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In Kenya, free cash is the latest solution to poverty
BONDO, Kenya, Oct 29, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Until recently, Molly struggled to
imagine life beyond the end of each repetitive day: work in someone else’s
fields and earn enough to eat, rinse, repeat.
“It was a vicious circle I could not escape,” says the 25-year-old
villager in the Bondo region of western Kenya.
Her hardscrabble, rural existence is the same for many in Siaya County
where people eke out a living farming maize, millet and cotton in the ochre
soil.
But that was before the introduction in her village of a cash handout
known as “universal basic income”. It’s part of a large, intensive, multi-
year study aimed at discovering a new way to end poverty in Africa.
Molly began receiving a no-strings, fixed monthly donation of 2,250
shillings ($22, 19 euros) two years ago, and since then “everything has
changed”, she says.
“I was able to save to study to be a nursery school teacher,” she says
proudly inside her tin-roofed cement home as chickens pecked outside.
“It was the little bit of help that turned my situation around.”
With a paid internship at the village school Molly has built on the
foundation of universal basic income to see her monthly income more than
double to $50, broadening her horizons.
“Before, I barely had enough money to survive but now I have plans… I
even go to the hairdresser once every two months,” she says with a smile.
– Same cash, different dreams –
According to the World Bank, over a third of Kenya’s nearly 50 million
citizens live below the international poverty line of $1.90 a day.
Molly’s village — which is not being identified in order not to stir envy
or skew the study — is one of scores in the area chosen by the US charity
Give Directly to test the universal basic income theory.
The region was selected because of its poverty, but also its stability
and, crucially, the effectiveness of Kenya’s mobile money transfer system, M-
Pesa, that allows the easy distribution of payments.
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Founded in 2010 and working in six African countries, Give Directly sends
money straight to the poor allowing them to choose their own priorities,
rather than outsiders “deciding instead of them”, explains the non-profit’s
spokeswoman Caroline Teti.
Previously, recipients were given a single lump sum, but now monthly
payments are being trialed.
“When you give people money monthly, will they stop working? Will they
take risks in the way they invest knowing they will have an income whatever
happens? How does that affect their aspirations?” says Teti of some of the
questions their programme is testing.
“There is a global debate about universal income and we want evidence to
move forward,” she says.
The study is the biggest in the world and will involve a total of 20,000
people in western Kenya.
Residents of 40 villages will receive $22 a month for 12 years, a further
80 villages will receive the same amount for just two years, while another 76
villages will receive two lump sum payments of $507 spaced two months apart.
Molly’s neighbour, 29-year-old Edwin, hopes to replace his mud hut with a
cement home, while Monica and her husband have invested in small-scale
chicken farming.
“We have a new enclosure and a few chickens,” says Monica, 30, wearing an
elegant black dress, mended in several places. She hopes to be able to send
her three children to school so that they won’t “live in poverty, like us”.
Without patronising prescriptions from donors, “everyone in the village is
using the money differently,” she adds.
– ‘Not the sole solution’ –
Give Directly believes universal basic income is useful, but not a
panacea.
“When you are in a conflict situation, you may have been affected beyond
basic (needs), you may not have a place to sleep, you’re more vulnerable to
disease,” says Teti.
“In that context, basic income can be a part of a solution, but it cannot
be the sole solution.”
Nor, she adds, is it a substitute for the state’s obligations to provide
life’s basics such as schools and healthcare.
For villagers involved in the basic income experiment, the money is an
assist not a solution, and also an opportunity, to be seized or squandered.
“2,250 shillings is not enough to buy useless things,” says Judge Samson,
72, explaining why villagers are not wasting their cash handouts. “It’s just
enough to feed you and get out of poverty.”
Monica has invested her money to benefit her family, but worries that if
the basic income trial is a success, others might prove less thrifty.
“Maybe in the future some will forget what we went through and start
buying stupid things,” she warns, but then adds: “I don’t think that will be
the case.”
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