Obama now probes everyone’s health – in Kenya!

By Steve Peacock

In the latest addition to the Obama administration’s growing aid-to-Kenya portfolio, the U.S. will help subsidize a nationwide citizen-health assessment in every Kenyan county without exception.

While the estimated project cost remains undisclosed, a separate Kenya-based trade-promotion project unveiled late last week came with an additional $70 million price tag.

The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, with U.S. taxpayer help, will implement the 2014 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey, or KDHS.

Kenya will coordinate the efforts with United Nations agencies, the U.S. government and “other partners.” The U.S. will fund a KDHS requirement to deploy contractor caravans across the entirety of this East African nation of 45 million.

The U.S. Agency for International Development’s goal is to facilitate the travel accommodations necessary to conduct 45,000 household in-person health surveys of women aged 15-49 and men 15-54.

The survey’s overall objective is to provide “demographic, socioeconomic and health data” that policymakers will leverage for future “planning, monitoring and evaluation,” according to procurement documents WND located via routine database research.

Spread across 1,600 geographic “clusters,” work is expected to last 160 to 220 days and may begin as early as April 28.

This ambitious endeavor demands the deployment of a six-member, driver-escorted team to each of Kenya’s 47 counties, with two groups focusing on the capital of Nairobi.

The bulk of the project Statement of Work – 77 out of 89 total pages – simply lists the voluminous targeted cluster areas.

USAID over the next five years separately could spend up to $70 million on its new East Africa Trade and Investment Hub project, a Nairobi-based endeavor “to increase regional trade competitiveness and reduce poverty.”

The Obama administration wants to leverage the “rise in a new consumer class” in and around Kenya. According to the initiative’s Request for Proposals, despite rising economic security across some population segments, many barriers to prosperity remain.

The promotion of regional economic integration is seen as a key driver to the program’s success. The 145-page RFP spells out numerous strategies to strengthen existing regional trade-bloc efforts and to launch new initiatives, including grants to African businesses.

USAID/Power Africa and Trade Africa, or PATA, and the Regional Mission for East Africa will administer the Hub project.

Obama’s multi-billion-dollar Power Africa initiative aims to double citizen access to electricity and other power sources across Sub-Saharan Africa.

WND last summer exposed the administration’s plan to create a new public-private bureaucracy for Power Africa, which it says is necessary to overcome the pervasive corruption and incompetence of African governments and power utilities.

WND has reported the “exponential growth” of U.S. assistance to Kenya in recent years.

The coverage includes an exposé of a sophisticated, advertising industry style scheme – which the administration subsequently covered up – to sway journalistic opinion in its favor.

Most recently, another of the reports sheds light on a U.S. Navy plan to build latrines at a Kenyan girl’s school.

WND, likewise, was first to cover an initiative to help modernize the Kenyan health system.

USAID around the globe is separately pursuing various new assistance projects, including the deployment of an adviser to Pakistan who will focus on encouraging gender equality.

The Gender Specialist, or GS, will help the administration in its “colossal multi-sectorial efforts” to influence attitudes and “social behavioral change” toward women among the Pakistani people.

The GS will serve as the “technical and managerial guru” to the U.S. Mission in Pakistan, providing advice on how to incorporate gender equality into agency initiatives in the nation, which was slated to receive $2.2 billion in U.S. aid in fiscal year 2013.

To the extent possible, the GS will seek to mitigate the “inequalities faced by Pakistan’s women and youth” by designing assistance plans with that population in mind. Such efforts are intended to enable them “to assume a more active and positive role in Pakistan’s economic, social and political evolution.”

WND’s reporting on Obama’s spending in Kenya:

 

Steve Peacock

Steve Peacock is a freelance writer and photographer whose work has appeared in the Tampa Tribune, WND, Drug Enforcement Report, Corrections Journal and the Revered Review. He also is a teacher, storyteller, actor and poet. Read more of Steve Peacock's articles here.


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