TSC is not authorized or qualified to spy on the classroom and make teaching decisions. The bureaucracy it imposed on teachers must be abolished.

On the afternoon of Friday, November 12, Martha Omollo, a teacher in Nairobi County, was called to her school and received a letter from the Public School Teachers Government Employer Teacher Services Committee. This letter, dated today, tells her that she has been transferred to a school in Trans Nzoia County 400 kilometers away, and that she will report that she is preparing to teach on the following Monday, November 15.

Earlier this week, Omoro was a spokesperson for the teacher pressure group, which questioned the loyalty of union leaders to its members and the opaque health insurance plan that teachers pay through involuntary salary deductions. Soon after the press conference, Omoro received a call from the TSC Nairobi County Office, warning her not to discuss the problems facing teachers in public.

The idea that a teacher can pack up in the middle of the semester, move 400 kilometers away, and prepare to teach in three days is cruel. This obviously ignores human nature, and also ignores that teaching is essentially a relational profession. When teachers themselves worry about their own happiness, they cannot take care of students' thoughts and happiness, and worse, when they are deprived of their freedom of thought and speech. The transfer shows that TSC does not care, and to make matters worse, it ruthlessly turns a teacher into a warning to other teachers.

In April of this year, someone also witnessed similar treatment to a teacher. The media reported a teacher named Magdalene Kimani who had traveled a long distance to a school 20 kilometers away to take a national exam for several days. In response to this rather innocent report, the county education office sent her a "show cause" letter, but the report was initiated by the media, not the other way around. Education officials ignored the teacher's 20-kilometer trek, and then sent a threatening letter to her.

These two cases are just a microcosm of the harassment experienced by Kenyan teachers under the TSC. For example, TSC uses a process called "dilocalization" to transfer teachers from their home regions on a large scale. When TSC chief executive Nancy Macharia appeared in the Senate, he saw measures affecting thousands of teachers as encouraging "national cohesion." Surprisingly, one can think that cohesion comes from changing teachers, disrupting their families, and not caring what a worried teacher means to students. Such actions to increase teacher anxiety during school riots are insensitive and a manifestation of bureaucratic arrogance.

Therefore, this kind of ruthlessness is bound to appear in schools and public places, which should not surprise Kenyans. High-level government officials show an alarming lack of emotional intelligence and sensitivity towards ordinary professionals, and they seem to be unaware of what harm their actions against juniors mean to the general public. Teachers who are anxious and feel disrespectful cannot treat their children with dignity, nor can they respond to the special circumstances of the children they care for. Otherwise, as TSC does, it is a definition of arrogance or inhumanity.

Take, for example, a form that teachers must fill out regularly. According to TSC, teachers must fill out 18 forms, but teachers say there are more forms. CBC’s absurd commitment to focus on individual learners means that teachers fill out forms detailing the special learners in the class, the nature of the challenges that the learners face, and the remedial measures that teachers take to address these challenges. Teachers should also submit reports on how they cover KICD's so-called “chains” and “sub-chains”. It is the evaluation season. The Kenya National Examinations Board also requires teachers to evaluate students in group activities, but the evaluation requires teachers to score each student based on six to seven measurements. This means that for a subject taught by 60 students in a class, a teacher fills in 60 rows x 7 columns.

High-level government officials show surprising inadequate emotional intelligence and sensitivity to ordinary professionals.

The problem with this work is not just quantity. It is degrading work. Teachers are filling out paperwork related to teaching, not actual teaching. In the language of the anthropologist David Graber, this is due to increased bureaucracy resulting in "nonsense" work, doing nothing but supervising others. The purpose of these forms is not to improve teaching and learning, because bureaucrats deceive themselves. The key is that those who stay in the office all day and do not understand the beauty and mystery of the interpersonal relationship between the teacher and the child are controlled by people, nor is it the fact that beauty and mystery cannot be transformed into a digital measurement. Graber explained that, according to a certain abnormal psychology, jobs in the neoliberal era meant an exponential increase in managers, who subsequently used bureaucratic tools to intimidate those who did the actual work.

I would not use the word "intimidation" lightly. Educational scholars use this term when evaluating the performance of teachers, including the famous British educational sociologist Stephen J. Ball (Stephen J. Ball) in his widely cited journal article "Teacher’s Soul and Performance In Fear. The essence of horror is to plant shame and fear in the individual, which makes the individual feel isolated and therefore cannot change their situation. Another characteristic of terrorism is its lack of predictability. And because the system is always incoherent and inconsistent, teachers can never judge where the attack comes from. No matter what the teacher does, the teacher is never good enough.

A teacher told me that in TPAD, teachers were told to rate themselves, but not too much, and then punished for not achieving 100% performance. The teacher said this: "When TPAD was introduced, we were instructed that even if we knew that we had reached the'target', our score should not exceed 80%. In a recent interview, those who had no evidence were disqualified. "

The key is to be controlled by those who spend the days in the office, who do not understand the beauty and mystery of the relationship between teachers and children.

A few years ago, in a letter to the editor of "Nation", another tragic and funny story was told. The letter titled "TSC should listen to teachers in the assessment line" reads:

As early as 2010, quality assurance and standards personnel from the Ministry of Education visited the school where I was teaching.

As a routine matter, they asked to check the teachers' "trading tools", as they said. These include work plans, workbook records, course notes and lesson plans, and documents containing learner progress reports. We complied. Only one staff member has all of these. The rest of us, including the principal, had 27 employees and lost one or more documents.

After reading carefully, we got a lengthy lecture about how "lazy" we became, and only one of us deserves recognition in public forums, especially the school's annual general meeting, and the agency will publish better results We have to imitate our colleagues.

After the QASO staff withdrew, a burst of laughter broke out in the entire faculty room. A few months later, the teacher was transferred because his parents and students complained that his childbirth was substandard and that he was drinking too much.

This is a shocking story about how bureaucrats confuse the measures and tools of work with the actual work itself. Humiliating a teacher for failing to submit a complete record is similar to judging the work of a carpenter not by furniture but by a carpenter's hammer. For teachers, part of the torture of performance appraisal comes from the awareness that the work a person is doing hardly reflects the actual teaching work. As the story shows, the teacher who actually teaches in the classroom is unlikely to make a perfect record, and the lack of record is used to judge the teacher's laxity and incompetence.

As Bauer explained, the goal of teacher evaluation is not to improve teaching as claimed by educational bureaucrats. The real goal is to capture the soul of the teacher. What the demand for performance seeks to change is not what the teacher does, but who the teacher is. This is a vicious power grab that aims to deprive teachers of the ability to make judgments based on their professional opinions and make bureaucrats and managers, rather than children in the classroom, the main focus of teaching. This obsession is so severe in TSC that when the latest wave of school fires began a few weeks ago, teachers also received text messages from their employers reminding them to complete the assessment before the deadline. In other words, our children are not a priority for educating bureaucrats. It is for this reason that many teachers have adopted the concept of "teaching home". It even has an acronym: TAGH.

How can this cruel behavior be carried out so easily without public resistance?

Part of what makes assessments so difficult to resist is that they sound like common sense. The argument of the managers and politicians who support the evaluation is this: Public education is useless and disappoints our children (Kenya’s argument is that it produces incompetent graduates). The problem is the teacher. In order to improve our education and make teachers work better, teachers need to be supervised by evaluation or performance contracts, and their performance is measured by scores.

When a person has no teaching experience, this logic is very convincing. I have been studying educational performance management for ten years, and to this day, I am still trying to explain why this system is abused. Common sense features come from British and American billionaires and politicians whose power and access to the media enable them to spread the narratives of truant and incompetent teachers who are highly paid by the state and are subject to permanent and pensionable provisions (known in the United States as " Term") protection. we). Teachers in English-speaking countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia have bravely resisted this attack, but as politicians and billionaires use the media to poison the public’s perception of teachers, their struggle has become longer and more difficult.

What the demand for performance seeks to change is not what the teacher does, but who the teacher is.

The demonization of teachers is actually to end the job security of teachers and replace them with evaluation, or the "teacher accountability system" as the American conservatives call it. In order to avoid the political chaos of collective dismissal of teachers, these teachers who hate teachers are calling for more measurement of teachers' work. They also advocated drastic measures, such as humiliating and dismissing teachers, and closing schools that do not meet the "standards". These standards are determined solely by students' test scores. Appraisal management is a large-scale and sterile form of "constructive dismissal", which is a technical term for workplace bullying, where workers are deliberately abused so that they can resign. The strategy worked because many teachers told me they wanted to quit.

Microsoft seems to be preparing for a situation where the number of trained teachers will be so insufficient that technology will have to do the work of teachers. When a teacher wrote to me that part of the TSC form filling system includes teachers uploading their notes to Microsoft, Microsoft caught my attention. It appears that when the President attended the Global Education Partners Conference in London in August 2021, one of the activities was the signing of an agreement with Microsoft, the goal of which was vaguely defined as "make full use of technology to significantly enhance learning" .

This article does not elaborate on how Microsoft intends to deal with these notes, but people can reasonably worry that the point is to eventually use these notes to create courses that Microsoft will charge Kenyans, and may not respect the copyrights of teachers. If this is the case, then the teaching profession is essentially a plantation, in which TSC is the foreman who threatens teachers to extract materials for use by foreign companies.

There is another common-sense narrative that allows us to adapt to this potential use, and this narrative comes from CBC. It is a narrative of "personal talent" and "individualized learning". When Kenyans heard about it, they thought the discussion was about a human teacher giving love and individual attention to each child, while in fact, companies are talking about children learning through tablets without a teacher.

This hatred of teachers has nothing to do with education. This is a cruel contempt of society, especially contempt for the poor. The rich believe that they should not receive a good education, especially when it comes to public expenses. Others believe that this is due to their contempt for teachers as people with professional knowledge and union members who still oppose temporary workers. Pastor William J. Barber also mentioned another logic of this attack: “The reason they want to privatize education is because many greedy people know that they can’t make so much money in other markets now. So they think Come in, grab money from the government and pay for your own personal pockets. Some of them don't hate the government; they just hate the government's money flowing to anyone other than them."

In any case, this Anglo-American war against teachers and public education has been a war against Kenyan public school teachers since 2010. It was led by the current president who was then the Minister of Finance and Acting Minister of Education. , And with the help of the British government. As Nimi Hoffman detailed in her article, DfID hired British academics who used unethical means to promote a project to disrupt teachers' unions by hiring low-paid contract teachers. The project was piloted in Kakamega County and was severely boycotted by the teachers' union.

It is for this reason that many teachers have adopted the concept of "teaching home".

In April 2015, TSC announced that it would replace the punitive performance management system with a more "encouraging" evaluation system, and continue its unremitting efforts in ad hoc teaching. The pilot project was funded by the World Bank and the implementation of the evaluation was funded by the British Council. In anticipation of the resistance of union officials, the then TSC CEO Gabriel Lengoiboni reminded them that they had implicitly accepted the project when they took part in the benchmarking trip to the UK in 2014.

Education policies in Africa have been largely affected by this. Foreign governments provide teachers with travel abroad, and this familiarity prevents teachers from questioning or opposing policies that are cleverly promoted through this informal network. Even the Bologna process, which is mainly responsible for the bureaucratization of higher education in Kenya, is deeply entrenched by sponsoring African vice-principals and senior scholars to travel to Europe.

The way to end this intricate decadence in the school system is through public exposure. However, Kenya’s education leaders are notoriously mysterious, hostile to self-examination and, ironically, resolutely resist public interrogation. Although the Constitution guarantees academic freedom, learning institutions ignore teaching professionals. The Kenya Curriculum Development Institute replaced the education system with competence, but avoided any debate in the media about their choices. TSC threatens teachers in the shadows and punishes teachers for any propaganda in the media. In the university, the insidious dismissal of disagreements as "personal attacks" and calls for third-party intervention to facilitate reconciliation have hindered public debate. Being a teacher in the Kenyan colonial school system is like living in a bad version of the movie "Stephenford's Wife". People should ignore reality and humanity and live in a fictional utopia.

This situation is almost indistinguishable from witchcraft. The defining feature of witchcraft is that the action takes place in the shadows. It is said that no one is an actor, just like the wind brings it, no one is responsible. No one can name it, and no one needs to take responsibility. Educational institutions remain stoic in their delusions, because educational bureaucrats have blocked their ears and cannot hear alternative educational voices and visions. These alternatives do not exist.

The demonization of teachers is actually to end the job security of teachers and replace them with evaluation, or the "teacher accountability system" as the American conservatives call it.

This is why we need a truth and justice committee to carry out education. We need a public forum where Kenyans are forced to listen to all education participants, especially those who are most vulnerable. Now is the time for Kenyans to stop listening to the silent and disorganized stories of the media, private sector propaganda and educational institutions, and construct a complete story for themselves, linking the dots between the atrocities suffered by our children, what teachers have experienced The horror of the country, the deaf ears of the educational bureaucracy, and the sadism of the Kenyan public. Our belief in the colonial education system is a national delusion, and only the truth can be cured.

Currently, the bureaucracy imposed on teachers by TPAD and TSC needs to be abolished. TSC is not authorized or qualified to spy on the classroom and make teaching decisions. Despite the "committee", the role of the label TSC is mainly human resource paperwork. If TSC officials want to enjoy the dignity of teaching, they are welcome to join our classroom. As we all know, teachers are not enough, and paid classrooms can save the country some money in hiring teachers. Similarly, the annual assessment of the Kenya National Examination Board needs to be cancelled. With the introduction of CBC, KICD promised Kenyans to end their obsession with exams. It's ridiculous that CBC now increases the annual assessment to elementary school. And Martha Omollo's transfer should be reversed. The remedy should follow this simple principle: Our children should be educated by adults with freedom of thought, innovative teaching, and interactive care.

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Wandia Njoya is a scholar, social and political commentator and blogger in Nairobi, Kenya.

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The government may easily find itself turning to shutting down the Internet to reduce the harm of inflammatory speech or suppress criticism.

Given Kenya’s history of election-related violence, any discussion of election preparations should address hate speech and incitement to violence. On October 25, 2021, the Kenyan government announced the convening of a multi-agency team responsible for formulating a free, fair and credible general election route. The team is chaired by Chief Justice Martha Koome. She announced that the Kenyan Judiciary will establish five specialized courts in Nairobi, Mombasa, Nakuru, Kisumu and Eldoret. Handling hate speech cases in order to get in the 20th general election.

When political speech is disseminated through social media platforms, concerns about the possibility of political speech triggering violence are understandable. These platforms are essentially peer-to-peer, instantaneous, and in some cases encrypted. In fact, when the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) began its national civic education campaign, it pointed out that hate speech spread through social media is currently its biggest challenge. Recently, it has been reported that social media platforms such as Facebook are often incapable or unwilling to deal with the spread of harmful content from the beginning, let alone in the context of the global south, so it is worth exploring how best stakeholders can work together to mitigate the adoption of such The potential impact of hate speech or inflammatory speech spread on the platform.

During the 2007/8 election cycle, several local radio stations are believed to have contributed to the spread of inflammatory political speech, usually in the vernacular. At the time, Kenya had no laws specifically defining hate speech or criminalizing hate speech. The spread of inflammatory political speech has contributed to election-related violence, leading to countless deaths and large-scale internal displacement. Following this deeply saddening event, Kenya enacted the National Cohesion and Integration Act (the Act), which defined hate speech and established NCIC for the first time in Kenya. The definition of hate speech adopted by the Act generally includes two main components: (i) the use or dissemination of threatening, abusive, or insulting content, and (ii) the intention to incite national hatred (or, if such hatred will Is a possible result, whether intentional or not). Given the context in which this definition was developed, it is not surprising that the core concept focuses on race (although the Act has defined it to include race and nationality). A person convicted of hate speech can be punished with a fine not exceeding 1,000,000 Kenyan shillings or imprisonment for up to 3 years, or both.

Like some hate speech laws around the world, the breadth of the definition of hate speech in the bill has been criticized as potentially stifling freedom of speech, especially due to criminal sanctions. Although the Kenya Constitution, which was promulgated less than three years after the enactment of the bill, made hate speech an exception to freedom of speech, the constitution’s restrictions on speech should be proportionate. In other words, restrictions on hateful or inflammatory speech should not be carried out in a way that puts other forms of speech (such as healthy political debate) at risk. In fact, some attempts by the government to prosecute hate speech have been criticized as politically motivated. Although these actions (based on the law) are strongly opposed, the social media platforms operating in Kenya continue to regulate hatred and inflammatory content on their own terms.

Although NCIC's mission is to investigate matters related to racial hatred under the Act, based on the available evidence, it seems that only a small part of the hate content spread through social media has received its attention. Recently, lawmaker Oscar Sudi (Oscar Sudi) was accused of making hate speech for his comments on videos uploaded to Facebook. Such prosecution is likely to have occurred due to the notoriety of the individual concerned. In addition to such cases, hate or inflammatory speech that may belong to hate speech under the Act is still under the jurisdiction of social media platforms, and social media platforms continue to conduct fairly opaque supervision of such content, and are mainly based on foreign regulatory agencies. Instructions. Leaving such an important task to private platforms raises some concerns and also questions the effectiveness of current law enforcement efforts.

A large amount of content is shared online via social media. Take Twitter as an example, sending an average of 6,000 tweets per second. It is very likely that some of the content is problematic in some way, especially if there is no agreement on the composition of the "problematic" content. Some form of control is advisable to mitigate the damage caused. These platforms are self-regulating to varying degrees; due to the private nature of social media platforms and their freedom of speech in their jurisdiction (the United States), social media platforms can formulate and enforce guidelines that their users should abide by. They often use artificial intelligence (AI) technology to scan user content for any infringing materials and take predetermined measures, such as deleting content, lowering rankings, or flagging for manual review. This approach is questionable because it is well known that algorithms are subject to various forms of bias, and they are rarely optimized for "foreign" voice nuances and habits.

Social media platforms operating in Kenya continue to monitor hatred and inflammatory content on their own terms.

These platforms also allow other users to report content for manual review. The provisions in these guidelines that determine content handling (by human reviewers and artificial intelligence) sometimes overlap with voice restrictions in the jurisdictions in which they operate. For example, Facebook’s community standards define and prohibit hate speech. However, sometimes there are clear conceptual differences between the definition of the private sector and the definition imposed by law or government regulatory agencies. In this case, the government may directly request the platform to delete content on the grounds of violating local laws. According to these platforms, when faced with such requests, they mainly evaluate the relevant content according to their own criteria. In other words, if the content does not violate their guidelines, they will only provide it in the jurisdiction where the government requested the removal. For example, if the Kenyan government, through NCIC and the Communications Authority, requires Facebook to delete a specific post because the post falls under the definition of hate speech in Kenya, Facebook will consider its own definition of hate speech in its community standards. If there is overlap and Facebook believes the content does constitute hate speech, then it will comply. Otherwise, it will only restrict access to content in Kenya and leave it to the rest of the world, which will not prevent Kenyan users from accessing it using a virtual private network (VPN).

The implementation of these guidelines and the design of these platforms (especially how to promote content to certain users) have long been the subject of criticism, including opacity and lack of accountability. In recent weeks, it has become clear that these concerns are more pronounced in the global south. Although these platforms place themselves in a position to make corresponding decisions about how to deal with content such as hate speech, they are generally not capable of doing so. From artificial intelligence techniques trained on biased data sets to human auditors with insufficient context and local knowledge, these platforms are currently not up to the task of large-scale review of content in countries such as Kenya, especially in the election environment.

The latest report after the leak of the "Facebook Paper" records stories that third world countries have been overlooked when deploying appropriate audit tools, which often lead to real-world violence or harm. For example, despite flagging Ethiopia as a country at risk and not having sufficient resources to detect hate speech in the local dialect, Facebook has failed to improve its artificial intelligence detection technology, nor has it hired more moderators who are familiar with the local situation. During the Tigray conflict (which intensified since then), Facebook's internal team realized that their efforts were insufficient. Facebook recently stated that it has improved its review work in Ethiopia.

However, the problems facing Facebook and other platforms are systemic. A reactionary one-off solution to problems with serious real-world consequences (such as violence and death) is not sustainable. Considering similar descriptions of real-world harm caused by content review failures recorded in Myanmar, India, Nigeria, and Palestine (to name a few), it is important to reconsider the level of oversight these platforms are subject to and the level of cooperation among stakeholders, To ensure that the harm is reduced in a politically charged situation.

In previous elections, both sides of the political contest used inflammatory remarks to incite the emotions of voters, resulting in disastrous consequences. There is no reason to expect that the upcoming elections will not include this strategy, and support the argument that some action is needed to reduce the effectiveness of this strategy. The government recently established the National Computer and Cybercrime Coordination Committee (called "NC4"), which is a committee established under the Computer Abuse and Cybercrime Act. NC4 is responsible for the integration of operations related to the detection, investigation and prosecution of cybercrime. The Cabinet Secretary of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and National Government Coordination recently stated that NC4 will prioritize the abuse of social media before the general election, thereby increasing the possibility of arrest and prosecution under the Computer Abuse and Cybercrime Act next year. Therefore, it seems that through NCIC and NC4, the government Doubling up the supervision of inflammatory online speech-this is a difficult task that is likely to endanger the space for political speech.

A reactionary one-off solution to problems with serious real-world consequences (such as violence and death) is not sustainable.

Considering the incompatibility between the online communication ecosystem and traditional detection and prosecution methods, supervision attempts that do not consider the role of social media platforms and other stakeholders will inevitably encounter challenges. If it does not adopt a cooperative policy attitude on this issue, the government may easily find itself turning to shutting down the Internet to reduce the harm of inflammatory speech or suppress criticism.

In contrast to initiating law enforcement agencies to crack down on content disseminated through social media, entities such as NCIC, NC4, and the Independent Election and Boundary Commission (IEBC) should consider working more closely with other stakeholders in social media platforms and media and civil society. Such cooperation aims to build the capacity of the content review tools of social media platforms used by Kenya and to increase the transparency of the behavior of these platforms for supervision. The involvement of civil society also helps hold governments and platforms accountable for their actions.

The risks posed by inflammatory political speech require a comprehensive and inclusive approach. Kenya cannot only rely on prosecutions that may be politically motivated in certain circumstances to deepen mistrust, and it usually completely ignores the harm caused by social media platform behavior. Any effort to reduce the impact of hate speech on social media should not ignore the fact that many stakeholders can play a role, albeit with varying importance. It is vital that these efforts should not detract from healthy citizen participation space.

Political actors must recognize their central position in the nature of discussions surrounding the upcoming elections on the Internet. They must publicly commit to avoid spreading hatred, incitement or false content. Examples such as the election oath drawn up by the Transatlantic Election Integrity Commission are instructive in this regard. By making public commitments as rules of participation, political actors can demonstrate their commitment to healthy democratic debate. These political actors should also recognize their influence on supporters and agents, and should do their best to encourage positive behavior. At party meetings and rallies, political actors should ensure that they adopt a zero tolerance policy for hate or divisive speech. In order to consolidate the culture of healthy discourse, political actors should cooperate with civil society to allow citizens to participate in civic education.

This is the fifth part of a five-part column series, which aims to explore the use of personal data in election campaigns, the dissemination of misinformation and false information, social media censorship, incitement to violence and hate speech, and the actual situation of various stakeholders Measures Before the 2022 elections, measures can be taken to protect the integrity of Kenya’s elections in the digital age. This column series is made possible in collaboration with the Kofi Annan Foundation and with the support of the United Nations Democracy Fund.

International institutions feel pressured to ask key questions about how they operate in local communities and the impact of their work on these populations. But are they ready to listen?

In the first two weeks of November, world leaders and diplomats gathered in Glasgow, Scotland for the COP26 climate summit. Superpowers such as the United States, Russia, China, and Brazil discussed the issue of achieving net zero carbon emissions, reducing deforestation, and successfully adapting to new energy sources other than coal production.

Realizing that if we do not take action on a global scale, climate change will have catastrophic effects, the goal of COP26 will undoubtedly be achieved long ago.

Tackling climate change requires strong governments — the worst polluters — to make major commitments. Once leaders make a commitment and leave implementation to their diplomatic team, it will follow the typical top-down model of imposing a majority without sufficient input from the local communities that may be most affected by the proposed intervention Human will.

Although indigenous members around the world participated in COP26 and condemned the destruction of climate change to their traditional way of life, they also reminded policy makers that implementing violence without recognizing the right of local people to self-determination over their land and resources is a global power. behavior.

Although countries such as Australia and Canada have made some progress, these countries have passed legislation to strengthen indigenous empowerment, but the huge gap still excludes local communities from decisions that affect their landscapes, natural resources, culture, and livelihoods.

In the past five years in Kenya, we have witnessed local communities being displaced and deprived of rights due to hydroelectric power generation by the Jibe Dam project, clean energy production by the Turkana wind power project and community protection. This leads people to worry about the outcome of the 30-30 plan (that is, 30% of global land and ocean protection by 2030).

However, we know that empowering local communities as legal and autonomous land managers has huge environmental benefits globally, as seen in places such as the United States, Amazon, and Kenya. So why is there such a power gap, and what measures must international institutions take to bridge the power gap that excludes local communities from the decision-making process?

As a white British-born anthropologist who has worked in the pastoral areas of northern Kenya for more than 15 years, my relationship with these communities has developed and deepened over time. Before starting the nearly two-year Ph.D. field study to study the resource conflicts and cooperation between the three herders, one of my mentors suggested that I "make friends with others, and no alliances."

The huge gap still excludes local communities from decisions that affect their landscapes, natural resources, culture, and livelihoods.

At that time, his wisdom benefited me a lot because I found my foothold in the controversial landscape, dealt with local distrust, and maintained the "objectivity" of my researchers, faithfully documenting The daily life and activities of these pastoral groups. My task at the time was to witness, record, understand and explain.

Since then, I have changed from a doctoral student to a postdoctoral researcher, independent researcher and advisory researcher, working in many universities and international non-governmental organizations.

Since I am closely related to so many friends and family in northern Kenya, my supervisor’s words echo in my ears, and I want to know if they still make sense to me and my representatives to these communities. The reality is that I will always be white. I will always come from a colonial country. I may be richer and educated. Moreover, in the foreseeable future, I will have more important opportunities and a larger platform to potentially influence change-even in communities that do not belong to me. I am ashamed to admit this, and should be ashamed of any majority that deals with global issues at the community level.

There are well-documented criticisms of the new extractive and colonial nature of international development, scientific research, biodiversity conservation, and humanitarian assistance in Kenya, especially at the local community level. Likewise, one of the fundamental reasons for the power gap is that the system is designed to operate precisely in this way.

Seats of financial power such as the United States Agency for International Development, WWF, or World Food Program are located in the northern part of the world. They are regionally managed by white people, relying on the support of foreign employees and experts locally, and are supported by a small number of people. Local people are carrying out projects on the ground. Given this structural imbalance, can we really expect any changes?

However, change must come.

Globally, the voices of minority groups for change are rising, requiring most people to recognize gender inequality, LGBTQ+ protection, social, racial and environmental injustice, and to treat indigenous peoples to their lands, livelihoods, and natural resources.

International institutions feel pressured to ask key questions about how they operate in local communities and the impact of their work on these populations. Although this recognition is an important first step in the decolonization and decentralization of top-down institutions, I ask: Are these institutions ready to listen?

Listening is a simple act, but it requires critical self-reflection. Listening requires a compassionate mindset to understand where people are. Listening also presupposes that the listener considers the potential for systematic reforms of the historically maintaining the status quo institutional structure.

One of the fundamental reasons for the power gap is that the system is designed to operate precisely in this way.

Global institutions have only just begun to raise these questions. Unfortunately, when they challenge deep-rooted systems and stubborn worldviews, they may not be ready to hear a response. Listen to our self-concept in front of us, and recognize our relationship with others and the potential hierarchy we assign to the value system. Listening can also reveal our failures, mistakes, and ignorance. If we do not see a future that can solve them, acknowledging these can be painful and can lead to frustration.

The terminology used to describe local conservation and development projects in northern Kenya began to change, and "community-led" initiatives and "participatory" approaches were emphasized. However, these plans must be scrutinized to ensure that community participation is not just symbolic, but that the power center is located in the community to design initiatives, execute plans, and fully benefit from the results they see fit.

This transition will be a long and arduous process, and global funders usually do not operate on the same time scale, and the success metrics between communities and funders may vary. Systemic change will require funders to listen first rather than command, and support rather than demand.

The core of the listening first approach is to be humble to know that we, most people in the world, cannot understand the complexity of local issues. As outsiders, we have no panacea for progress. Just driving through northern Kenya, past a series of abandoned telephone poles, broken water tanks, and unmanned clinics bearing the faded names of international funding agencies illustrates this. In these local landscapes, instability exists and interacts at all levels, so it cannot be understood outside of life experience.

I was fortunate to have established a deep lifelong friendship with a Bolana family in northern Kenya. When I lived in their village, I lived with them. They provided excellent research skills and taught me the value of a rich culture. And nominated me as their local customs. The most important thing for me is that they share their stories that make us laugh, and believe that I will share those stories that also make us cry.

These plans must be scrutinized to ensure that community participation is not just symbolic,

I am forever grateful for their friendship. In the past 18 months, tragedies have occurred one after another in this family: inadequate medical care resulted in the death of newborns, young mothers’ legs were amputated due to untreated infections, and the family’s compound was burned down due to opening-flame cooking The sudden death of the brother who bears most of the family’s economic responsibilities, the locust plague leading to the death of livestock, and the unsupported mental health barriers have exacerbated economic and personal insecurity, and the irregular supply of medicines has made the situation worse. In fact, most families in northern Kenya are likely to talk about similar tragedies.

These are realities that policymakers in Nairobi, London, and New York cannot see, realize, or feel. They will decide in the coming months and years what is best for the land, resources, and families of these communities.

Yes, we really must work together to solve global issues such as COVID-19 and climate change. However, implementation at the local level must start from the global powers investing resources, truly listening to the opinions of local communities, recognizing their diverse needs and concerns, and committing to subvert traditional power dynamics by decentralizing their agendas. The local people understand their instability because their cultural system and customs have been formed, and they can appropriately adapt and respond to the challenges they face.

International entities often undermine these institutions by prioritizing their values ​​and overlaying their systems in the local environment. It's time for those in power to start listening. For the rest of us, I think it’s time to put alliance neutrality aside—because as allies, we may begin to amplify the voices and concerns of indigenous peoples so that the whole world can hear them.

The obstacles facing the county may sound daunting and impossible, but they can be resolved by a new group of responsible and compassionate leaders and managers who put people first.

Pastoral pastures in northern Kenya, including Marsabit, have historically been associated with marginalization and structural inequality, inter-ethnic conflict, and adverse human development indicators.

Some typical stress factors have been studied and documented, including climate change and environmental degradation; drought, famine, and other natural disasters; conflicts related to resources and land (some related to administrative and electoral boundaries); and the proliferation of small arms and light weapons ; Competitive use of land between private reserves and wildlife protection has intensified the conflict between humans and wildlife.

Marsabit County has a surface area of ​​70,000 square kilometers, which is almost half of the entire US state of North Carolina (population 10.50 million), but its population is only roughly the same as the state capital, Raleigh. But this is the end of this comparison. Marsabit is facing countless deteriorating human development and ecological challenges. It remains one of the poorest counties in the country, characterized by unsatisfactory education and health indicators, limited infrastructure, and a large part of the population is classified as food deprivation or chronic hunger. There are almost no street lights, paved roads, running water or basic sanitation system in the town of Marsabit, the county headquarters.

In Marsabit, decentralization has become synonymous with conflict, death and despair. In the past few years, these conflicts have become more and more insidious, and sporadic violent incidents involving the three major ethnic groups have gradually shifted from traditional resource-based conflicts to more sinister crimes in order to maintain long-term economic and political interests.

Sadly, the beginning of decentralization was accompanied by political erosion of trust and intolerance between these groups. Attacks and counterattacks are fierce and unscrupulous. Armed and disorganized militiamen killed and killed indiscriminately and disappeared. The wounded were hospitalized, the deceased was buried, politicians made the same clichés, and the police promised to investigate. There were no arrests, if any, and no successful prosecutions. Too many grieving families have suffered trauma and permanent scars, and there is no end. And the cycle continues.

The question for most observers is, what contributed to this tragedy, and what can we do to stop it?

First of all, we need to frame the challenge and express it clearly and truthfully, because factual analysis is not biased against any party. What is happening in Marsabit is a direct result of the catastrophic failure of leadership and autonomy since 2013. The politics of racial supremacy, the politics surrounding land and development projects, coupled with weak land tenure and long-term failure of public security and justice, set off a perfect storm of militia activities under the guise of inter-communal violence. Politicians and their elite captive aides have perfected the cruel art of weaponizing race, amplifying lies and parroting, rather than policy choices, as an effective platform for political mobilization, and using violence as a means to achieve this goal.

In Marsabit, decentralization has become synonymous with conflict, death and despair.

The obstacles facing the county may sound daunting and impossible, but they can be resolved. All you need is a group of responsible and compassionate new county leaders and managers who put people first and implement long-term, evidence-based county development plans. For example, improving the health indicators of mothers and children, and even cleaning up the town of Marsabit, not only requires the use of financial resources on the right priorities, such as life-saving maternal and child health interventions and improved public health. It also calls on a new generation of leaders to believe that transparency is a major component of public accountability. But if you also have enlightened citizens who hold public officials accountable, demand basic services and stop accepting sub-human living conditions, that will help. All these governance dynamics, incentive structures, and human behavior need to be carefully adjusted to get rid of the current quagmire of only serving small-scale corrupt elites while others continue to fail.

What do we do? The first step is to get the county government to recognize the complexity of its operating environment. If any governance structure ignores complexity and believes that all challenges are capable of coping with the eye-catching slogans and naive prescriptions usually aimed at establishing and maintaining ethnic alliances, buying loyalty, or appeasing different interest groups, then there is a real risk of failure. This is a major challenge in our local political economy that needs to be addressed because it perpetuates a culture of impunity. At the core of this challenge is the connection between race, identity, and governance—usually an unstable cocktail. Just looking at this from some historical perspective, the late Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi once described race as a “cancer that threatens to eat up the structure of our country”. Ironically, race and corruption are the epitome of his more than two decades of rule—and the country is often the only visible way to wealth, fame, and glory. Competing for the right to use national resources along the tribal route is considered a completely reasonable and legal pursuit.

The hangover of that period is still with us. It seems to be shaping the emergence of tribal alliances that illustrate the role of race rather than purity, expertise, and integrity in determining where power lies in each election cycle. The results can be frightening, especially in multi-ethnic counties like Marsabit, where lack of trust and tension have been lurking below the surface. This is why any coalition whose main theme of victory is to block most of the county’s ethnic population is not only obviously absurd but also dangerously stupid.

What is happening in Marsabit is a direct result of the catastrophic failure of leadership and autonomy since 2013.

There are many problems and thorny issues that need to be resolved. In this short article, I am not going to answer these questions in detail. Instead, my goal is to provide some directional advice and explain what it looks like in practice. There are at least four basic dilemmas that must be continuously resolved. Marsabit must become a vibrant county that fosters peace, growth and prosperity for all, and avoids rolling disasters: accountability dilemmas, policy dilemmas, capacity development dilemmas, and diversity The dilemma of sex.

In the course of working with African ministries of health and education for the past 20 years, I have learned that nothing wastes precious and scarce public resources more than poor management, poor leadership and irresponsible governance arrangements.

The key to understanding the accountability system is to realize that a public governance system that is mainly shaped by greed, mediocrity, or particularly simple goals cannot provide any valuable public benefits. Therefore, the county needs to be led and staffed by thoughtful decision makers and human development practitioners who can design, monitor, and improve the system to ensure that internal accountability is established in all its operations. For example, a web-based electronic dashboard with regularly updated and publicly available income and expenditure information would be a suitable standard operating procedure for public accountability. This idea is based on the internal commitment to the users of the system and the loyalty to the public they serve to achieve the form of accountability-there is no room for negotiation. In addition, effective accountability is a function of good data-driven policies that provide information on improved strategies and activities and results and broad transparency of what works and what does not work. Without data and evidence, human development cannot advance.

Nothing wastes precious and scarce public resources more than poor management, poor leadership and irresponsible governance arrangements.

The core of any successful human progress system is capacity development-the effective development of new skills, resources, motivations, and results by individuals, teams, and organizations. In other words, the county government should not underestimate the need to develop team and institutional capabilities, or try to solve this problem in a weak, individualistic way. The core county development plan and all department plans must focus on comprehensive and extensive capacity development, especially the collective ability of county teams and groups to deliver results.

Marsabit is more diverse than most other counties in the country. Although there are many differences in the beautiful tapestry of the community’s language, tradition and culture, ordinary Wananqi people have the same basic needs in terms of health, children’s education, safety and security, fairness and justice, and access to basic services. In addition, when we work together and take advantage of our diversity, we all benefit. In other words, diversity is a virtue to be celebrated and promoted, not to be used or weaponized to feed the political class’s over-conceit or short-term agenda.

In the end, there is no benefit in ignoring such an ominously looming challenge in Marsabit County. This is an extraordinary period and requires extraordinary leadership and a declaration of conscience. A system for everyone is easy to build-but it not only requires implementable ideas based on reliable evidence and practice, but most importantly, it requires capable and purposeful leaders with a clear mind- -A heart that loves and treats all people equally and fairly, always. However, if voters in Marsabit County do not collectively reject politicians who do not value human life, repeatedly deceive them, and unscrupulously waste or abuse their resources, then they will continue to accept the trauma and humiliation they have caused by the fate they deserve.

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