In its vision, Strathmore Governance Centre seeks to promote good governance in the public, private and civic sectors of the Eastern African region.  This is done through carrying out research and analysis on governance issues, by facilitating dialogue within and across those sectors and by identifying educational needs and developing appropriate tools and programmes to meet them.

 

It is in this context of responding to educational needs that the Integrity in Public Leadership Program, designed by Dr. Kankindi, was structured with the aim of making it possible for specific segments of public leadership officials to be trained in Integrity. The first group of participants for this short course were, 22 senior public servants from Benue State in Nigeria, 4 participants from Kiambu County and 1 participant from a Kenya parastatal. The delegation from Benue State was led by the Head of Service himself, Mr. Terna Ahua and the Commissioner of higher education, Dr. Ugo Elizabeth Aundu. Both were attending as observers, and were tasked with helping participants from their State devise workable solutions to specific integrity challenges they face. The delegation included among others; members of the House of Assembly, Permanent Secretaries, and Directors. The Kiambu County delegation included the Chairman of County Public Service Board Mr. Justin Kimani, his deputy and two other board members in charge of, among other duties, Human Resources matters.

 

The Public Service is an engine that is meant to support any government in place to deliver public service to the citizens. Lack of integrity has made this noble task almost impossible and the awareness that the situation must change is becoming as pressing as ever. The exciting thing about the event taking place this week was that, the need for transformation from a culture of corruption to a culture of integrity is coming from the Public Service itself. The Head of Service from Benue State known as a reformer in his country, and the Chairman of Kiambu Public Service Board a technocrat who wants things to start off well in his county, have both worked hard to secure the sponsorship needed for the course and attended with their team.

 

Facilitators of the programs included; Dr. Kankindi who took the participants through the Principles of personal and public integrity; Dr. Tom Odhiambo who covered the Historical background of public leadership in Africa; Ms Joy Goopio who dealt with Temperament and integrity in leading people; Geoffrey Injeni who delivered on the topic of Integrity in Public Expenditure; Mr Peter Kegode who presented the sessions focused on Agriculture and Agri-business; Mr. David Chawo who covered Strategies in developing Tourism and Hospitality; and Allen Ndung’u who presented on a project based tool to measuring integrity.

 

All participants were expected to specifically identify integrity challenges they would take on for their work based assignments. They have a timeline of three months to improve on the particular task. Dr. Kankindi and some faculty members will travel to Benue and Kiambu to review the progress and completion of the task early March 2015.