‘Kujituma’: The Why and How of Proactive Public Participation in Kenya

At the end of the day, it is also about what we do in addition to what government ought to do. There is a role to be played and being informed on the processes is a step towards that. Do you know your role? What are you doing about it or what do you plan to do about it?

I read a book that challenged my perspective on proactivity. The author emphasizes the importance of taking initiative and responsibility to make things happen, shifting from a reactive to a proactive approach. Reactivity is passive, while proactivity involves responding to circumstances without necessarily being subject to them. This, I believe, extends to the sphere of public affairs, where citizen participation also requires proactivity.

Kenya's legal system secures the right to public participation, especially when it comes to the government's management of public funds through the budgeting process. The government is responsible for supporting and coordinating public involvement. However, the onus is not solely on the government; the public and other stakeholders have a role to play in ensuring that their participation is both effective and meaningful.

Sustaining Public Interest and Engagement

At the International Budget Partnership Kenya, we engage on public budgets and other PFM issues year in year out. We have observed that there is a rigorous engagement during the budget formulation and approval stages, but this reduces during budget implementation. Why is there robust engagement during the initial two stages and especially the approval stage? A key feature of the budget approval stage is the political side of it that often overshadows the technical budget discussions. This ranges from the ‘winners and losers’ debates when the proposals are published, leading up to the Budget Reading by the Cabinet Secretary for the National Treasury and Economic Planning in Parliament.

During this pompous period, one thing is always evident, many citizens are interested in what is going on and there is an audience for the various opinions that are given. An important aspect of engagement is that people want to feel and know that they are being heard, something that is probably elicited by the nature of engagement that happens during the approval stage. The structure of public engagement during the budget approval stage is one that ranges from submission of memoranda following Parliament’s call for public input to the public directly engaging with members of the Parliamentary Budget and Appropriation Committee (even though this only happens in a number of counties). The decisions being made during this stage are also at a more granular level compared to other stages where the decisions are more at a broad or policy level. This includes very specific project-related allocations where people can easily recognize and identify with the various projects. Further, mainstream media has also often focused on this stage and have played a big role in bringing the conversations to the fore of public discourse. Finally, as regards the budget approval stage, the public participation provisions in law are well detailed and explicit on the role of citizens and the part that government must play in facilitating citizen engagement. Unfortunately, this is not the case when it comes to the budget implementation stage.

Budget Revisions and the Need to Engage

As this article goes up, the first half of the 2023/24 budget year is already done. The Controller of Budget published the first and second quarter implementation reports, and The National Treasury has put out the first and second quarter Quarterly Economic and Budget Review (QEBR) - a document that reports on revenue performance and financing each quarter. Ideally, as citizens we should be looking at budget performance against the approved budget and asking for reasons of the trends of performance that are captured in these regular reports. For instance, the QEBR highlights an underperformance of ordinary revenue as well as underspending on the expenditure side of the budget. Why the underspending? Why the revenue underperformance? What does this mean for service delivery when checked against the approved budget priorities? These are some examples of key questions to raise during the implementation stage of the budget. The quarterly reports should aid follow up as implementation is happening and not a postmortem after the fact.?

The role of citizens in the budget implementation stage is not as explicit in law as in the first two stages and as such it is more about taking initiative than waiting to be called upon. A key occurrence in Kenya’s budgeting cycle has been supplementary budgets. These budgets are revisions of the originally approved estimates; something that happens during the implementation of the budget. The PFM laws and regulations do not explicitly require the government to consult citizens when revising budgets. Technically, if we consider the circumstances under which budgets can be revised under the law, it makes sense why such a process would not be subjected to the rigour of public engagement; the COVID-19 pandemic and the immediate action needed to mitigate the pandemic, is a good example.

On the flip side, however, it has often not been clear whether the conditions under which supplementary budgets are prepared were unforeseen or whether they were emergencies to not warrant public engagement especially where revisions have resulted in budget cuts for certain budget lines that may have been prioritized by citizens in their submissions/input.

IBP Kenya has keenly followed up on supplementary budgets, analysing the budget revisions and the potential effects of the changes to service delivery. Despite there not being a call for public input, IBP Kenya has submitted memoranda raising concerns and making recommendations to the National Treasury. Pleasantly surprising, the National Assembly called for public input before approving the 2022/23 supplementary budget in August of 2022. At the sub-national level, our partners in Busia have also been able to influence decisions made during the supplementary budget approval process through the County Assembly. There are several other examples of citizens taking initiative or as Kenyans put it ‘Kujituma’. We could talk of the 2015 Kiambu Finance Act that was dismissed on the grounds of lack of public participation or of how citizens in Mombasa County pushed for the extension of the public participation period for the 2021/22 county budget.

Enhancing Public Engagement through Capacity Strengthening ?

Over the years, IBP Kenya has helped citizens participate in budgeting by organizing pre-budget forums with partners. These forums, called budget cafés, are citizen-led spaces to help citizens and civil society actors analyze the budget proposals and plan on how they will engage the government once they are called upon to take part in public participation forums. The cafés allow for consolidation of views and enable the building of a stronger voice on a matter, seeing as an issue raised is being supported by diverse groups of people. There is something about numbers that cannot be ignored. ?During these cafés, two important things occur: firstly, there is regular capacity strengthening regarding the budget process, decision-making, and citizen participation; and secondly, the decision at hand is analyzed, issues are discussed, and a memo is prepared for submission to either the Executive or Legislature. In addition to the joint memos, the cafés also enable participants to effectively express their concerns in public participation forums. This relates to the proactive approach mentioned earlier in this article.

Bottom Line

The bottom-line of engagement, and especially through the budget cafés, is that one needs to just show up as a first step and be open to?learn. In particular, a key lesson to observe is how the taxes you pay and other revenue collected by government eventually translate into services, and the role you can play in that process.

At the end of the day, it is also about what we do in addition to what government ought to do. There is a role to be played and being informed on the processes is a step towards that. It has been said that an informed citizen is the best auditor of public funds. Do you know your role? What are you doing about it or what do you plan to do about it?