Dr. Nyanchama, Using the language of the youth - I agree and totally feel you ;-) But as articulated in Dr. Ndemo's rejoinder, you have to be part of the solution. You cannot sit 1,000 miles away and hope someone else will clean up the mess and make your motherland worth coming back to. walu. --- On Sun, 1/1/12, Matunda Nyanchama <mnyanchama@aganoconsulting.com> wrote: From: Matunda Nyanchama <mnyanchama@aganoconsulting.com> Subject: [kictanet] Happy New Year - ref: Re: Vision 2030: ICT and Other Sectors Converged (Day 3) To: jwalu@yahoo.com Cc: "KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions" <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> Date: Sunday, January 1, 2012, 2:27 AM Friends This is to wish you the very best of 2012. Kictanet has been a good source of information, ideas and exchange of those ideas in 2011. I hope that will be the case. I hope that we can make the best of those ideas in the interest of the nation, Kenya and the businesses associated with participants. Dr Ndemo raised an issue on Diaspora academics and professionals. Some of his observations are right: it is easy to cheer or jeer from a distance. We see it in soccer matches where some (as someone put it) some of the best players are on the spectator benches. That said, though, this matter cannot be generalized. We have many, many accomplished academics and professionals that choose to make the Diaspora their home; some do it by choice others by circumstance. I once listened to professor Mazrui on how he ended up on the United States, recognized as an authority in his space (globally) and yet no institution in Kenya wanted to welcome him. By the time Kibaki came along in 2002, he had been too long gone and entrenched in his space to be simply transplanted. We have many Kenyans in the Diaspora like those: they moved out when times were bad, are well-established and cannot simply come back. There are other examples that make people stay away from Kenya. A friend I know came home but could not even be short listed for an interview, despite his PhD and a number of published works. His luck came through a friend he met at a pub, someone who knew one of the VCs; an appointment with the VC then led to an interview and a job. He later told me that the department was dominated by some ethnic group and the reason he was kept out for such a long time. Another one I know supervised grad students meticulous only to become a target of his colleagues, eti he was making them look bad: completing paper reviews in timely manner, and having students get their degrees in reasonable time. His recourse: join a research outfit and leave out the politics of academia! I was recently in the UoN Senior Common Room with a friend; and it is amazing how our ivory tower reflects the ethnic cleavages in the country. Since I wasn't in the company of fellow Kisiis to the place, I ended at a table that appeared colourless with sober conversation and none of the ethnic passionate obsessions. For people that have established positions where they are in the Diaspora, it would be hard to adapt to such an environment. I once visited a friend at his post at the UoN and talked about his routine, much of which was composed of driving across campuses, offering the same course across different institutions for no one job paid enough; the man literary lived on the road! He used the same notes from year to year; and research? What language is that again? He kept talking about his former position back in the USA and how progressive the institution was, requiring ranking in teaching and research; and having time to attend conferences/seminars and the like plus supervise graduate students with interesting study topics. Yet here he was in a system of persistent struggle, spinning wheels to meet basic needs. Yet quacks that had connections with corruption rings were the limelight and mwananchi and authorities seemed to love it. There is more. GoK and other companies can pay experts as much as $3K/day; so called experts then staff work with junior consultants (to cut costs and make a profit) ending with dubious deliverables! If a Kenyan (whether in the Diaspora or in Kenya) asked for even $1K a day, which in some cases is less than what they are qualified to get, some people think it is charity! And the cost of doing business in Kenya? Speak not. I personally have a lot of respect for those that choose to settle back home; I salute their patriotism and commitment. I would NOT besmirch those that choose to leave for quiet peace somewhere else, where they can achieve their life goals. I just think that patriotism alone would not make people come home. Lack of patriotism is NOT the recluse of those that leave; we have a lot of people doing very unpatriotic things in Kenya like stealing from public coffers, taking short cuts in public services (pot holes anyone?), committing crime, selling drugs to our youth, doing inhuman demolitions, etc. But Diasporans can also bring different perspectives if we engage them appropriately; and in my view, we should be working towards collaborative models to allows for knowledge exchange and sharing of experiences. And this can be done both in the private and public sector. And there are many academic institutions keen on such collaboration; we just need to nurture these. If we truly want to develop Kenya we need to create an environment where ideas "germinate", get "watered" and result in true harvest in terms of products and service and hence economic development. An environment in which Kenyans can prosper on merit and fair play; an environment of ethics and values. Back in the 80s/90s GoK was a major bottleneck for people wanting to go overseas, what with the frustrating clearance process for those in public service and trying process in the issuance of passports. Today, we celebrate Diaspora remittances! What if, in hindsight, Moi and co had left the floodgates open for people to disperse across the world? We could probably be reaping several times more in remittances than we are doing presently. In a nutshell, we are better off with our people dispersed across the globe; they link us to networks in places they live and allow for knowledge flow and exchange that can benefit our country. The role of Indian and Chinese Diasporas in those countries’ economic development is well known; it is the reason I would like more of our people across the world. The Indian government has a special ID for people of Indian origin across the world; the ID, while not conferring citizenship, acts like a permanent visa for into India for holders. As the Indian ambassador to the US said at our recent Kenyan Diaspora conference in the USA, this card has spurred Indian tourism to a degree they hadn't imagined before. Happy New Year. Matunda Nyanchama ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Matunda Nyanchama, PhD, CISSP; mnyanchama@aganoconsulting.com Agano Consulting Inc.; www.aganoconsulting.com; Twitter: nmatunda; Skype: okiambe ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Be prepared to face ICT Security failures & know how to respond when they happen! 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