Corruption, Battle Over Turf
Stall Kenya Animal Health Push

In a country where corruption is high, livestock projects suffer even when funds from donor agencies are available.

In Kenya, ranked fifth most corrupt nation by Transparency International last year, farmers are losing cattle daily to nagana (trypanosomiasis) while bureaucrats wrangle over a 336 million shilling ($4.3 million) European Union-funded project meant to fight the menace.

By the middle of September the outbreak had claimed more than 2000 head of cattle in Siaya and Bondo districts in western parts of Kenya.

The tsetse fly, which causes sleeping sickness in humans and nagana in animals, had been brought to 99 per cent control levels by 1991 but has bounced back because of unsustainable control measures.

An expert, Rajinder Saini, said that while there was appropriate technology to check the fly, money to finance control programs on a sustainable basis was lacking.

The European Union agreed to fund the Farming in Tsetse Controlled Areas project in western Kenya, which emphasizes tsetse and trypanosomiasis control and farmer training for improved productivity. However, two years down the road, the project is still tied down in departmental wrangling.

The battle is between the Department of Veterinary Services, DVS, and Kenya Trypanosomiasis Research Institute, KETRI, on one hand and EU's consultants, Rural Development International and StockWatch, and the Organisation of African Unity-Inter African Bureau for Animal Resources, on the other.

The project's financing agreement gives the bureau the authority to implement while the aid recipient is the Republic of Kenya. The Veterinary Department and KETRI accuse the consulting agencies of wrongly advising the EU to give the implementing authority to the bureau.

The consulting agencies are said to have convinced the EU that the money would be misappropriated if channeled through a government agency.

A government official who does not agree with the arrangement says: "The PS Finance, having received the money on behalf of the government should have channeled it to the Ministry of Agriculture and the mandate to implement left to the Department of Veterinary Services.

"The PS would then be the accounting officer. It was very wrong to have OAU bureau, which is an international organization, to implement a government project."

But the consultants say it was necessary to shift the implementation to another agency because of the frustrations experienced in similar projects before. During the early planning stages of this project, the EU delegation was experiencing problems with the implementation of other agricultural sector projects, notably the Arid and Semi-Arid Lands - Kenya Livestock Development Programme, a representative said. KETRI was knocked out on the grounds that it was a research institute without the mandate or capacity to undertake an implementation project, according to the head of EU in Kenya.

Following the wrangle, KETRI and the DVS, which are supposed to be key collaborators in the implementation of the project, have taken a back seat and are merely observing the developments from a distance. A Rural Development International report states: "The goal of an easier and more effective means of disbursing the funds has certainly been found, but the project is faced instead with a range of unforeseen problems related to ownership and control."

The report regrets that a lot of time has been spent trying to solve these problems and numerous approaches have been made to improve the relationship with DVS and KETRI.

The RDI says the stand taken by these institutions is partly contributing to the failure of the project. "The constraints imposed on these institutes because of dwindling resources prevents them from fulfilling their own mandate and from playing their full role in the project activities. This continues to be a major problem for the project," states RDI.

Francis Oloo, Farming in Tsetse Controlled Areas (Kenya) liaison officer, accuses KETRI and DVS of refusing to be involved in the implementation. "We have made numerous reconciliatory trips to KETRI to try to get them fully on board. But they have refused to cooperate."

But Dr. Mathu Ndung'u, the director KETRI, dismisses these as mere excuses. He accuses the consultants of operating in isolation, ignoring the input of other stakeholders who were crucial to the project. The director of Veterinary Services refused to comment on any Farming in Tsetse Controlled Areas issue.