New Kenyan initiative aims to tackle endemic graft

Date : 09/02/2012 Publication : German Press Agency dpa Category : Feature

Efforts to tackle corruption in Kenya, which is regularly flagged by watchdogs as one of the world’s most graft-ridden nations, have been as plentiful as they have been ineffective.

Politicians in the East African nation are often accused of filling their pockets with public funds, the police are notorious for actively seeking out bribes and most people accept graft as the price of doing business.

Yet Ipaidabribe.or.ke, a new online initiative based on a similar website set up in India, aims to allow ordinary citizens to report day-to-day corruption and thereby pressure the government into taking action.

The website, already creating a serious buzz, was started by Antony Ragui last year. He says he was sick of people talking about corruption without doing anything to challenge it.

The many high-profile scams down the years - including the infamous Goldenberg scandal, which saw the government accused of the fictitious export of gold and diamonds - are estimated to have leached billions of dollars of public funds.

It was that kind of corruption that Patrick Lumumba, the latest in a long line of anti-corruption chiefs, was supposed to tackle when he was appointed in 2010.

Yet, one year later, Lumumba was forced out, and none of the ministers he had been investigating were brought to book – an all-too-familiar story for Kenyans.

Ragui, who runs the website on a voluntary basis, is well aware that such efforts have fallen by the wayside when they become about powerful personalities, and is instead targeting the system itself, at a grass-roots level.

The website does not name names, instead targeting the most graft-ridden government bodies.

“If you target people, they start fighting back, so it isn’t about reporting people, it’s about changing systems,” he told dpa. “If I fire one policeman, another one comes and takes bribes. The system is wrong, it’s corrupt.”

John Githongo, the former corruption tsar who was forced to flee Kenya for several years after uncovering top-level graft that was ultimately brushed under the carpet, has no doubt about the effect of the problem on the Kenyan economy.

“(If not for corruption), we would be like Singapore, but far richer,” he told dpa in an earlier interview. “It’s the primary manufacturer of poverty and inequality.”

Virtually all Kenyans have stories to tell about bribes they had to pay to access basic services. It is these experiences Ragui hopes to tap into, getting people to share their stories – both on the bribes they paid and how they avoided paying.

As of early February, 3.4 million Kenyan shillings (41,000 dollars) worth of bribes had been reported to the site in the few months it has been running. Unsurprisingly, police and government officials figured strongly in the list of bribes paid.

This is only the tip of the iceberg, though, and Ragui expects the numbers to jump as more people learn about the site.

Ragui, who says the average Kenyan pays at least three bribes a month to the police, city council or corporations, believes this kind of corruption undermines the rule of law.

As an example, he highlighted the increased threat to Kenya’s national security.

Kenya is battling Islamist group al-Shabaab in Somalia, and the insurgents have threatened to carry out revenge suicide attacks in Kenya. The culture of bribery opens the country up to such threats, he said.

“You can pay a bribe to get anything in this country,” he said. “You come as a Somali with bad intentions … you pay a bribe, get an ID, pay another bribe, get a passport, and you are in the Kenyan system.”

Part of the problem for the website at the moment is that reports can only be sent in online, shutting out many ordinary Kenyans, who do not access the internet.

Ragui says plans are afoot to expand the service to allow people to use text messages to report their bribery stories. This, he believes, will create an explosion in reporting, although a lack of funding may delay the service.

Nonetheless, he is optimistic that the bright start can lead to real change.

“If I could change just one government department, I would feel like I’d done my job,” he said.