem, and it has gotten help from international institutions as well. In the last decade, in accordance with the data provided by the World Bank, the amount of Kenyan living under the international poverty line has dropped significantly. And the incident rate of poverty has kept decreasing shown by recent MPI index. However, the solution to poverty in Kenya still needs the long-term efforts.

Definition and measures of poverty

Definition

Poverty is a condition that someone lacks of materials or money and has a low level of standard of living. It is a complicated concept, reflected by many aspects, such as social, economic and political.

Multidimensional poverty index

The Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) incorporate 10 variables to explore poverty in three dimensions, including standard of living, education and health. It is more scientific and practical to measure poverty as it reflects both incidence rate and the degree to which they are deprived. Shown by the 2014 global MPI data, the amount of Kenyans being MPI poor is 39.9%, indicated by the headcount ratio, implying that poverty still is a severe issue in Kenya.

According to the information from OPHI Country Briefing 2017, poor people in Kenya was deprived seriously in the living standard dimension, especially for cooking fuel, electricity and sanitation indicators. In addition, poverty differs between different regions, and the percentage of MPI Poor deprivation in rural areas is higher than that in urban areas.

Dynamic poverty in Kenya

This part mainly focuses on trends of Kenya’s poverty from 1990 to 2007.

The diagram shows trends in the gross domestic product of Kenya from 1960 to 2017.

In the 1990s, the reduction about 5% in GDP growth rate has indicated that Kenya’s economic become stagnate and even shrink. The teetering economy made the poverty issue be much more severe, reflected by 12% ascending poverty incidence rate from 2000 to 2003. In order to address the issue, the government introduced some policies, such as National Poverty Eradication Plan and Poverty Reduction Strategy. However, due to ineffectively implement, it failed to alleviate poverty radically.

After the new government taking office in 2003, there were early signs of economic recovery in Kenya. The annual GDP growth rate had continued to go up during the period from 2003 to 2007. Owing to the success of Economic Recovery Strategy developed by the new government, children had free access to the primary education. To some extent, improved education level and economic boom had eased the poverty in Kenya.

Economic condition and poverty   

Kenya has kept the leading economic position in the East African region with the gross domestic product at 74.84 billion US dollars in 2017. The Kenya's economy mainly relies on agriculture, livestock keeping and tourism.

Although only less than 20% of lands are suitable for cultivation, agriculture industry still remains the dominant position in Kenya’s economy. More than 75 percent of population in Kenya makes a living by agriculture. However, extensively distributed arid desert, unpredictable weather changes and backward technology, makes agriculture sector quite erratic. In Kenya, 80% of territory is classified into arid and semi-arid lands, where always has highly variable rainfall and frequent droughts. What’s worse, more than a quarter of the population and half of livestock live in these area, largely affected by periods of drought. In time of serious drought crisis, the government usually has to spend 50 dollars per family as the relief.

There was a severe drought in Kenya that began on October 2016, due to shortage of rainfall accompanying extreme high temperature. On April 2017, the drought escalated and was even declared as a national emergency by Kenya's government. The drought gave rise to a slump in production of the staple crop and more than 2 million people are in need of food aid.

Droughts reduce crop and livestock production that further cause great financial losses in agriculture and increase unemployment rates. Besides, decline in food production forces the government to provide food assistance, incurring extra expenditures in the national budget. All these situations trigger more severe poverty issues in Kenya.

Social inequality and poverty   

Kenya is an extremely unequal country and its inequality mainly reflected in wealth distribution, poverty level and human rights aspects.

Kenya's Inequality is reflected by share of income and social services varying among different segments of the population. To be more specific, one tenth of Kenyans have grasp approximately two fifths of total wealth, implying that the overwhelming majority of Kenyans only shares less than 60 per cent of the total wealth. The gap of wealth was not narrowed, even if the statistics showed that the economy has grown by 19 percent. Disclosed by the World Bank in 2015, Kenya’s GINI index was 40.8%, indicating the unequal distribution of income. Distribution of welfare should always be a challenge to Kenya, because income inequality is a factor leading to social conflicts, violence, crime, which aggravates social instability and poverty issues.

Besides, poverty level is unequal in different regions. Measured by MPI, the percentage of poor people is much lower in the capital city. Compared to that, some large secondary cities’ percentage of poor people is much higher. For instance, there is 44% of population in Mombasa in relatively poor condition. In addition to the huge inequality between different level of cities, inequalities in poverty level even exists within cities. For example, in Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya, Kileleshwa’s location level poverty is under 5%, while location level poverty of Korogocho and Laini saba even excess 60%.

Inequality is also manifested in human rights and democratic governance in Kenya. There are some group with weak power was excluded to be made their voice heard. In general, different access to human rights may lead to conflicts between the exploited and the authority party.

Social inequality affects Kenya's widespread economics growth, social stability, overall living standards, which is a noteworthy factor contributing to Kenya's poverty.

Government corruption and poverty   

Corruption remains a severe and non-negligible issue in Kenya. There are 180 countries participating in the assessment of the corruption perceptions index. Kenya has ranked at 143 with the score of 28 in 2017. And the score of Kenya for the past five years have fluctuated between 25 and 28, implying that corruption is still a serious problem. Kenya's corruption is prevalent within all levels of government with various ways.

Studies have found that Kenya is the most crime-infested countries in Africa. One of reasons is that even the police help crime. Especially in some rural areas, the police provide arms to criminals, assist to transfer stolen goods and even release arrested criminals if criminals bribe the police. The increasing criminal rate leads to instability of the society that directly reduces economic growth and further causes poverty problems.

Apart from bribe-taking, improper government expenditure and illegal possession of public resources by senior government officials also worsen Kenya's corruption phenomenon.

Some authority institutions, such as judiciary, legislature, are even considered as the channel of corruption. In the major reforms in 2011, many unqualified judges were removed from their positions. What’s worse, not strictly obeying the law is a common phenomenon in Kenya. And this kind of phenomenon gives rise to cynicism and undermine social value, because instead of doing the legitimate process, people in Kenya find it easier to use corruption to solve problems. The society in Kenya without authoritative orders and binding regulations fails to establish effective social order and make good use of all public resources, which leads to poverty.

Health problems and poverty

Addressing health problems is still a big challenge for Kenya’s government. Diseases that spread in the society reduce productivity and increases the health care expenditure of government, which worsens poverty of Kenya.

According to the data from Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, diseases including Pneumonia, HIV and malaria are main causes of mortality, which brings about 11.5%, 16.1% and 11.5% of deaths in the total register deaths respectively. In particular, Kenya is ranked as 4^th in highest HIV infections countries in the world with 1.6 million people infected with HIV.

People with poor health condition decreases household incomes and increase medical expenditures, which may cause households to fall into poverty. HIV and malaria are especially prevalent in marginal areas, such as Western and Nyanza Provinces. And there are more than third fifths of household who fell into poverty due to these diseases. Furthermore, decreasing available workforces and increasing government expenditures further strains economy and worsen poverty.

Water problems and poverty

Data from Society for International Development shows that although nearly half of Kenya’s people have access to improved water supply, there are over 19 million Kenyans still drinking unimproved water, such as unsafe water from rivers. Besides, there is large inequality in access of safe water. Improved sources of water in urban areas are about 30 percent more than that in rural areas.

One of major causes of water crisis in Kenya is frequent droughts. Society for International Development has revealed that rivers are the most general supply of Kenya’s drinking water. However, more than half of Kenya’s regions are classified as arid and very arid areas with annual average rainfall at very low level, even global warming exacerbates this situation. Rivers are unstable source of water, especially in arid climate period that droughts damage Kenya’s agricultural economy, cause famine and result in even worse hygienic condition.

According to data from the World Bank, renewable internal freshwater resources have been decreasing from 1970 to now.

Kenya is classified as a water limited country. According to data from world bank, the amount of renewable internal freshwater resources per capita has been decreasing from past to now and it has declined to under 450 cubic meters per capita in 2014. However, apart from the declining quantity of water sources, quality of water becomes poor. According to the research conducted by Kimani-Murage and Ngindu in 2007, main activities that causes contamination of water in Kenya are washing clothes in rivers, pouring dirty stuff into rivers, using dirty containers to get water, and these are especially common in rural area and some urban slums. Although they know quality of water is poor, people without money having no access to improved water sources, have to drink the polluted water because they have no choices.

Besides, high population growth rate of and inappropriate water policy also make the water problem become more severe.

Revealed by the Government of Kenya, unsafe water causes diseases including malaria, cholera, diarrhea and so on. Shown by MSF clinic, three fifths of all consultation is classified as poor sanitation diseases. And over 5 thousand children die from water-related diseases per day.

Due to the severe water crisis, many Kenyans’ basic standards of living are not guaranteed and incidence of related diseases is high, which increases financial burden of the government and exacerbate poverty.

Poverty reduction   

National Poverty Eradication Plan

With the assistance of the Commission of Poverty Eradication and Poverty Eradication Unit, the National Poverty Eradication provided various poverty reduction programmes to against poverty in Kenya. It paid highly attentions to increase the poor households living standard. For instance, for householders with low income that unable to have access safe food, health care and education, implement of the plan improved the condition for them by using money from the exchequer. Objectives of the NPEP involved wide aspects, such as universal education, primary health care, safe drinking water, gap between rural and urban social development, and are monitored by Anti Poverty Trust Fund.

Economic Recovery Strategy

In 2003, the Kenya’s government launched the Economic Recovery Strategy, which mainly focused on three parts, including economic, equity and reformation of governance.

Due to the success of the strategy in the economic part, fiscal deficit and stock of non-performing loans have decreased, implying the more stable economic structure. In addition, the government encourages the private sector to be actively involved in offering infrastructure services.

To alleviate poverty, the government succeeded to achieve the goal of universal primary education. Besides, it enlarged the scope of health services and water services, which reduced the incident rate of HIV and other epidemic diseases and improved the living condition of poor people. In addition, the government created more jobs and helped arid areas’ people address the unstable weather effects on agriculture.

To complete the sound management system, the ERS paid highly attention to drive judicial reform and transformation of government functions, which further helped establish a stable social order and increase transparency in government affairs.

World Bank

On June 15, 2018, small and medium-sized enterprises has got 50 million dollar funded by World Bank. In the Kenya’s vision 2030, small and medium enterprises are the key to economic development. Although Kenya leads innovation in Africa, it has ranked at 78^th out of 126 countries in accordance with the global innovation index 2018. World bank supported Kenya to address employment and stimulate economic growth, relieving poverty. Beside, world bank also has credited $200 million to Kenya to address climate and disaster problems.