Women: The impact of the rising cost of living on society’s ‘shock absorbers of poverty’
The Mt Kenya Times 
Dr Abel Mokoro, an economist, speaking with this writer in his office, calls on women to make efforts to empower themselves such as venturing into small businesses/photo credit Elizabeth Angira
By Elizabeth Angira
Worth Noting:
- Some of the county’s leading economists at the Strathmore University Business School’s Economic Symposium held on July 7, 2022 observed that ordinary people are struggling more and more every day with the price of fuel, food and basic commodities.
- “Industry is being challenged to remain competitive with input and transportation costs rising rapidly and shortages throughout the global economy driving scarcity, threatening to push already punishing costs even higher,” Ms. Shailja Sharma, Executive Fellow and Coach, said in an article after the Symposium.
- A UK-headquartered independent network of leading academic researchers, policy experts and campaigners, the Women’s Budget Group, however, says the rising cost of living has a gender bias.
Ms. Yunuke Moraa, at a ripe age of 60, should be winding down her life’s daily routine to mostly spending much of her time in her home in Kisii County playing with her grandchildren and generally taking it easy.
Instead, the sexagenarian is engaged in a rat race on a daily basis as she has to wake up at 5.00am to go eking a living by selling potatoes at the Daraja Mbili Market in Kisii Town.
“I do not want to be a beggar depending on my children for everything,” she explains, “I have to find a way of making some money to meet some of my personal needs because I know how tough the economy is to everyone, including my children.”
Cost of living
Ms. Moraa says a 50kg sack of potatoes is going for Kshs.4,000 (about $33) up from Kshs. 2,000 (about $16), less than a year ago, a 200 per cent increase.
This has forced her to buy half a sack sometimes and has had to adjust upwards the price she charges her clients.
“Luckily most of my customers understand why I had to adjust the price, though some of them do not purchase in quantities they used to before the adjustment,” she says, “I used to sell three sacks of potatoes per day, but now I only sell one.”
A combination of factors -a slowdown in the world economy, a global supply chain, especially of commodities, struggling to recover from the COVID-19 disruption, rising oil prices, increasing production costs and the prospect of global food insecurity caused by a war in Ukraine -have conspired to drive up inflation — a measure of annual changes in the cost of living— across the world, including in Kenya, condemning a large part of the population including Ms. Moraa and her customers into a daily struggle just to survive.
The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) announced that the annual inflation rate in Kenya rose for the seventh consecutive month to 9.2 per cent in September 2022, above market forecasts of 8.6 per cent and is higher than the upper limit of the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK)’s target range of between 2.5 per cent and 7.5 per cent, a feat last recorded half a decade ago.
The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), CBK’s decision-making organ, which met on September 29, 2022, said inflation in the advanced economies remains elevated mainly reflecting high oil and gas prices and lingering supply chain challenges, despite the recent moderation in commodity prices.
The banking sector regulator noted that locally, the sustained inflationary pressures, the elevated global risks and their potential impact on the domestic economy and concluded that there was scope for a tightening of the monetary policy in order to further anchor inflation expectations.
“In view of these developments, the MPC decided to raise the Central Bank Rate (CBR) from 7.50 per cent to 8.25 per cent,” it said in a press release its decision meant to contain the inflation and stabilise the Kenya shilling.
No end in sight
The African Development Bank (AfDB) says around 30 million people in Africa were pushed into extreme poverty in 2021 and about 22 million jobs were lost in the same year because of the pandemic.
“And the trend is expected to continue through the second half of 2022 and on into 2023,” the Bank projects.
It warns that the economic disruptions stemming from the Russia-Ukraine war could push a further 1.8 million people across the African continent into extreme poverty in 2022.
“That number could swell with another 2.1 million in 2023,” it says.
Society’s shock absorbers of poverty
Some of the county’s leading economists at the Strathmore University Business School’s Economic Symposium held on July 7, 2022 observed that ordinary people are struggling more and more every day with the price of fuel, food and basic commodities.
“Industry is being challenged to remain competitive with input and transportation costs rising rapidly and shortages throughout the global economy driving scarcity, threatening to push already punishing costs even higher,” Ms. Shailja Sharma, Executive Fellow and Coach, said in an article after the Symposium.
A UK-headquartered independent network of leading academic researchers, policy experts and campaigners, the Women’s Budget Group, however, says the rising cost of living has a gender bias.
In a brief, the Group says the increase in the cost-of-living will hit the poorest hardest and women are more likely to be poor, and have been hit harder by cuts to social security and provision of public services over the past decade.
“Women have lower levels of savings and wealth than men. Even before Covid-19, women were more likely to be in debt and this has worsened as a result of the pandemic,” it says.
The Group says women’s caring responsibilities mean that they are often less able than men to increase their hours of paid work, as childcare costs were increasing above the rate of inflation for several years before this crisis.
“Women are the ‘shock absorbers of poverty’,” it says, “They tend to have the main responsibility for the purchase and preparation of food for their children and families, and for the management of budgets of poor households.”
Ms. Ruth Bosibori, a 40-year-old single mother of three, ekes her leaving by cleaning people’s houses and doing their laundry at Kshs. 200-Kshs.300.
“Most of my clients are cleaning their houses and washing their clothes themselves as a cost-cutting measure in the face of the rising cost of living rendering me jobless,” she says.
To a majority of the people, including the underemployed, especially vulnerable groups such as women, the youth, persons with disabilities (PWDs) working in the informal sector, they have to calculate on how to grapple with the harsh economy realities, devising survival tactics on how to put food on the table and at the same time invest for the future.
Ms. Bosibori uses firewood, which she collects from nearby gardens and some pieces of timber or saw dust from workshops since she cannot afford cooking gas or kerosene.
“I prepare porridge in the morning which we take as breakfast and lunch to save on both firewood and cost of food,” she says.
Women empowerment
Most of these have been forced to devise alternative ways of survival some coming up with a a programme that guides them on what to buy, when to buy it, in what quantity to buy and at how much.
Ms. Jackline Kwamboka, a fruit hawking mother of two, says food being a top priority in her budget and those of her fellow women in their 20-member self-help group, they were forced to purchase food in bulk to benefit from supplier discounts as a mitigation measure against the high food prices.
“Upon analyzing our expenses over a period of time, we realized we were spending a lot on daily purchase of food items. We started buying food items in bulk and then sharing them out among ourselves equally,” she says.
This could see her saving up Kshs. 40 per food item per month, a figure when all the items are included and calculated over a period of three or six months or even a year makes a tidy some of cash saved and possibly channeled into her fruit business.
The UN Women, a United Nations agency working for gender equality and the empowerment of women, says empowering women in the economy and closing gender gaps in the world of work are key to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Empowering women will enable Kenya, Africa and the world to achieve specific SDGs, especially Goal 1, No poverty, Goal 2, Zero hunger, Goal 3, Good health and wellbeing, Goal 5, Gender equality, and Goal 8, Decent work and economic growth, and Goal 10, Reduce inequalities.
Dr Abel Mokoro, an economist, calls on women to make efforts to empower themselves such as venturing into small businesses, joining self-help groups, learning new skills such as baking so that they become self-reliant.
“Women are the backbone of the family and are the one who know what the family eats. The economy has hit them hard and some may be skipping meals to preserve their share for their children,” he says.
Ms. Esnahs Nyaramaba, the Chair of the Young Democrats, a lobby group in Kisii County, says the government, private sector, religious sector and community-based groups should initiate measures to empower women.
“We believe that an empowered woman is an empowered family, society and country as an association and this is why women are part of our empowerment programme. We have senstised more than 50 rural women to become economically self-reliant,” she says.
A society under siege
But it is neither the womenfolk nor those in the informal sector are the only ones being hurt by the inflation.
“The high cost of living, especially the rising food and oil prices, has forced to some in the middle class with personal cars to leave them parked in their homes and hoped into public service vehicles to cut down their expenses,” says Mr.Tom Kennedy Miyienda, the Seventh Adventist church South Conference Executive Secretary.
Mr. John Mokua, a 30-year-old cobbler living with disability, says he hardly makes ends meet compared to a year or so back when he made on average Kshs. 1,000 per day.
“Nowadays getting even Kshs. 500 is a big task. When I ask my clients, most of whom are in the formal sector, say that the cost of living is high and hence they have reduced the frequency of polishing their shoes to twice a week down from five times a week save some cash for their food budget,” he says.
Mr. Brian Achaka, a 28-year-old unemployed graduate and had depended on menial jobs to make ends meet, is very scared. youth, worries on how youths of his same caliber, depend on menial jobs for the survival, how are they going to adapt up with the high cost of living?
“I am very worried because, if life has been though in the past, how am I going to survive the rising cost of living?” asks Mr Achaka who graduated from university in 2019.
Way out
“A full economic recovery accompanied by policies that, among others tackles the issue of corruption, is the only way out,” says Dr. Mokoro
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