BY Isaac Newton
Grants and loans extended to Africa by the foreign donors are courtesy of the generosity of the citizens of the respective countries.
In essence, the funds are generated from the taxes collected from them.
Kenya is among key recipients of such aid with donor countries often pressing for great accountability
It has, however, become a norm these grants are misapplied with public not given proper information about their allocations.
This not withstanding, Kenyans have always been reminded about the loans borrowed or about to be borrowed.
Today, very few Kenyans are aware that their country has been receiving billions of dollars in grants every year.
Millions of other Kenyans have scarce information about the grants.
Successive Kenyan presidents and the Kenyan legislatures have always kept grants as secrets.
Most grants given to Kenya are never used for any projects in the nation, but they are all always looted and banked abroad in foreign personal bank accounts.
Many of these accounts offshore are suspiciously associated to some Kenyan leaders.
Ideally, Kenyans should not be suffering after all those grants were given to the nation.
Curiously the same funds are looted and banked in foreign personal bank accounts thus failing to achieve any meaningful results.
All efforts should be made to make sure that the money is retrieved to serve the purpose for which it was intended.
No more grant money should be given to Kenya until all the looted public funds which include the grants are returned to Kenya, and after all, the looters of public funds at the top who loot billions every day have been arrested, prosecuted, and sent to jail for long periods of time.
President Donald Trump was right. He honored the USA taxpayers’ money which had always been given free to help the common Kenyans, but which money had alwaysbeen looted by the Kenyan leaders and banked abroad into personal bank accounts, with some of the grant money used to buy properties abroad while Kenyans have continued to suffer and die out of poverty created by their own leaders.
This looting of public funds has to be stopped. Kenyans should not continue to suffer anymore.
Corrupt Kenyan leades have to be weeded out for the country to prosper and to be respected by other nations.
Imagine a government executive boasting of Byron a one wrist watch at a cost of Kshs. 17 million ($170,000) in a country where majority citizens earn less than a dollar a day..
It must pricky the conscience of the nation that more often such purchases are products of looting.
No any other nation in the world would give away the taxes collected from its nationals and give it out to be looted by individuals of other nations, but the USA has been doing it for decades.
It shocks therefore to see the impunity from local political wags, some close to executive, to catwalk around broadcasting illicit opulence.
It is absolutely wrong for the USA taxpayers money to be given as grant to a country patronized by looters.
The more cunny ones go a notch hire to stash the loot im foreign banks perpetuating a circle of greed.
It perturbs the more then that part of the funds channeled as aid is stolen and used to display ill gotten opulence.
This is why i support the call for greater accountability on donor funds.
More importantly let our leaders stop the looting.
Dr. Isaac Newton Kinity who writes from the US is Counselor and Human Rights Activist
He is former Secretary General of the Kenya Civil Servants Union.
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