I lost my baby to Violence.....

By Judy Waguma

She lays exhausted on her hospital bed;oblivious of her surrounding-ward 17, at the provincial Hospital, Kisumu. She is alone in this big room.

Shortly the tea lady has arrives. Chai Chai, kuja Chukua chai! (Tea Tea Tea) but she just lays there. The tea lady moves on to the next ward. A Good Samaritan sympathizes with this girl and rushes to get her the tea.

She takes a deep breath, not interested in the tea either.“It was Thursday morning,” she says, almost like a whisper. I was at the displaced camp in Naivasha.

“A bus had just come to take us home, and I was overjoyed as I knew I was going to join my family again”.

Susan Akinyi says that she collected the little household goods she salvaged during the post election violence and was ready to go.

In her joy, the 17 year old stood holding her protruding belly, softly she whispered to her unborn baby, with a broad smile on her face, ‘home at last’

She says that the journey back to Kisumu began early.

In the bus, she sat staring out of the window, Susan could be heard humming a song, her joy profound, and even the rough road seemed like nothing.

All over sudden, her face hardens. She keeps quiet, closes her eyes and with renewed strength she continues to say, “I felt a sharp pain in my stomach, then another, then another”

She says that she panicked, and did not know what to do, since this was her first pregnancy.

“I tried so hard to hold it, I couldn’t, it was becoming unbearable, and then I started to scream, that made me feel a little better, at least it would get my mind off the pain,” she says.

In the bus, she says, a lady came to her rescue. The lady took her to the back seat and put her to lie on her back.

Her water broke, all she could feel was wetness. Unaware of what to do, she diligently relied on this lady to help her.

“The lady, told me that she had been through this before and could help me, she asked me no to worry or be scared”

To her amazement, the lady wore black rubber shoes, pressed on her buttocks, and prodded her to push.

I pushed, and pushed, and pushed, until we could see the baby’s head, she says.

Meanwhile the bus was moving, probably to get her to the nearest hospital as soon as possible.

With abated breath, Susan says that she was drained. “I was so tired, I could not push anymore, but we were lucky as I was rushed to Pap Onditi hospital”

However as they got to the hospital, the doctors there could not help the young girl; they did not have equipments to deal with her state and therefore referred her to the Provincial Hospital.

The baby could not move, and from the pain, she passed out.

At the provincial hospital, Dr Paul Mitei says that Susan had had an obstructed labour, the fetus was dead.

“She had also gotten infections, and therefore we had to remove the baby through cesarean section,” says Dr Mitei.

A week later, says Mitei, Susan developed more complications; she had severe pain in her stomach.

We had to take her back to theatre since she had sepsis, says Mitei. Sepsis is a medical condition characterized by a whole-body inflammatory state caused by infection.

Sepsis is broadly defined as the presence of various pus-forming and other pathogenic organisms, or their toxins, in the blood or tissues, says Mitei.

Susan’s condition had now worsened and Mitei says that they had to take her for surgery to remove the pus. In the process they also discovered that the upper part of her Uterus had been destroyed and so it had to be removed.

She was in danger of getting Fistula, but we have been able to save her. The doctors at the hospital had to maintain her for 14 days where she was under drugs and she was being monitored on her condition every day, says Dr Mitei.

The saddest part however is that Susan will never conceive again, she only has her lower uterus left.
But she is not moved by that.

“I knew that I would not come back after the second surgery, but I am alive. I don’t care that I cannot deliver anymore, because I never want to go through that pain ever again,” she says.

Sineno....

By Judy Waguma


Sineno has a round, smooth face. Her complexion is chocolate and her smile infectious.
The jolly girl greets us candidly as we enter the rescue center. She is lively, and speaks fluent Kiswahili.

The young girl looks in perfect condition and happy, oblivious of all the troubles she went through. Sineno is not just any other child. She has been robbed of her innocence. She was raped and now lives with the agony of seeing her perpetrator every single day.

Sineno, 11, comes from Taveta district, where she lives with her single mother and three siblings. At the age of nine, a man she knew only as a neighbor, attacked her and defiled her in a nearby thicket on her way home from school.

The little girl finds it hard to talk about the experience. Her face has changed. The former bubbly child has been transformed into a pouting and not-so-friendly person. She is fidgeting with her clothes as tears well in her eyes. The memory is unbearable.

“He grabbed me, pulled me into the thicket and defiled me,” she recalls. The 50-year-old man, after finishing his dastardly act, left her unconscious in the thicket, not caring whether she was still alive or not. The only thing Sineno says she remembers is that the man threatened to kill her and her family if she told anyone about what had happened.

But she couldn’t care less; she was in too much pain. When she gained consciousness she stood up and walked slowly home. Her mother was livid with rage. Her first step was to report the matter to police, and the man was arrested. She then rushed her daughter to Coast General Hospital, but the medical staff could not handle her case. Her genitals were badly damaged. “Coast General Hospital referred me to Nairobi Women’s Hospital, where I was admitted for a week,” the little girl recalls.

Sineno has now recovered, but she constantly gets rashes and pain in her genitals. She does not know what the problem could be, but she has to be taken to hospital each time the rashes occur. She says her attacker’s case is pending in court. He was released on bond, but still goes to court for hearings. “However, he has threatened that if we do not withdraw the case, the whole family will perish, and that’s why I was brought to the rescue center,” she adds.

Joseph Okwino, the home’s director, says the girl has made tremendous progress. When she was brought to the center, where she has been living since, she could not stand seeing men. “The young girl would set out for school, but would not reach there, say that someone had threatened her on the way,” he points out.

“She would come back with so many excuses, until we figured out what the problem was and put her through a counseling session.”

Sineno is not alone; there are other defiled young girls at the centre. Nine-year-old
Rachael was left to take care of her siblings as the mother went to fend for them as a sex worker, says Okwino.
That night, Rachael says, a neighbor came calling in the pretext that he was looking for her mother. It is at this point that he attacked her. She is till in pain as she struggles to forget the day. She, too, contracted a sexually transmitted disease and has to seek medical attention every so often.
The centre is home to 14 other girls, each with a different problem. Initially, says Okwino, the place was meant for physically abused girls. But today, it receives all manner of cases, ranging from sexual abuse to domestic issues. It also houses teenage mothers.

But Okwino says the center is a temporary shelter, as the girls stay for some time as they get medical attention or counseling before rejoining their families. It is also home to girls whom, the administration, feels are at risk in their own homes. An example is Sineno who is still being threatened by her attacker. Action Aid brings in the children, gives them support by taking them to hospital, he explains. They are provided with food and medicine as well.

He explains that in the area, defilement is rampant. “We also girls who have been defiled by their fathers, strangers and other people known to them. “At the moment, we have a girl who was defiled by her father and she conceived,” Okwino adds.

“We took her in, and now she has gone back to school, we take care of her.”

Sauti ya Wanawake

By Judy Waguma



The wave of Sauti ya Wanawake in the coastal province is a force to reckon with.

Translated as the voice of women, this group has made a tremendous milestone in giving the women an accent into a society that is riddled by culture and religion, and so often do not allow much priority to the woman. They are also advocating for the girl’s right to education.

This group of women, one day sat, and reflected on their status in the society. Their major concern was the lack of involvement in development issues and also the schools drop out levels of the girl child.

After much deliberations and consultations, Sauti ya Wanawake was born, in 2001.

“We started with around 50 women, as a forum to help the women in various needs in Kisauni, a region in coast Province,” says Binti Ali, the chair lady of the group.

Binti Ali says that when they met, they discovered there was just too much that was not being discussed on women issues. “Our biggest concern, though, was to remove the silence, and give the women in Mombasa a unifying voice,” she says.

They discovered that the reason owing to their suppressed voices was due to the staunch culture and religion practiced in the area.

“We wanted to be free, to talk about everything that is of importance to us,” they say. The issues that concerned them the most were like politics, education, and other daily matters.

To them, they had had it. They were tired of adding their numbers to meetings and then being left out during times for key decision-making.
“We decided that enough is enough, because we also wanted to be involved in matters that affect us as the women of Mombasa,” adds Binti Ali.

Today Sauti ya Wanawake, boasts of over 1000 members and they are still growing. They have a steering committee that comprise of 36 members. Of that only 21 are active and have helped steer this movement.

Within their activities, they have sub committees that deal with health, advocacy and child and human rights as well as, HIV and governance.

The women say that their main mandates are on a number of issues. Besides creating awareness on women rights they ensure that they make follow ups on children who are defiled, give their parents support and assistance, to make sure that they have gone to the hospital and to report the case to the police and to the courts.

One of their major activities, of which they are commonly known of, is to keep the girl child in schools, and educate them of their rights to education.

Florence Gideon, a member of the group, says that looking at their different regions, they discovered that education among girls was low.

“We conducted research in the areas to establish what exactly the problem in these areas was,” she says.

Gideon says that they discovered that for instance out of the 400 girls who enroll in class one, only 200 go through to class eight.

“We asked ourselves, where these students go?” she says.

However, they did not have to ponder for long as the girls came forward to speak, she says.

The chairlady says that the girls confessed to them that they barely got the time to read. Their major concerns were that when they got home from school, they had to do the all of the house chores.

They had to go fetch water, wash the babies, and if the mothers did business they had to take over, to assist them until very late in the night. This they attributed to their lack of concentration in class and also not doing their homework.

Sauti ya Wanawake also say that, some of these girls also confessed that sometimes they are not given money by their parents, and due to peer pressure, others advice them to get boyfriends who constantly give them money.

At the long run, they say, the boys demand to have sex with them. It is here that the problem lies, after they engage in sexual behavior, the girl will either get pregnant, or the boy will take her in for marriage, and that’s where their education ends

That was our entry point, says Binti Ali, we felt that there was a problem and we needed to help these girls to finish their education.

It is through these tribulations that the girls’ forum was started. To make the girls understand what their rights are.

The need for the girls to be educated on the rights of a child, counseling, and also to build their capacity plus that of their teachers was important.

Now, the Sauti ya Wanawake can say that the girls have become the ambassadors of the others. While they cannot talk to their parents freely, they can find confidence in their peers and also be open to their counselors.

They also, report cases to either their teachers or one of the group members in case a girl is becoming unruly.

Action aid, has given the group support by taking them for professional counseling to be able to tackle issues effectively.

Most of the cases they have received are rape and domestic cases-which are not so many and the victims are mostly of the ages 9-12.

Sauti ya Wanawake says that they have created a lot of impact in these regions. A good example they say is the Ziwa la Ngombe primary where 20 girls got over 300 marks in the last Kenya Certificate of primary education.

The girl’s performances have improved, they say. Above all, there is that retention in schools, we see the girls not dropping out as they used to. We also have to make sure that they get to class eight and that if they are outside we report them.

The women have also made it their own initiative to follow their mothers, by going door to door and educate them on the importance of educating the girl child.

“We tell them that if we find a child out of school we will report them to the police, who have created fear to the parents and also helped in taking the children to school,” says another member of the group.

They all agree that the girl child has special issues and there is need to sensitize them more.

“Yes we have the girl’s forum but there is still more that has to be done for these girls. We need to get these girls on a one on one basis and figure best way to help them out,”

There are parents who demoralize the children, says Binti Ali, the chairlady of the group. She says that some parents abuse the children verbally, telling them they would do better prostituting and are not worthy of anything.

Their living conditions are not any better. The poor the say, suffer the most as all the family members sleep in one house. The girls have no privacy and this where the trouble begins. Sometimes the women who sell manzi a local brew and the patrons assault the girls all the time.

When a girl is facing all these problems, they find it hard to talk to people openly about them, says Florence Gideon, a member of the group. Adding to their problems, she says, is the fact that they cannot afford sanitary towels and are therefore forced to miss school close to one week.

The girls concerns are indeed many. The Sauti Group has thus made it their objective to also talk to the parents and educate them about the needs of the girls.

By Judy Waguma


Even the bravest of them all cry. In their moments of weakness they lie down and weep.

A man's ego is like a rock. Dumbfounded, I sat there and watched, as his shoulder moved up and down. He had his back to me so that I could not look at him in the face.

I touched him and told him that it was going to alright. That we were going to be together forever and we will find away through our problems. I was met by his cries, louder this time, and I lay there and cried with him.

It was a Thursday evening.

I had called him; I wanted to know if he had been to the doctor’s appointment, to get his results. His voice was jolly and happy as usual, he said, “honey, I am on my way there, I am sure everything is fine and will call you as soon as I am through”

With that I took off, went to my house, waiting to hear from the man I had loved for three years now. In my heart I was happy, because I knew that eventually our plans to get married were becoming real, and that I was going to be his forever. Finally he was going to be my life partner because I loved him with all my heart and soul.

Tick tock, time went by. I started getting worried. He had taken so long to call me. Maybe he had gone to be with his friends and forgot to call me, I thought. I gave him time. Then the text message came in. “hey hon, today it’s final, I will never be able to have babies, and this is the cruelest thing ever………”

Ohh no, I cried. I felt like someone had died. Ooh it couldn't be true. I read and reread the message, my heart beat so fast. Why I asked, why us, why now? There was no one to answer.

I remembered how we used to joke about the baby issues. We could do it all the time. We could say that if our babies came, he would be the good cop, and I would be the bad one because he felt I was too strict.

I remembered all the talks we had ever had about our babies. He loves babies. ooh he loves even the dirtiest babies. He picks them up and mellows when he holds them, and equally babies love him, they do not even squirm when he holds them.

I have watched the bond he has had with people’s babies, and in my heart I kept thanking God that I have a good man who will love my babies to death.

That dream was shattered.

I called for a taxi and went to see my devastated man. When he opened the door, he could not look me in the face. He was swollen all over from crying too much. I locked the door and followed him inside to the bedroom. He lay there and cried some more, I held him, not saying a word.

I did not know what to say. What could I say? That night we slept in each others arms, I held him so close. I wanted to feel him, and share in his pain.

Early that morning, he woke up early, left me in bed. He just sat there in the living room, staring into the empty space. My heart broke for him, and I went to him. Knelt by his side, and hugged him,but he did not hug me back. I told him that we would face this, no matter what, that we are both in it together. He turned, looked at me, and said, “Honey, I know I have lost you, it’s just a matter of time, what will u do with a useless man like me?”

And that’s the last I saw of him, or heard from him. He refused to pick my calls, he even refused to see me, that drove me insane…Today I ask myself, if he really loved me, did he want me to be his wife. Are babies the only thing to a marriage? I was ready to be in it, with my all; so long as he was in the same boat.

Was he selfish? Or was it for my own good? Or am I being the selfish one? How can men be made to cope with infertility?

Ends

All about Familly Planning Pills and Cysts

Akelle Waguma


I had just gotten to college, and I was putting up with my Aunt at that time. To cut it short, she was a liar, a big one, and crazy too- you can imagine that combination. Anyway she could make me laugh and cry too! But that is a story for another day.

One weekend her friends came to visit her at the house. I was in the kitchen preparing their meals. As the loud laughter kept renting the air, I decided to eavesdrop and listen to what was really making them laugh so loudly.

Apparently, one of her friends had gotten pregnant right after delivering. And she did not know about it way into her sixth month. Then my aunt's voice came, " I don't use contraceptives at all, I go the natural way, and I have managed to keep my children well spaced" I did not wait to hear the rest, this was clearly grown up talk.

A month after this, I got unwell, and went to her medicine cabinet to get drugs-this was not a very bright thing to do- but I did it anyway. I was really feeling nasty and wanted something to cool my pain.

The only drugs in the cabinet were some little yellow tablets that I consumed three at a go - Stupid huh!- they were tiny, and I figured out that just two would not work.

After taking the three, I cut like 6 more pills and kept them in my bag, just in case I needed to proceed with the medication.

I did not get to use the six as I got better soon after.

But I kept them with me. It was just about Christmas, and each holiday I had to travel home and spend time with my family.

During Christmas we sometimes go to the rural areas, and this was one such time.

So one day, as I was removing things from my bag, the pills that I had self prescribed from my aunt's medicine cabinet, fell down at my mothers feet. She picked them up and the expression on her face was grave.

Innocently I asked her for my pills back. She looked at me and asked, " Judy you are taking birth control pills?"

Okay that was a shocker to me too. One, I did not know that these tablets were contraceptives, and two, I remembered my aunt bragging to her pals that she does not use pills, she goes the natural way.

You should have seen me try to fumble with words trying to explain to my mum how I got the pills. Thank God she believed me. Not that using pills is a bad thing, but because I regarded myself so young as to start using family planning pills, besides I had heard a lot about the effects of the pills.

And my mum, drove in more fear of the pills in my head. She gave me a stern warning not to use pills that the effects are not so good.
That was not a topic I was going to get to with my mother so I shrugged it off, and have constantly remembered her word," don't use Family Planning pills!"

I am a journalist by profession, and still I am not sure whether pills are good or not.

This story has been sparked by my friends illness.

She is a very strong woman, and you will not know that there is a problem until you really probe. She calls me at 7 in the morning, I was nursing a terrible hungover. But the voice on the other ends makes me sober.

She is crying and sounds like she's in so much pain. I call a cab and rush to her place immediately. I find her bent, touching her stomach and in great agony.

Immediately I rush her to the hospital, and they find out that she has cysts -she has known for a while though- and it had burst, that's why she was in great pain.

I have known of cysts, but never really bothered to find out about them. Even when she came to me with her scans,which looked almost she was having a baby.

But what pushed me into searching for these cysts, is when she went to see her doctor again, and was told she had to use family planning pills.

I actually told her that she will grow fat, and have huge........that was my ignorance talking.

The much I know about family Planning is so negative, that nowadays I do not say anything out loud.

The reason why the doctor prescribed Family Planning pills to my friend is mainly to control her hormones.

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a health problem that can affect a woman's menstrual cycle, ability to have children, hormones, heart, blood vessels, and appearance.

With PCOS, women typically have high levels of androgens. These are sometimes called male hormones, although females also make them, missed or irregular period and many small cysts in their ovaries. Cysts are fluid-filled sacs.

Functional cysts commonly occur around mid cycle, when a follicle destined to become an egg fails to mature. Instead of leaving the ovary in the process known as ovulation, it remains inside, floating in a tiny sac of fluid.

It is that sac that eventually forms into a cyst. Although rarely malignant, ovarian cysts lead to 200,000 hospitalisations in the US each year. For some women, the cysts develop cycle after cycle, previous studies have shown.

Because birth control pills block egg development and ovulation, they were used intuitively by doctors for many years as a treatment to stop the cysts from forming.

But the advent of the new, lose-dose oral contraceptives changed that presumption. While the new pills still contained enough hormones to block ovulation and prevent pregnancy, they were no longer potent enough to override the body's own chemistry involved in cyst formation.

For gynaecologist Dr Rachel Masch of New York University, the new finding is no surprise because evidence has been mounting for some time that low-dose pills do not affect cyst formation.

She adds, however, that because the study found a small number of women for whom the treatment worked, there remain some circumstances under which she might still prescribe birth control pills for this purpose.

"If a woman wanted to use a pill for contraception, or to help clear her skin, for example, and she also had recurring cysts, then it is still reasonable to give it a try as a treatment," Masch says. In most cases, though, other hormonal treatments are more likely to help. Therefore family planning pills can be of importance is various ways, when well prescribed by the doctor.

Is Africa ready to embrace free and open source software?

By Solomon Omondi

Africa is yet again at crossroads. This time around the dilemma is not whether or not to support the war on terrorism but how to deal with emerging issues at technological level.

African governments are now coming under immense pressure on policies regarding technology.

The benefits of information and communication technology have revolutionized activities around the world.

However, these benefits do not seem to have spread evenly around the globe to benefit everybody. Africa is a region where people are yet to reap the benefits that comes along with technolo

Until recently the debate on the potential economic benefits of embracing information and communication technologies (ICTs) by African countries,if they were to leapfrog development stages has mainly been at the infrastructural level, that is, the cost of hardware needed to access this technology at the expense of the intelligibility of the content of this technology to the user.

It has been argued that ICTs in themselves do not necessarily translate into development since the focus is on the technology rather than people. For example, how do rural women benefit from information on the Internet when they cannot read and understand what is on the computer screen?

Traditionally, computer software and hardware have been closed-source, controlled by a few large corporate organizations.
For instance, most of the common software applications are Microsoft based and these are closed-source, implying that their source code is not available to the general public.

Consequently, this software is shrouded in secrecy through stringent copyright protection to protect and maintain their privileged place in the global market.

More and more people are opting for open source software (OSS). OSS refers to software that is developed, tested, or improved through public collaboration and distributed with the idea that they must be shared with others, ensuring an open future collaboration. The best known example is the operating system Linux, which could be a possible threat to Microsoft’s Windows.

The majority of those who have adopted OSS cite their flexibility and cost-effectiveness. Open source essentially refers to freedom to access the principles and methodology to promote open access to production and design of goods, products and resources.

The term has mostly been used to refer to computer software generally availed to the public with either relaxed or non-existent Intellectual Property rights. These include operating systems like Linux and Mozilla among others.

Other benefits associated with OSS according to the proponents include the absence of defects and in case any are detected, these can be rectified with ease and as soon as they are detected since the source code is usually available to both the users and developers.

Given the fact that proprietary software is closed-source and therefore cannot be easily modified to be user and regional specific, this has in essence limited the extent to which these technologies can be used to empower the poor, particularly in developing countries.

While most African governments are currently rushing to embrace e-government to improve service delivery, they are also spending huge amounts of money to purchase operating systems software for their computers.

The scenario has drawn sharp reactions from critics who claim this is tantamount to global technological imperialism. At the heart of the debate is the prohibitive cost of software that has ensured most Africans effectively remain on the other side of the digital divide. For instance, the cost of proprietary software, mainly distributed by Microsoft remains the most prohibitive.

For instance, at the recently concluded World Social Forum (WSF) in Nairobi, technology was once again on the spot with activists bashing the continued capitalistic trends by a few software companies to lock out a big chunk of the world’s poor with intellectual property rights protocols.

“The challenges we are facing today is not just fascism, Nazism or terrorism but more increasingly global technological capitalism,” says Christophe Aguiton of France Telecom Orange recently during the WSF.

According to Christophe, it is time to challenge the established system of the world by fighting against the metaphor of methodology through which technological capitalism has been created to exploit the poor.

This sentiment was echoed by Alan Story, a senior lecturer in intellectual property law at the University of KentUK. He argues that “millions of people especially in developing countries have been forced to become ‘pirates’ because of the copyright laws imposed on them by a few monopolies in the West.” in

“If it wasn’t for the issue of copyrights, Bill Gates would be selling pencils in the streets of New York,” quips Story.

In large parts of Africa, the high cost of proprietor software is often higher than the per-capita income of these countries. This forces ordinary citizens into becoming “software pirates”. Interestingly, most of them are not even aware that they are operating copies of pirated software.

Indeed, it is the case that most people in developing world have found themselves operating pirated copies of Microsoft software without their knowledge. Recently , a Reuters article illustrated the story of a Russian teacher in a remote village who was charged with pirated software in the classroom. Led by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, appeals have been made to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates for the release of the teacher arguing that he was unaware that he was violating Microsoft’s intellectual property rights.

Proponents of OSS have argued that such incidents need not happen if the world embraced OSS since it would cost far much less.

Kenya is currently implementing an e-government project that is supposed to make delivery of government information and services to the public efficient and promote citizens participation in government.

While this is a noble initiative, it has been argued that since most of the government run services on e-government initiative are still based on proprietary software applications, the government is forced to unnecessarily spend huge sums of money to purchase these. It would be wiser if the government adopted open source software.

Furthermore, not only are these commercial software packages costly, but they also do not come in local languages and neither can they be shared or adapted to meet local needs.

Critics have also argued that continued control of the software industry by a few global corporations is tantamount to stifling democracy and violation of consumer rights. By denying them the right to alternatives.

According to Anoop Sukumaran, an activist based in Indonesia working against proprietary software controlled by global monopolies, the right to information is not a privilege but a basic human right and taking away these rights is tantamount to killing democracy.

Anoop says: “Democracy is about alternatives. If there are no alternatives, then you cannot claim to be participating in a democracy.”

Currently, most African governments, including Kenya are still bound by stringent licensing obligations by the big software companies The question remains; are African governments ready to breach these licensing obligations and adopt open source software?

ENDS

Millenium Development goals

As 2007, is the half way mark of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the hopes of Africa ever meeting the MDGs by the set deadline continue to dwindle.

However, if African governments reverted their efforts, by localizing the goals to be fully owned by the people, then the 2015 target would be met, if not all then halfway.

The secretary general of the United and local government of Africa believes and is determined that if local authorities have enough resources and the capability to achieve the MDG’s.

Jean-Pierre Elong Mbassi says that the resources exist within our governments, but only raises issue with the manner in which governments utilize these resources.

Local government is the sphere of government closest to the people. Many basic services are delivered by local municipalities and local ward councilors are the politicians closest to communities.

Even though development experts contend that there has been progress, slow though, there is still more that African governments need to do to ensure that the goals are achieved by the 2015 target.

The MDGs in question are an initiative of the United Nations and seek to rid the world off poverty. Eight goals were agreed upon by UN member countries in 2000 and they include eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, universal primary education, promote gender equality and empowerment of women, reducing child mortality and improving maternal health. Others are combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability and developing a global partnership for development, all these by 2015.

To put it in simple terms, “localizing MDGs means making sense of the global and national targets locally – understanding how these global objectives relate to local needs, checking where the community is vis-à-vis MDG targets.

Africa can still make more progress and it is in this aspect that local authorities come in, it is established that in Africa over 70 percent of the population dwell in rural areas, the chain of communication and exploitation of resources is tilted to the advantage of those in the urban centers and majority of urban dwellers are never involved consulted as to possible ways to improve their lives especially eradication of poverty.

Considering that over 70 percent of the resources in any government go to the Local governments the goals could fit in well with better expertise.

Although this accounts for only 5 percent allocated to Local authority, of the national budget in Kenya, Mumbi Ngaru, a former councilor of Thika town council says that the need to increase the resources to at least 15 percent would be more efficient.

On the other hand, Mumbi in every sense is right to say that this sector be endowed with more resources, but whether the councils have the capability to handle these resources is also an issue, but one that can be handled.

It’s a big set back that in our contemporary times, we are still losing women during child birth, and that there are people in the slums who still live without a decent meal, yet there are a lot of resources being mismanaged within our governments.

However, within Sub-Saharan Africa, there is quite varied performance and there have been some countries that have shown quite strong growth, with rising per capita incomes, while others have experienced stagnant or declining growth.

Country performance has been quite varied. The Global Monitoring Report, commissioned by the world Bank, shows that trends in income growth in recent years have been very encouraging in Sub-Saharan Africa, and there is evidence of poverty reduction in some African countries, not only in the more rapidly growing regions of East Asia and South Asia.

There have also been several countries in Africa for whom recent survey data reveals quite remarkable progress in the human development indicators. Madagascar is one of such countries, since 1997, it has experienced a 6 percent annual decline in child mortality.

That is a very rapid rate that is very encouraging. South Africa has been able to reduce the incidence of measles by 90 percent since 2000. Mozambique is another example where the poor are clearly benefiting from human development efforts.

Immunization coverage has improved by 18 percent annually between 1997 and 2003 among the poorest households in the country, which is four times as fast as the national average. So it is true that regionally Africa faces the most daunting challenges to meet the MDGs.

However, it is a diverse region, and many countries are achieving remarkable progress. We need to learn more from those examples and try to replicate this positive experience elsewhere.

For instance the Ugandan government stands out as an example in utilizing of the resources available, in that it sent resources down to the local and posted in community centers that the resources and amount of resources made available and quite rapidly that the amount went from 20 cents on the dollar to 90 cents on the dollar.

So this signals a number of different messages, the first is that global transparency in terms of getting resources used effectively. The second one is when the institutional arrangement functions effectively.

Then money can in fact pass through public systems and be used for poverty reduction, and indeed that strengthening public systems is key to scaling up the resource transfers because they are a cost-effective way if they work well.

Then that there can be real advantage in working in bottom-up service delivery approaches, for example, providing grants directly down to the lowest tier of local government's on some sort of formula basis or activities

Linking these goals with the local Government projects would be a noble idea, but the need for citizens to also own these projects first and stop focusing on the national level and go back to the level of the common man is paramount.

A large number of people still do not understand that their decisions matter in all the resources allocated to the municipalities.

On the other hand the law only guarantees political participation through civic elections, as is assumed that councillors effectively represent citizens,” Yet these councillors also rarely hold consultative meetings in their respective wards.

Mumbi sums the situation up as follows: “For in stance in Kenya the Citizens' participation in decision making in the local authorities has been elusive, except during elections when citizens participate in electing their councillors”.

Once this is done they are never consulted in any decisions that affect them. Indeed, the Local government Act also makes no reference to citizens’ participation.

It allows, but does not require the local authority to publish a summary of a budget estimates in a local newspaper, Mumbi adds.

Also, only for a fee must the local authority provide a copy of the annual estimates if requested.

Local citizen’s can only attend full Council meetings as observers. They cannot, however, attend any committee meetings as these are held behind closed doors as closed sessions.

Now for this to change, then there need to be that full participation of the people, and also to know what exactly these goals are, to be in a position to demand and dictate that particular projects be done in a manner to satisfy their needs.

Along with the political liberalisation, the shifting emphasis in development discourse and towards promoting more socially equitable economic growth and meeting the basic needs of the poor has created pressures for a wider participation of the people in decision-making.

Participation and decentralization are considered to have a symbiotic relationship, as successful decentralization requires some degree of local participation.

In relation to this, the Kenyan government required that the local authorities produce a Local Authority Service Delivery Action Plan (LASDAP) together with the local organisations, groups and associations.

In the first year of LASDAPs (2001/2002) more than 27,000 individuals participated in all together 900 meetings.

Participant groups included market and trader associations, women's groups, self-help groups, handicapped groups, neighbourhood groups, health and medical groups, churches and schools.

Elected representatives both national and local also took part, together with some government officials.
It also means that the people come up with ideas of how to achieve the targets that are important for the community, working together to implement these ideas and regularly looking back to ensure that the actions do indeed lead towards achievement of the common goals.

In addition to this, they should use MDG indicators as part of a situation assessment carried out during the initial planning stages to help focus and analyze local development potential on clear developmental targets.

This would also help generate relevant data that both allows establishing clear priorities for local development and expresses development objectives in MDG terms from the very beginning of the planning process.

For instance within their jurisdictions the Local Authorities in Kenya, are charged with the responsibility for providing services such as health, primary education, refuse collection, water and sanitation, and fire protection services among others.

However, over the years the service delivery capacity of local authorities has deteriorated to the extent that even the most basic services are not always provided.

Central government is forced therefore to fill in the gaps in service delivery when it comes to water and health services for instance.

The reasons for the poor state of service delivery by the local authorities are many, explains Mumbi.

Firstly, the existing facilities in most local authorities were not planned to cater for such an amount of people now residing in the municipal areas.

“The high population growth rates are mainly the result of the expansion in commerce and industrial development”.

Secondly, the local government capability to provide services is hindered by insufficient resource base, mismanagement, weak technical and institutional capacity to increase service coverage, and lack of planning and foresight.

Even with several cases of corruption and mismanagement within the local government set up, Elong Mbassi, still believes that such past cases of mismanagement of funds could in itself be a step, and that all Africans needed was to put up better mechanisms to monitor how the resources are utilized.

It is also of importance to train our personnel, and not to assume that every one understands what these goals are, and then we will know what we are dealing with,” he added.

In retrospect, the goals are achievable, but the need to also focus on results rather than meeting the target, if we do not meet the deadline of 2015, we can still look back, to say that indeed improved someone’s life.