It's bottom up, William Ruto orders all NGOs in Kenya
Interior PS Raymond Omollo addressing at a past function in Nairobi.
The government has ordered all NGOs and Public Benefits Organisations (PBOs) operating in Kenya to align their operations with President William Ruto’s bottom-up economic transformation agenda.
Internal Security Principal Secretary Raymond Omollo says the directive follows revelations of misalignment of international donor aid with Kenya Kwanza administration’s development agenda.
“This model, sadly, leans more towards meeting the interests of donor countries than supporting Kenya’s national development agenda and priority needs,” Dr Omollo says in a statement released on Friday.
“This is not only ineffective but also impairs the ownership of development plans for Kenya, as the host country,” Dr Omollo said.
“Further, it has the potential of weakening our capacity to accurately monitor and manage donor aid management in the best interest of our national security.”
This means that the NGOs will now be required to carry out projects touching on the six pillars outlined by the government as the pillars of its transformation agenda.
They include agriculture, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) economy projects, housing, healthcare, digital and creative economy initiatives as well as environment and climate change.
Dr Omollo said that the government’s aim was to ensure that the projects the non-state actors carry out benefit the people.
“This will guarantee greater partnership and synergies among different parties working in the aid industry to ensure that donor aid is not only producing better impacts for Kenya but also benefits local communities,” he added.
“Our prime focus is on optimising the value of all projects and programmes funded through international aid to ensure they complement our developmental plan outlined in
Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda (BETA).”
The government has also put on notice a number of charity organisations it says have been engaging in money laundering and illicit cash flows.
Dr Omollo has said the government had put up a surveillance team as well as a number of strategic interventions to curb the malpractices.
The new directive comes amid concerns over delays in the completion of donor-funded projects in the country.
Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu in a report released in May 2023 noted that in the financial year 2021/2022, the International Development Association (IDA) and the government committed a total of Sh33 billion to fund a number of projects in 19 counties but the projects had not been completed.
Despite availability of funds, most of them are still way behind their timelines, with some of the counties paying contractors before they complete the actual work.
In some of the completed projects, Ms Gathungu also said that the projects delivered were sub-standard— meaning that the residents did not get value for the money.
