Diplomat: US suspends aid to Kenyan education ministry due to corruption allegations
By APTuesday, January 26, 2010
US suspends aid to Kenya’s education ministry
NAIROBI, Kenya — The U.S. has suspended a five-year plan to fund Kenya’s education programs following allegations that more than $1 million in funds went missing at the Education Ministry, its ambassador said Tuesday.
The U.S. made the decision based on claims late last year that Education Ministry officials misappropriated 100 million shillings ($1.3 million) of Kenyan government and donor funds to finance the country’s much-lauded free primary school education program, U.S. Ambassador Michael Ranneberger told a luncheon of the American Chamber of Commerce in Kenya.
“Those culpable for the fraud should not merely be sacked; they should be prosecuted and put behind bars,” Ranneberger said.
The U.S. funding was to cost $7 million and begin this year, the ambassador said.
Kenya’s Finance Ministry audited the program late last year and found the funds missing. Britain announced in December it was suspending its funding of the program.
Britain’s funding totaled 55 million sterling pounds ($88.8 million) over a five-year period, beginning in 2005. The December suspension saw the last tranche of funding, 10 million sterling pounds ($16.1 million), withheld.
When Kenya started the program in 2003, it earned praise across the world because more than 1 million children who had never been to school enrolled.
In his Tuesday speech, Ranneberger once again called on Kenya to speed up wide-ranging reforms deemed necessary to avoid a repeat of violence that followed the December 2007 controversial presidential poll.
More than 1,000 people were killed and hundreds of thousands displaced from their homes during that violence. It ended when President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga signed a power sharing deal. The two leaders also agreed to see through changes in the constitution, police and land ownership as part of a reform package to address the country’s crushing poverty and other inequalities believed to have fueled the bloodshed.
“Failure to implement significant reforms will greatly enhance prospects for violent crisis in 2012 or before (when the next elections are scheduled), which might well prove worse than the last post election violence,” Ranneberger said.
