The US has suspended $21m (\u00a316m) of funding to Kenya’s ministry of health due to concerns over corruption and weak accounting procedures, the state department said.<\/p>\n
But this amounts to a “small portion of the overall US health investment exceeding $650m annually,” it added<\/p>\n
In response, Kenya has said it is strengthening its auditing processes.<\/p>\n
Corruption allegations have dogged successive Kenyan governments for many years.<\/p>\n
The health ministry itself has been accused of corruption. Last year, it was alleged that the ministry misappropriated $50m by awarding contracts to politically-connected business people for inflated amounts.<\/p>\n
In a statement, the US said that the move is intended to ensure that “health care spending reaches those in need, and to protect US taxpayer money”.<\/p>\n
But it stressed that “support for life-saving and essential health services” will not be not affected.<\/p>\n
It added it was working with the ministry to improve accounting and it will restore funding if changes are made.<\/p>\n
A statement from USAID on Monday to organisations it supports said that the suspended funding covers salaries, wages and travel expenses.<\/p>\n
US ambassador to Kenya Bob Godec said the suspension had nothing to do with the general election in August and does not mean that US-Kenya relations are bad, the Daily Nation newspaper reports.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The US has suspended $21m (\u00a316m) of funding to Kenya’s ministry of health due to concerns over corruption and weak accounting procedures, the state department said. But this amounts to a “small portion of the overall US health investment exceeding $650m annually,” it added In response, Kenya has said it is strengthening its auditing processes. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[6948,36,6949],"class_list":["post-317726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","tag-aid","tag-corruption","tag-us-kenya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=317726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317726\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=317726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=317726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=317726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}