The US has suspended $7m of funding for free primary schools in Kenya until fraud allegations are investigated, the US ambassador in Nairobi has said. Michael Ranneberger says "credible action" must be taken on claims that 110m shillings (£900,000; $1.4m) were siphoned off a free-education fund. The US move comes a month after the UK government pulled out of the project. Kenya is ranked as East Africa's most corrupt country by campaign group Transparency International. The US has been pushing for reform in Kenya since deadly violence swept the country after an election in 2007. Although the violence was primarily political and ethnic, US officials have highlighted underlying causes such as corruption and weak institutions. Future 'in the balance' Mr Ranneberger demanded an independent audit of the free-schools programme. "Those culpable for the fraud should not only be sacked - they need to be prosecuted and put behind bars," he said. "The US shares the deep concern of Kenya's development partners and the Kenyan people regarding the continuous revelations of large-scale corruption." He reiterated demands for wider changes in the country, saying "the reform agenda and the future of this country hangs in the balance". Kenya introduced free primary education in 2003 - and schools were quickly swamped as more than one million children were enrolled who had never been to school before. Unicef says the primary school population jumped from 5.9 million in 2002 to 7.6 million in 2005. Most of the funding for primary education comes from government coffers. BBC |
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Corruption forces US to suspend Kenya school funding
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Ghana Pundit Headline News
E-mail subscription
Pan Africa News
Graphic Ghana
MYJOYONLINE.COM
Peacefm Online - News with a vision
The Times - World News
The Times - Africa News
Pambazuka News :Emerging powers in Africa Watch
AfricaNews - RSS News
The Zimbabwe Telegraph
BBC News | Africa | World Edition
Modern Ghana
My Blog List
-
Should Frozen Russian Assets Fund Ukraine? - The adversaries during more cordial times. Unbeknownst to many, one of the linchpins of the post-WWII global infrastructure is coming under sustained at...6 days ago
-
Chinese Lending to Sri Lanka: A Factual cum “Reality” Check - Note: This guest blog post by Dr Muttukrishna Sarvananthan is a response to CARI briefing paper 08/2022: EVOLUTION OF CHINESE LENDING TO SRI LANKA SINCE TH...1 year ago
-
-
A Leopard can’t change its skin: PNDC versus Rev. Charles Palmer Buckle, NDC versus Rev Martey & Otabil - The Catholic Standard, before it was banned by the PNDC government of Jerry John Rawlings in 1985, was Ghana’s oldest private newspaper, owned by the Catho...7 years ago
-
Egyptians mass in Tahrir to honour uprising - Hundreds of thousands of people have gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square to commemorate the first anniversary of the Egyptian revolution that toppled their l...12 years ago
-
Egyptians mass in Tahrir to honour uprising - Hundreds of thousands of people have gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square to commemorate the first anniversary of the Egyptian revolution that toppled their l...12 years ago
-
-
-
No comments:
Post a Comment