“They are not there to lead, they are there to steal” The Inside Story of Corruption in Africa

Kenyan-born human rights activist, Isaac Newton Kinity took his campaign against corruption to the United Nations headquarters in New York.

Kenya. Uganda. Rwanda. These countries have more in common than their location in Eastern Africa. All three of these countries, and many other developing Nations face the same problem of corruption. Here at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, activist Isaac Newton Kinity has come to protest the looting of funds in impoverished nations.
Looting of loans in poor nations has continued to cause widespread poverty and suffering, and has taken the lives of many innocent children and their parents. This occurs when larger, established nations send loans to developing countries, but instead of using the loans to aid the 95% of the population that lives in poverty, leaders have taken the loans into their own offshore bank accounts.

Here at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, activist Isaac Newton Kinity has come to protest the looting of funds in impoverished nations. According to Kinity, who is an avid member of the NCAA and has created his own organization, the Kikimo Foundation, the large nations who donate this funding are to blame because they have been providing those dictators with the venues to hide their funds and the money itself to do so. Instead of using this funding to help their nation, these leaders use it for their own benefit. According to Kinity, “An example of this was the late president Muammah Gadhafi who has $30 billion hidden in USA prior to his death. The poor people are going down, down, down, down and the rich are going high, high, high. Why? Because they have got to make enough tax from essential commodities so they can make enough for the loans that never reach the countries.”
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​ By protesting outside of the United Nations, Kinity hopes to speak in front of the esteemed delegates and officials to share his beliefs and establish some sort of new charter or law to prevent this from happening in the future. This issue hits close to home for Kinity, who states, “I’m a Human Rights Activist. I’m heading an organization, Kikimo Foundation. I am also a member of NCCA. I’m established, but I care about these people suffering, although I’m not suffering. And that’s why I’m making the noise. I’ve tried a lot in my life [to help the cause] especially in Kenya. I started fighting corruption in 1984, and since then I’ve been fighting. My life was threatened several times in Kenya, including being poisoned. I was injected with poison, and I was loosing eyesight and was paralyzed one side of my body. They went on attempting to kill me until I skipped the country.”

By Noah Gelles, ngelles15@students.hopkins.edu