Poverty has been cut in half since the beginning of the 21st century the United Nations Secretary General said Wednesday. A state of affairs Abugure says holds true for Kenya as well.
“The number living in poverty, which is below one dollar a day, has reduced; especially since 2007 after the post election violence.”
There is however a caveat attached to the impression the statistics create, “if you went below the average, however, to look at the conditions of life of those at the bottom of the pile, in some cases life has gotten worse. The reason life has gotten worse is because inequality in Kenya has increased quite dramatically.”
A reality UN boss Ban Ki-Moon echoed in a statement Wednesday in commemoration of the 67 years the United Nations has been in existence.
“We are living through a period of profound turmoil, transition and transformation. Insecurity, inequality and intolerance are spreading. Global and national institutions are being put to the test.”
Insecurity, Abugure says, has rendered even more people homeless, “people running away from Tana River for instance.”
Insecurity leading to homelessness is just one of the ways poverty rears its ugly head in much of the developing world and it paints a picture so grim that the very first Millennium Development Goal is aimed at its eradication.
Rapid urbanisation without consideration for the poor is another reason we now have people living on the street, Ouma says.
“Poor people have a right to be in the city.”
“In cities like Mombasa, Nakuru and Eldoret where the rate of urbanisation is above nine percent per year, there is very little intervention to produce housing for the poor. There’s a lot of intervention to produce high market housing but little for the poor.”
“What happens when that trend continues is that when you do upgrading like Kibera, the middle class, who are just on the boundary between surviving and modest earnings, run and push away the poor from houses.”
“The housing stock produced every year in Kenya lags so far behind by eighty percent; especially for the category of the urban poor. That means people need an affordable house but they can’t get it at any time.”
A national policy addressing the housing deficit especially for the lower income groups Abugure says agreeing with Odong’o is critical.
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