POVERTY REDUCTION STRATEGIES: The Kenyan
Experience
1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Poverty remains a pervasive national [problem in
Kenya today. The Poor in Kenya constitute more
that half of the total population. In other words, at
least one in every two Kenyans.
1.2 Efforts fighting poverty in Kenya can be traced
from Independence. The Sessional Paper No 1 of
1965 detailed the Government commitment to
alleviate poverty together with ignorance and
disease. This policy has been propagated in policy
through long-term strategic plans, sessional papers
development plans and other policy documents.
1.3 The Early efforts geared towards poverty
reduction included land resettlement programmes,
the District Focus For Rural Development Strategy,
the social dimensions of development programmes
and other targeted initiatives undertaken by NGOs,
CBOs, Development Partners and communities.
1.4 That poverty still remains a major problem
indicates that poverty alleviation initiatives have
not been successful. More and more Kenyans have
fallen below the poverty line:
NPEP
WMS
PRSP
1994
1997
2001
46%
52%
56%
Number of Poor People
1972-3 3.7 million
1994
11.5 million
2001
15.0 million
1.5 Majority of Kenyans (80%) live in the rural areas;
most of the poor people also live in the rural areas.
2.0 IPRSP
2.1 In June 2000 Kenya adopted the interim PRSP.
The objectives were to:
 Facilitate sustained and rapid economic
growth
 Improve governance and security
 Raise poor people’s ability to earn a
living
 Improve quality life
 Improve equity and participation
2.2 The IPRSP coincided with the first MTEF budget
and formed the basis of the full PRSP
2.3 The IPRSP was prepared with limited
consultations and lacked the voices of the poor.
There was need therefore to undertake all inclusive
and wide ranging consultations to determine the
causes, nature and extent of poverty and above all
to come up with people driven poverty reduction
strategies.
3.0 PRSP
3.1 The PRSP outlines the priorities and
measures necessary for poverty reduction
and economic growth creation in Kenya.
3.2 Poverty reduction and economic growth creation
are mutually reinforcing. Economic growth is good
for the poor though not a sufficient condition for
poverty reduction.
3.3 As noted earlier, the PRSP builds on the IPRSP
and has made deliberate efforts to learn past
mistakes in poverty reduction initiatives:
 Non implementation
 Inadequate resource allocations
 Lack of prioritization
 Lack of participation and involvement of
the poor – planning and budgeting for
he poor and not with poor
3.4 Years of fighting poverty have resulted in
valuable qualitative and quantative data. The PRSP
has utilized and have formed the basis for data
gaps identification.
3.5 The PRSP consultation process in Kenya was
undertaken at the national, district and local levels.
In-depth consultations were undertaken through
PPA conducted in selected districts and helped to
reach the lowest communities. The consultations
were enriched by sector working group reports and
thematic group reports.
3.6 The principles guiding the PRSP process in
Kenya included:
 Giving a voice o the poor
 Participation and ownership
 Transparency, openness and
accountability
 Equitable distribution of national
resources and development initiatives
3.7 The causes of poverty in Kenya as revealed
through the consultation process are:
 Low agricultural production and
marketing
 Insecurity
 Unemployment and low wages
 Poor governance
 Landlessness
 Lack of roads/inadequate roads
 Cost sharing policies
 Gender imbalance and vulnerability
3.8 These concerns are now core to the development
of a pro poor growth strategy that emphasizes a
growth process that directly addresses poverty and
leads to sustained poverty reduction.
3.9 Poverty reduction has budgetary implications.
Policy implementation costs money. It is therefore
to:
 Link policy, planning and budgeting
 Achieve quality expenditures (proper
planning, clear targets, prioritization,
ranking and costing identified priorities)
leading to efficiency gains.
 Harmonization of the financing
framework
3.10 The PRSP process has been twined with a pro
poor and pro growth MTEF
Budget. The three-year rolling budget aims to
implement the priorities that improve the quality
of expenditures and shift resources towards pro
poor activities and programmes.
3.11 Both PRSP and MTEF recognize sector priorities
and inter/intra sectoral linkages.
3.12 The success of the PRSP will depend on how
well the activities are funded, implemented,
monitored and evaluated in a manner that promote
the principles of the PRSP process. Development
of indicators will be at the core of this process. Past
studies and surveys have given us some indicators.
These will have to be updated and others
developed.
4.0 Challenges
4.1 Stakeholder expectations. There is need to
manage these to minimize stakeholder
fatigue.
4.2 Resource constraints against to many
priorities. This has prompted the government
to prepare an action plan detailing what is
implementable given available resources.
Other stakeholders are being encouraged to
prepare action plans.
5.0 Conclusion
5.1 Development is people centred. People are both
the key actors and principal beneficiaries of
development. Poverty is about people. Poverty
reduction will only happen where the people
become fully involved. Statistics will remain at the
core of the development process; only then can
we know whether we are on track in our
development process.