Corruption

Kenya: Campaign against FGM and GBV rolled out in Nakuru and Baringo

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Africa/Kenya/09-08-2020/Author and Source: www.kbc.co.ke

Gender activists in Nakuru and Baringo have launched a campaign against Gender Based Violence (GBV), teenage pregnancies, FGM and early marriages in 16 villages within the counties.

Through a Programme rolled out by Dandelion Africa, a community based organization, in partnership with the Ministry of Interior, 250 members of Nyumba Kumi clusters have been engaged in sensitization initiatives aimed at bringing down outdated cultural practices that entrench the vices.

The initiative dubbed Jukumu Langu Project under Wajibu Wetu Programme has also seen more than 300 community members trained on how to report violation of their rights and those of their children so that the legal process is followed for justice.

The Project Director Ruth Nderitu said chiefs and village elders have also been sensitized against settling defilement cases through ‘Kangaroo’ courts, as the process compromised justice to the disadvantage of the affected girls.

She said Dandelion Africa was also using vernacular radio stations, drama and theatre to enhance knowledge on GBV and FGM.

“Elders involved in mediation in these villages have been trained on basic human rights as settling some matters locally denies women, men and young girls and boys justice,” said Nderitu.

She further pointed out that many boys and girls drop out of school or are forced into early marriage as a result of pregnancy.

At the same time, the director said that cases of FGM usually went up during the month of November before peaking in December when schools close for long holidays.

Part of the project entails encouraging men subjected to GBV to open up, report to authorities and seek counseling at health facilities.

“Male survivors of GBV rarely report to police and medical authorities. They will only do so when the physical effects of attacks require urgent intervention. Some men and boys only dare to seek assistance several years after the incident.

Nderitu said GBV and FGM remained deeply etched in most parts of the country due to failure by communities to report the twin vices to authorities, stigmatization, lack of cooperation by witnesses and reluctance by concerned authorities to act.

“The consequences of GBV and FGM are severe particularly for women. They are vulnerable because the vices are condoned by customs, reinforced by institutions and the fact that most rural women have limited knowledge on their rights,” she stated.

Source and Image: https://www.kbc.co.ke/campaign-against-fgm-and-gbv-rolled-out-in-nakuru-and-baringo/

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Kenya: Ex Kasarani MP, 18 others summoned over Ksh 48m ghost school

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Africa/Kenya/27-10-2019/Author(a): Claire Wanja/Source:www.kbc.co.ke

The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) has directed nineteen people among them former Kasarani  Member of Parliament Elizabeth Ongoro to appear at Integrity Center over allegations of embezzlement of public funds amounting to 48,907,826 shillings.

Other allegations are failure to follow procurement laws by officials of Kasarani National Government Constituency Development Fund (NG-CDF) in relation to construction of non- existent Kasarani Girls ‘ High School.

In a statement Friday, EACC chief executive officer Twalib Mbarak said the commission established that the award of the contract for the construction of the school was made without due regard to the procurement laws, and that the school does not exist and that payments were made to different individuals and companies associated to the National Government Constituency Development Fund patron and committee members for services not rendered.

” Upon completion of the investigations and pursuant to section 35 of the Anti­ Corruption and Economic Crimes Act, the file was submitted to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) who upon review has granted consent to charge twenty six (26) individuals and entities.” He said.

The persons will be charged with conspiracy to commit an offence of corruption; misappropriation of public funds; abuse of office; engaging in a project without prior planning; unlawful acquisition of public property; willful failure to comply with the law relating to procurement; fraudulent acquisition of public property;dealing with suspect property contrary to Section 47 (2) of the Anti­ Corruption and Economic Crimes and conflict of interest.

The commission has also arrested Kefa Omanga Omoi-Former Kasarani District Development Officer and Jecinta Akoth Opondi-Former Kasarani CDF Committee member over the ghost multi-million project.

The eighteen summoned are Mwalim Rashid Mrafi-Former Fund Manager, Kasarani CDF; Ruth Kanini Kitonyi-Former Kasarani District Development Officer; Silvan Onyango-Former CDF Committee member; Pamela Mudha-Former CDF Committee member; Nashon  Odongo – Former Provincial Accountant, Nairobi; Claperton  Ouda-Former CDF Committee member;Douglas Parshet-Former Fund Manager, Kasarani CDF and Vitalis Obunga Ogingo-Former Regional Accountant , Nairobi.

The others include businessmen Ferdinand Mas ha Kenga; Maric us Otieno;Peter A rning; Maurice Orongo; William Ogutu Wedo;James Juma Ochieng; Peter Ongeyo; Charles Owino; John Obonyo Owinga and James Miruka Dola.

EACC has been conducting investigations into the embezzlement of the funds and blatant abuse of procurement laws by officials of Kasarani NG-CDF.

Source and Image: https://www.kbc.co.ke/ex-kasarani-mp-18-others-summoned-over-ksh-48m-ghost-school/

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Competition and corruption in education: a lethal combination for academic integrity

Tracey Bretag

By: Dr Tracey Bretag

Higher education is a competitive enterprise at every level – from student admissions processes to university ranking systems and competition for funding. In many contexts, access to education means jobs and wealth. The poisonous mix of competition, corruption and poor resources has the potential to create an environment where misconduct becomes the norm, rather than the exception.

“If you take me back to 1995, when [cheating] was completely and totally pervasive, I’d probably do it again.” (Lance Armstrong, BBC Sport 2015)

It is too simplistic to place all of the blame for cheating on individuals. While individuals do need to take personal responsibility for their actions, their behaviour is often symptomatic of wider and deeply entrenched patterns in society. As this Call for Papers suggests, when the two toxic pressures of competition and corruption intersect, it cannot be surprising that scholars at all levels of the educational spectrum may choose the ‘easy’ path of cheating to gain academic advantage.

Recent findings from the Contract Cheating and Assessment Design Project, support the earlier conceptualisation by Bertram Gallant (2011) that cheating is a systems issue requiring a broad, holistic response, rather than an individual behavioural problem which can be solved using a ‘catch and punish’ approach.

Yes, some scholars cheat. Students plagiarise or outsource their learning, researchers fabricate results and authors submit recycled or redundant publications. So much research is devoted to understanding the individual motivations for cheating (eg academic, social or financial pressure, poor time management, etc), without addressing the broader educational and social context. As I suggested in 2013:

Higher education is a competitive enterprise at every level – from student admissions processes to university ranking systems and competition for funding…This highly competitive and under-resourced environment is situated in an increasingly competitive worldwide economy, as well as a social context that may encourage students to regard higher education primarily as a means to a vocational end. Academic misconduct may also contribute to and be exacerbated by corruption in wider society…media coverage of various ethics scandals may have contributed to the perception that misconduct is common.

Competition and corruption go hand-in-hand

When corruption combines with increasing competition in society, for instance for access to education, jobs and wealth, academic integrity becomes a casualty.

The ‘Corruption Perceptions Index’ scores 180 countries and territories on how corrupt their public sectors are seen to be, using a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is ‘very clean’. The 2017 index found that more than two-thirds of countries score below 50, and many countries (including developed countries such as Australia) are actually declining in their scores.

The Global Corruption Report: Education detailed a vast array of corrupt practices including “illicit payments in recruitment and admissions, nepotism in tenured positions, bribery in on-campus accommodation and grading, political and corporate undue influence in research, plagiarism, ‘ghost authorship’ and editorial misconduct in academic journals” (Executive Summary, p. xx).

The Independent Commission Against Corruption in Australia report, Learning the hard way: Managing Corruption Risks associated with International Students at Universities in NSW, highlighted the specific corrupt practices in international education, including: falsification of entry documents, cheating in English language proficiency tests, online contract cheat sites selling assignments, plagiarism, and cheating and fraud in examinations. I commented at the time that “corruption has seeped into every aspect of the higher education sector, from admissions all the way through to graduation”.

When corruption combines with increasing competition in society (eg for access to education, jobs and wealth), academic integrity becomes a casualty. The poisonous mix of competition and corruption has the potential to create an environment where misconduct becomes the norm, rather than the exception. There is a sense of pessimism and despondency for some in academe that there is simply no other way to get ahead than to fabricate, falsify, plagiarise, misrepresent, outsource, cheat and take unfair advantage. If ‘everyone else is doing it’, scholars may justify their behaviour in the same way that famous sports stars have done by arguing that they are simply responding to external pressures and creating a ‘level playing field’.

It is therefore more important than ever that scholars at every level of the academy make a stand for academic integrity and to insist that all academic work – whether an assignment by an undergraduate student, a PhD thesis by a graduate student, or a publication by a leading researcher – is underpinned by the values and practices of honesty, trust, respect, fairness and responsibility. This journal provides the platform for that stand to be taken. As researchers and practitioners we have a responsibility to undertake the challenging task of exploring how and why competition and corruption is so harmful to academic integrity and to provide empirically based insights and recommendations for action.

*Fuente: http://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bmcblog/2018/08/06/competition-corruption-education-lethal-combination-academic-integrity/

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Kenya: How our university education system went terribly wrong

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Kenya/ March 13, 2018/By EVAN MWANGI/Source: https://www.nation.co.ke/

The student unrest at Meru University of Science at Technology (MUST) that left a student leader dead last week exposes the soft underbelly of higher education institutions, once considered citadels of knowledge and a sure ticket to a better future.

The student, Evans Njoroge, was shot dead by the police as he and his fellow students protested higher tuition fees, bad management of their university, and poor facilities at the campus.

These are complaints also heard in both private and public universities across the country.

LECTURERS’ STRIKE
Public university lecturers have also downed their tools over what one professor at the University of Nairobi termed the “same old story of bargaining agreements that the government and university councils refuse to honour”.

The lecturers have not been paid their allowances because the universities claim they don’t have money to implement an agreement over improved pay.

The lecturers are also asking for a 150 per cent salary increase and a 100 per cent raise in housing allowance to cushion them from the high cost of living.

Already in coffins awaiting their mass funeral, only divine intervention can save Kenyan universities, as their degeneration reflects the general rot in a nation riddled with corruption, poor planning, and indifference to excellence.

“Universities are dealing with the same dysfunctional politics as the rest of the country,” Dr Wandia Njoya of Daystar University, a vocal critic of the way universities are run like businesses or dirty-handed political campaign machines, says.

“It’s all about ego and status, including expensive campaigning for campus positions.”

SATELLITE CAMPUSES
Most experts we interviewed noted that the main problem facing Kenyan universities is the mushrooming of substandard campuses.

With rapid expansion of universities to cater for rising demand for degrees (from seven public universities in 2012 to 33 in 2018), the quality of teaching and research has sunk to the lowest ebb.

Kenya’s 60 university colleges educate about 540,000 students annually, graduating about 50,000 students each year.

The need to cater for rising demands in higher education and finance university programmes after the government cuts on education spending has had its toll on quality.

Staffing is outstretched. “We don’t have the matching workforce and personnel to staff the increasing masses of students,” Dr Teresa Okoth-Oluoch, a specialist in language education and curriculum development at Masinde Muliro University, where she is the director of the Centre for Quality Teaching and Learning, says.

“The so-called university campuses dotting villages seriously compromise quality.”

FUNDING
Between 2013 and 2016, universities tried to fill the gap left by declining government funding by opening campuses all over the place, sometimes next to pubs, strip clubs, and doomsday churches.

But with high school mass failures in the past two years, these satellite campuses are starved of students and are falling like underwear in brothels next door.

“The competition to open campuses and village shoeshine universities is never about academic excellence,” Prof Maloba Wekesa of the University of Nairobi, who is also the organising secretary of the University Academic Staff Union, says.

“Most of those colleges are just income-generation projects and degree mill centres especially for politicians.”

Neoliberal policies that view everything in terms of profits have hit the universities where it hurts.

“Academics have bought into the lie that the way to run universities efficiently is to run them as profit-making businesses,” Daystar’s Njoya says in an interview with the Sunday Nation.

“Education is a completely different kind of organisation. We invest in people. We are accountable to the people we teach and the people in society.”

STUDENT ADMISSION
She adds that unless education is treated as a “public good” and not a profit-making venture, “we will have to cut corners on education: We have bigger-size classes taught by part-time lecturers to avoid spending money on faculty stability and quality education.”

Whereas universities across the world are allowed to set the standards regarding the students they want to admit, the Kenyan government requires all universities, including private ones, to admit only students who score C+ and above in high school.

Only 15 per cent of the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education candidate achieved the cut-off score last year.

The number is just enough for the slots in public universities, leaving private universities and income-generation streams in public universities without prospective students.

PRIVATE UNIVERSITIES
Professor Mumo Kisau, the chairman of the Kenya Association of Private Universities, was quoted last week saying that private institutions have suffered a reduction of between 30,000 and 40,000 students this year.

Only Jesus Christ can save most of the faith-based universities whose prospective students rarely meet the high standards the government has set for universities.

With dwindling enrolment numbers, it is hard for these universities to remain afloat.

In late January, the Ministry of Education shutdown Presbyterian University of East Africa because the university finances were allegedly not in order.

This left its over 1,000 students in limbo, but the institution has since gone to court to oppose the closure.

ACCOMMODATION
Lukenya University Vice-Chancellor Maurice N. Amutabi thinks something should be done about the numbers of those allowed to proceed with university education.

“We have more spaces and capacity than the number of students we admit.

«It would have been good to have at least 20 per cent joining university than the current 10 per cent of all KCSE candidates,” the professor of history, who has previously worked at Kisii University and Central Washington University in the United States, says.

No tangible solutions are expected soon. Just as they prefer to receive their medical care abroad because Kenyan healthcare is comatose, our senior government officials, including those in the presidency, the opposition, and the education ministry give the local education system a wide berth.

They enrol their children in elite universities in Europe, America, New Zealand, and Australia.

GRADUATES
The only investment the ruling elites have in local universities is to ensure these institutions don’t produce independent-minded graduates.

A systematically degraded education system ensures universities churn out masses of graduates that are easy to control ideologically and acquiesce to the neoliberal agenda of the ruling elites.

With corruption affecting every sphere of public services, public universities are starved of the money they need to produce graduates worth giving a second glance on the job market.

Education officials misappropriate the money set aside for research.

“Funding of public universities is tied to how the Ministry of Education is able to do its budget, which mostly caters for salaries. Much of the (money) allocated for research is ‘eaten’ by ministry officials” Prof Maloba Wekesa says.

“We need a constant fraction of the budget to get to the specific universities to support research.”

INCOME
Although in dire financial straits, the universities have not been terribly creative in fundraising.

“Kenyan university financial models have never taken into account programme costs or developed innovative ways to protect the institutions from financial disasters,” Prof Ishmael Munene of Northern Arizona University in the US, who has written widely on the problems facing universities in Africa, says.

The shallow economic base means that the universities cannot provide basic needs for their students and staff.

Prof Munene mentions alumni donations, endowment funds, strategic investments, and industry partnerships among the possible initiatives to raise money and diversify income sources.

“The government is encouraging universities to find alternative sources of funding, including entrepreneurship, without compromising their core mandate,” Prof Mwenda Ntarangwi, a respected academic and the CEO of the Commission for Higher Education, says.

DONATIONS

His attempts to put in place quality assurance mechanisms will be a tall order, given the cynicism in the government structures.

Western universities frequently receive donations from philanthropists.

Buildings on campus and endowed chairs are named in honour of these donors.

Endowed chairs provide a bait to attract and retain the best brains around.

However, except maybe the industrialist Manu Chandaria, rich people in Kenya cannot be expected to come to a university’s aid with donations to boost teaching and research.

CORRUPTION
The interest of the country’s rich class is primitive accumulation of stolen wealth, following a familiar script: run down one parastatal after another by stealing their assets, then take to Twitter daily to share with the nation inspirational quotes on how to get rich.

Experts think the universities should specialise in the areas they are strongest in.

At the moment, the universities duplicate one another, imitating the University of Nairobi, and offering unviable courses.

Professional bodies have rejected degrees from several public universities.

For example, the Engineers Board of Kenya has previously blacklisted engineers trained at Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology, Meru University of Science and Technology, South Eastern Kenya University (Seku), Technical University of Kenya, and University of Eldoret.

“What we need is a differentiation of institutions with some specialising in good teaching, others in excellent research, and still others providing education midway between research and teaching,” Prof Munene says.

SALARY
He sees in Kenyan universities outdated pedagogical practices that discourage critical thinking; weak doctoral courses that duplicate work done at the undergraduate level; poor governance structures; and the absence of strategic planning as the other challenges facing Kenyan universities.

With low pay, university academic staff resort to moonlighting to make ends meet.

There is hardly any time to prepare for classes, and they end up giving students yellow notes. Cases of missing marks are common across all universities.

Without any clearly laid down ethical standards, universities watch as professors sexually abuse their hapless students for good grades. Rarely are sexual predators on campus punished.

The systematic degrading of education to serve the ruling class has been effective.

TRIBALISM

Now Kenyan universities value mediocrity above anything else. Professors are hired on the basis of their ethnicity, and top brains are edged out to teach in South Africa, Europe or America.

The lack of basic management skills are the bane of university administration, and woe unto you if you expect a university administrator to respond to your enquiries on anything.

“You will not get feedback from them because they don’t know the importance of feedback and research,” Prof Amutabi says.

“The university fat cats are too busy to answer calls or emails.”

Ethnocentrism is the order of the day on campus. “Some people think universities belong to them because they bear their ethnic name or are located in their counties,” Prof Amutabi says.

POLITICIANS

On September 2016, Uasin Gishu Governor Jackson Mandagoled demonstrations to demand the sacking of the Moi University vice-chancellor on the basis that he did not come from the dominant ethnic community around the university.

The students have also responded well to the unrelenting assault on higher education.

Congratulations! Even those born in the city and cannot say “good morning” in their mother tongues are as tribalistic as their grandparents in the rural backwaters.

Their response to political crises is based purely on tribe, usually to secure power for their ethnic tin gods.

LEADERS
Like the rest of Kenya, the students choose their leaders on the basis of how much the candidate can drink, smoke illicit substances, and steal from the public coffers.

Unlike in the 1970s, when student leaders practised selfless ideals, their counterparts today are protégés of the corrupt national leadership, whom they eventually join at the national level to continue the vicious circle of degrading universities. 

The few student leaders who don’t play ball are shot in cold blood in potato farms — left to die like the universities whose interests they agitate for.

evanmwangi@gmail.com Twitter: @evanmwangi

Source:

https://www.nation.co.ke/news/education/How-our-university-education-system-went-terribly-wrong/2643604-4336630-cj92ug/index.html

 

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Analysis: How corrupt local officials kill decent education in Africa

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Africa/February 24, 2018/Author: Maty Konte/Independent

There’s no disputing that many African countries’ education systems are in trouble. Despite significant investment and some improvements linked to the push to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, children in large parts of Africa are simply not being well taught or learning what is needed as they progress through the school system.

A lot of the discussion around this problem centres on resources: people argue that teachers must be trained better. More money must be spent. This is, of course, correct.

And governance is sometimes discussed, though mostly only as it relates to central governments and their responsibilities. But the quality of local governance matters, too. Local governments – those at a regional, provincial level, district or village level – are closer to communities. They are more likely to understand particular populations’ needs. At a practical level, they are often in charge of providing or distributing goods and services. In education this would mean textbooks, furniture and repairs to classrooms.

This suggests that local governance can have a real effect – positive or negative – on the quality of learning resources in a community and, by association, on how children perform?

I set out to explore this effect by using a series of surveys conducted by Afrobarometer in 33 African countries. This is an independent and non-partisan research network which conducts nationally representative surveys in Africa measuring public attitudes on economic, political and social matters. More than 50,000 citizens have been interviewed in the selected surveys I used for this study.

My study showed a strong link between the quality of local governance and the quality of the educational resources in Africa’s public schools.

In fact, I found that corrupt behaviour by local government councilors increased the likelihood that schools would lack textbooks, have poor facilities and overcrowded classrooms, have poor quality of teaching, and would record high levels of teacher absenteeism. This finding stands no matter how much money a particular country’s central government had invested in education.

If Africa is serious about improving its schooling systems (and meeting the Sustainable Development Goal related to education), it must tackle corruption among local councilors.

What the data shows

My research was based on survey data Afrobarometer collected between 2005 and 2013. Some of the questions related to education; others to people’s perceptions of their local government councilors’ performance and ability.

Among the questions about education, interviewees were asked whether they had encountered the following challenges in their local public schools: expensive school fees; lack of textbooks or other learning supplies; poor teaching; teacher absenteeism; overcrowded classrooms; and facilities that were in poor condition.

Afrobarometer Round 5 (2011 – 2013)

For almost each of the items listed, more than 50% of the respondents had encountered the challenge in the question.

Most interviewees complained particularly about a lack of textbooks and teaching materials; poor teaching quality and teacher absenteeism. These are all key determinants of what students can achieve by the end of an academic year.

A crisis of corruption

Corruption, like low-quality education, is a real problem across Africa. In its 2017 Ibrahim Index of African Governance, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation warned that the level of corruption on the continent had risen between 2007 and 2016.

This is borne out by what interviewees told Afrobarometer in the surveys I studied. More than 80% of those surveyed on the subject said that at least some of their local government councilors were involved in corrupt activities. Less than 10% of those surveyed believed that their local councilors listened to their communities.

Afrobarometer Round 5 (2011 – 2013)

The study shows that a 1% increase in the measure of local government corruption is associated with an increase of about 0.4% to 0.9% in the percentage of people who face poor human or physical school resources in local public schools. This statistical evidence suggests tackling issues in local governance can help education systems in Africa.

And it matters because good local governance can ensure that textbooks and learning materials are available and that they reach the students at public schools. The behaviours and attitudes of local government councilor’s may affect the way public sector employees, like teachers, are hired and treated.

The performance of teachers in public schools depends on many factors, and their degree of accountability depends also on the degree of accountability and responsiveness of those in charge of the management of the schools that include local government councilors.

Taking action

Improving the quality of education systems will have huge benefits for Africa’s present and future generations. Part of this improvement must involve tackling people’s negative perceptions about their local councilors, whether those relate to corruption, effectiveness or responsiveness.

Central governance remains important. It should be coupled with careful plans and actions to fix local governance, make councilors more accountable and ensure they’re providing the services schools need to thrive.

Fuente: https://www.independent.co.ug/analysis-corrupt-local-officials-kill-decent-education-africa/

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