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The United Nations Deputy Secretary General, Ms Amina Mohammed recently commended “<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/dsg/statement/2020-09-25/deputy-secretary-generals-remarks-the-high-level-event-beyond-covid-19-public-private-partnerships-for-the-sdgs-model-for-building-back-better-prepared-for-delivery" target="_blank" data-id="https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/dsg/statement/2020-09-25/deputy-secretary-generals-remarks-the-high-level-event-beyond-covid-19-public-private-partnerships-for-the-sdgs-model-for-building-back-better-prepared-for-delivery" data-type="URL">Kenya’s exemplary role in its response to COVID-19 and in advancing Agenda 2030</a>”. 



On Monday, 28 September 2020, the President of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta hosted a national conference on COVID 19. I was invited to speak about Kenya’s response, and without equivocation I restate what I said&#8211;Kenya deserves an A + rating. 



Here’s why!



When the COVID-19 pandemic struck Asia, Europe and the US, experts began to worry about what it would do to poor countries, with predictions of thousands of deaths, serious infections as well as the near-total collapse of already ailing health systems. 



How would Africa, characterised by crowded living conditions, widespread poverty and a lack of basic hygienic facilities deal with such a devastating and largely unknown pathogen? 



Months later, such horror scenarios have not materialised and the question has changed to why most of Africa is seeing comparably less devastation. As explained by President Uhuru Kenyatta during the National Covid-19 Conference, “the reason why we have managed to flatten the curve is because Kenyans have exercised an impressive civic responsibility and duty.” 



A reality that tends to be lost in all the discussions about this novel coronavirus in Kenya is just how much pummelling the country’s social and economic structures have received lately. 2020 was a particularly difficult year for Kenya. A triple crisis, coming on the heels of a protracted period of droughts, a cholera epidemic and not to underestimate the spectre of cross-border terror attacks, which dented one of Kenya’s biggest foreign exchange earners-tourism.



Consider this. In 2017, nearly half of the counties of Kenya w<a href="https://news.trust.org/item/20171023130503-xo7f4/" data-type="URL" data-id="https://news.trust.org/item/20171023130503-xo7f4/">as reeling from the effects of probably the worst drought in the last 20 years</a>. With nearly 3.4 million people food insecure, Kenya’s food security prognosis looked gloomy, with climate change and natural resource depletion set to pose even greater risks in the long term. 



Often unnoticed is the insidious effect on the country&#8217;s economy, with experts estimating that there have been, &#8220;12 serious droughts since 1990&#8221;. The average annual costs of the damage caused estimated at around KHS 125 billion ($1.25 billion) &#8212; with each drought reducing the country&#8217;s <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/kenya/insuring-against-climate-risk-kenya" data-type="URL" data-id="https://reliefweb.int/report/kenya/insuring-against-climate-risk-kenya">Gross Domestic Product by an average of 3.3 percent</a>. 



The two consecutive national elections in 2017 also took a massive financial toll. 



Given the dire financial situation, it is quite remarkable, the resilience, tenacity and optimism, Kenya has displayed in the face of such adversity, and done so with their head held high, with stoicism and compassion in its fight against the triple threat. 



Since the beginning of the year, Kenya has gone through a series of unprecedented crises, where within six months it has experienced the worst desert locust invasion in 70 years, heavy unusual flooding that has left scores of people dead and thousands displaced, and the pandemic that is taking a toll on health services and the economy. 



Aware of the technological and financial handicaps facing the health sector, the government has responded commendably in leading the fight against COVID-19, from mandating physical distancing to wearing of masks, promoting hand and respiratory hygiene, promptly dealing with rumours, to specialised facilities in hospitals, to working with industry to deliver local equipment such as PPEs, to delivering economic relief to impacted families. And above all not allowing politics to hijack the wisdom of science.



In about six months after the first case was reported, Kenya increased the number of infectious diseases isolation beds from eight to just over 7,000 across the country, thus keeping the casualty rates low. This was a remarkable feat achieved through unity of purpose between the national and county governments. 



The government rolled out moderate stimulus packages to help families ride out the economic turbulence and cushion companies from financial shocks. The Treasury instituted tax relief for low-income earners and reduced VAT rates as well as corporate sales tax for businesses. In a country already facing slow GDP growth, these were commendable actions of national self-sacrifice and coming together in times of crises. 



When you look at some of the most developed countries in the world, buckling to the microscopic and highly virulent coronavirus and their national responses are properly examined, Kenya does score an ‘A+’ in how quickly and decisively the government acted in the COVID-19 crisis. Measures such as travel restrictions, curfews and school closures were implemented early in the country, before the number of infections rose. 



As testament to the spirit of coming together to confront a common adversary, there was broad support from the public for these measures. In social media and elsewhere, citizens were quick to express responsible outrage where they felt those responsible for the response at various levels were not keeping to the expected standards. 



This grit and determination to rise to the occasion even where resources are hard to come by was key in getting on board international donor agencies and private sector to mobilise funding to support the national response. The UN in Kenya repurposed $45 million from the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) towards the COVID response, and deployed over 150 staff and volunteers to the government response structures. 



In partnership with the Government of Kenya, the UN launched a Flash Appeal to mobilize $267.5 million to support more than 10 million vulnerable people affected by the pandemic, of which nearly US$ 60 million was raised. An additional US$ 10 million dollars was allocated by the UN Secretary General, Mr. Antonio Guterres, to construct a new specialized 100 bed COVID 19 hospital in Nairobi, which will remain as additional capacity even after the pandemic is over. 



The UN in Kenya has prepared a COVID-19 socioeconomic response and recovery plan to address the health care system, social protection, employment opportunities and social cohesion. The recovery plan will be implemented in the next two years and will cost $155 million to focus on recovering better from the pandemic for the Sustainable Development Goals.



The country is still in the maelstrom of the pandemic. The devastating consequences of the pandemic have not fully played out and important challenges remain, some wrought by the pandemic but many that continued long before, such as high health care costs for millions of Kenyans, gender inequalities, widespread poverty, youth unemployment, environmental degradation, corruption and terrorism. 



The country must converge at every level to address these threats today or suffer the consequences tomorrow. Recovery will be made much tougher by the economic toll of COVID-19 as well as an exhausted and depleted health system. 



Still, the pandemic has shown that Kenya can overcome partisanship, think anew and work on short and longer-term sustainable development priorities towards ‘building back better’, with more resilience to future shocks. 



As the<a href="https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/dsg/statement/2020-09-25/deputy-secretary-generals-remarks-the-high-level-event-beyond-covid-19-public-private-partnerships-for-the-sdgs-model-for-building-back-better-prepared-for-delivery" data-type="URL" data-id="https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/dsg/statement/2020-09-25/deputy-secretary-generals-remarks-the-high-level-event-beyond-covid-19-public-private-partnerships-for-the-sdgs-model-for-building-back-better-prepared-for-delivery"> UN Deputy Secretary General, Ms Mohammed</a> said, “I am convinced that Kenya will continue demonstrating that results and transformation are possible and I call upon all of you to double your efforts to invest at scale in those critical interventions that will unlock benefits across all the goals, to make bold choices, to take decisive action and to leave no one behind in your pursuit of a better future&#8221;. 



Kenyans can be fully assured of the commitment of the United Nations to overcome every adversity, leapfrog socio-economic recovery and progress to realise Vision 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals.



Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya. He has served in various parts of the world with UNFPA, UNICEF, UNDP, UNOPS, UN Peacekeeping and the Red Cross Movement. A decorated Special Forces veteran, he is an alumnus of Princeton University. Follow him on twitter-<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://twitter.com/sidchat1?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor" target="_blank">@sidchat1</a>

Triple Threat

The Triple Humanitarian Crisis and Why Kenya Deserves An A + in its Response

When Marguerite Barankitse heard that she had won a prestigious humanitarian award earlier this year, she thought it was a joke. Several months later, sharing the stage with other humanitarians and dignitaries at the Social Good Summit in New York, the 59-year-old Burundian still seems perplexed by all the attention.
“Of course I’m happy to have won a prize but there is nothing special about me,” she told FORBES WOMAN AFRICA on the sidelines of the summit.
“Our mission in life is to show love and compassion. It’s a duty; it’s an obligation,” she said.
For decades, Barankitse has worked to bridge ethnic divides, devoting her life to saving thousands of children caught up in Burundi’s brutal civil war. Her brave, tireless work was finally recognized in April 2016, when she won the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity. The Aurora Humanitarian Initiative, an organization inspired by the courage and resilience shown by many people during the genocide that led to the death of 1.5 million Armenians a century ago, bestowed the award.
Barankitse, a Tutsi, was a young woman when she adopted her first child, a Hutu.
“She was a Protestant, I was Catholic. She came from the south, I came from the east,” she said. Barankitse then adopted six more children – four Hutus and three Tutsis.
“I wanted to show people that it is possible for Tutsi and Hutu to be together.”
When war came to Burundi in 1993, Barankitse’s extended family was killed.
Barankitse, who trained as a teacher, wanted to flee with her children to Tanzania but was told that she could bring only her Hutu children as hiding the Tutsi children would be too difficult.
“I said you will never separate me from my children. My dream was to show that we could all live together. I would prefer to die than be separated from my children,” she said.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-32102 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/DSC00473-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="683" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC00473.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC00473-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC00473-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC00473-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />
Barankitse sought safety in the Catholic Diocese where she worked. She tried to save many who were being targeted in reprisal killings and sheltered 72 of them on the same premises.
When the soldiers came, Barankitse pleaded for their lives. “I told them, ‘There are no killers here. They are your brothers’.”
Barankitse ultimately managed to save the lives of many children, even rescuing an injured baby from the back of his dead mother. That baby is now a young adult with a promising future, like many of the others she has rescued and mentored.
In 1993, Barankitse formed a children’s shelter called Maison Shalom, meaning ‘House of Peace’, to give safety to all the Burundi children orphaned by war, regardless of their ethnicity. She also helped unite those who were separated from their families during the 12-year civil war that claimed close to 300,000 lives. Her organization expanded to include schools, hospitals and other resources for rescued children, many whose parents died of AIDS. More than 20,000 children have been given the chance of a new life thanks to her efforts.
Presenting her with the prize in Yerevan, Armenia, earlier this year, Aurora Prize Selection Committee Co-Chair George Clooney said Barankitse was a “reminder of the impact that one person can have when encountering seemingly insurmountable persecution and justice”.
Clooney said he hoped that she would inspire everyone to “stand up on behalf of those whose rights are abused and are in most need of our solidarity and support”.
A proud, elegant woman in brightly-colored traditional dress, Barankitse speaks her mind and laughs a lot. She seems unmoved by the sparkle of celebrity and status swirling around the Social Good Summit, where glamorous stars rub shoulders with humanitarians and VIPs.
In her view, all people are equal and all have a responsibility to help one another. Throughout her life, Barankitse says, she has sought to break down divisions between people and celebrate what unites them. Although she has an unwavering faith in humanity, she also has an equally strong sense of what is wrong with the world. Conflict, she believes, is fueled by poverty and ignorance.
Her outspoken views against war and ethnic division have earned her some enemies at home. When Burundi’s President Pierre Nkurunziza ran for a third term last year, tilting the country towards instability again, Barankitse was threatened with death.
She was forced to flee to neighboring Rwanda last year, where she now lives as a refugee herself, estranged from her home country. She devotes her energies to refugees in the Mahama camp near the border. A branch of Maison Shalom has also been opened in Rwanda to help Burundian refugees as well as local people in need.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-32103 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/DSCF6390-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="683" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSCF6390.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSCF6390-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSCF6390-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSCF6390-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />
Undeterred by exile, Barankitse continues to say what she thinks. She recently spoke out against Burundi’s intention, along with South Africa and Gambia, to leave the International Criminal Court.  She is cynical too about the corrupting influence of wealth.
“When I see African ministers sipping champagne in business class as they journey to attend conferences on poverty I say to them, ‘If you want to eradicate poverty, why not start off by traveling in economy’?”, she chuckles. Her prize money gives her $100,000 to spend as she wishes and $1 million to award to other initiatives. She has selected three organizations that help child refugees and orphans and that strive to combat poverty.
Although she herself is now a refugee, she has managed to create a home where all are welcome. She recounts how she recently served dinner to a visiting diplomat. Also seated around the same table were the mentally-ill former prostitute and the ex-child soldiers she has taken in.
It is this ability to see the humanity in everyone and her eschewing of wealth and status that has earned her the praise of Pope Francis. At an event in October in Sweden, the Pope applauded her for her work and for spreading the word of peace, even while she lives in exile. Thanks to her efforts, he said, “Thousands of children can study, grow and enjoy good health.”

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‘Compassion Is A Duty’

She was destined to be a teacher but fate had grander plans for the young Graça Simbine. Born in 1945 in rural Mozambique, the youngest of six children, she survived the dismal conditions of Portuguese colonial rule, and rose to being one of the most influential women on the continent.
However, ambition distinguished her early on. A prodigy, Simbine consistently found herself at the top of her class at the missionary schools she attended. Her academic talent led her to become one of the first Mozambican women to win a scholarship to study at the University of Lisbon in 1968 where she focused on German Philosophy and Linguistics.
Moved by the plight of those she left behind during her time in Europe, she became increasingly politicized and began campaigning for the independence movement back in Mozambique. Courting the attention of Portuguese authorities and facing arrest, she eventually abandoned her studies to join FRELIMO [Frente de Libertação de Moçambique or the Mozambique Liberation Front], a political movement that retains substantial popular support to date. Her first posting was as teacher at a school run by the movement in Tanzania where she taught languages and served as deputy headmistress.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-31841 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2016/04/DSC04281-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="683" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/DSC04281.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/DSC04281-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/DSC04281-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/DSC04281-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />
Respected by her peers and senior officers, as a courageous and articulate member of the movement, Simbine found herself taking on greater responsibility within the movement. On one of those assignments, stationed in Mozambique in 1973, she met Samora Machel, then commander with FRELIMO. They married a year later.
Her standing within the movement earned her an appointment as the country’s first post-independence Education Minister. She held the post for over a decade. During that time, she put in place the foundations of Mozambique’s education system. One of her achievements was pushing primary school enrolment rates from 40% to over 90% for boys and 75% for girls, an absolute increase of 1.5 million pupils nationwide. Today, she remains deeply passionate about ensuring universal access to education for every child, not only in Mozambique but across the globe.
For Machel, education is not merely a right, it is the means to a greater end; political and economic liberation.
“I believe that education is freedom, and it must provide our children with the skills they need to become who they want to be,” she said at a press conference announcing the launch of the African Leadership University (ALU) in Mauritius last month.
Machel believes education for every child is within reach and, despite resource constraints, Africa is capable of providing world-class education to its professional and leadership cadres.
As an experienced policy-maker, Machel understands the importance of strong institutions in addressing intractable social challenges. Social institutions, Machel believes, must be designed to evenly empower citizens to achieve their individual and collective conditions. The challenges within the higher education system in Africa are only symptoms of a system that needs to be rethought.
“There is something quite courageous in interrogating the kind of education we’ve been providing our young people. Our children today are learning the same things that I was taught when I was in school in the 1950s. We never took the time to reimagine our education,” she says.
Commenting on the recent turbulence in South African universities, Machel points out that it is evidence of a systemic rather than a philosophical problem.
“This is not an emotional issue, it’s an issue of economics, it’s an issue of social justice. It is not only about higher education, but all the way down to early childhood development. This is the only reasonable way to look at it. There is a danger of #FeesMustFall playing against the students themselves. There is an issue on deciding who gets the benefits of the new system. We have not yet done the math.”
Machel’s voice on the issue matters.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-31838 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2016/04/DSC05662-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="683" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/DSC05662.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/DSC05662-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/DSC05662-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/DSC05662-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />
She has served as a Chancellor at the University of Cape Town and as President of the prestigious School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Her argument also makes sense. For an education system to fully play its social role, it must also be accessible to as many people as possible at every stage. The trick is to strike a balance.
“There are only about 100,000 [South Africans] in university today. What about the millions who need to go to secondary school, primary school or kindergarten? We haven’t navigated the mathematics of such a system. You can’t give to tertiary education without taking away from something else.”
Machel is confident transformative solutions exist and only need to be developed. She is currently focusing her energies on the newly-established ALU that is seeking to position itself as the premier leadership education institution in Africa.
“It’s important to look at the future of our continent in the eyes of the human capability that we have. Take the faces and voices of the young people who will come through these doors, we have to present them to Africa and then to the rest of the world,” she says.
ALU is built on “a resource efficient model that pioneers technology and innovative learning to provide high-quality tertiary education at scale”. The university plans to build 25 campuses that would each host 250,000 students each.
But even at those numbers, Machel argues that the university will only address a small portion of the continent’s education needs.
If the challenge today is to provide a solution at scale, Machel reflects, the long-term challenge is to develop institutions that are distinctively African, designed to solve the problems of today but constructed to stand the test of time.

Tag: Humanitarian

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

The Triple Humanitarian Crisis and Why Kenya Deserves An A + in its Response

‘Compassion Is A Duty’

‘Education Is Freedom’