Kenya has been ranked the sixth poorest country on the continent. These stark findings are contained in the authoritative report of Institute for Security Studies (ISS). The ISS has found that 18.4 million Kenyans live in extreme poverty. With this regard, we Hizb ut Tahrir East Africa wish to expound the following

This is not the exact figure rather a conservative one, the fact is that more than half of Kenya's population live in dire poverty. Facts from some international organizations such as UNICEF say that 46% of Kenyans live below the poverty line. More disgraceful, whilst these statistics are revealed, Kenya still prides itself to be the largest economy of East Africa and among the top ten economies of Africa. It's clear that poverty problems in the Country remains to be a malignancy. This is an indication of the current government as the past regimes have totally failed in eliminating the problem.

The main cause of the Government's failure to deal with the problem is its bounding into the erroneous the capitalist economic philosophy. The so-called trickle down or the invisible hand theory asserting that the economic problem is tackled through production of the resources and not distribution. The theory further claims that through production that will automatically enable people to satisfy their needs. This is why in many capitalist countries which are rich in natural resources many of the citizens remain poor. Capitalists are measuring the economic success of a country on the basis on an increase of production i.e. the collective wealth (GDP) and not the individual wealth. On the other hand, the capitalist political class are mega corrupt hence cannot solve the poverty problem. They are accumulating wealth by evil means through misuse of billions of public funds, increasing the hefty perks with only one aim i.e. enriching themselves not the common man. Even worse, they push for what they call development projects as means to justify their corruption.

We would like to openly state that poverty can only be tackled if this western economic system is thrown into the dustbin of history to be replaced in its place with the perfect Islamic economic system. Islam is not a religion only nevertheless an ideology embodied with a complete way of life capable of solving all man's problems. As for the question on how Islam solves these problems, it is because it has elaborated that the main cause of these problems relies on the distribution of the resources rather than production. This will enable to empower each individual to satisfy their basic needs independently. Islam has placed more emphasis on the issue of equilibrium distribution of resources rather than on the simple idea of production. Apart from prohibiting the monopoly of the resources by the rich only rotating among themselves. This means, the problem facing people in the world does not lie on the scarcity of resources as the capitalists tend to portray, the truth is if the resources were to be distributed equally, then the issue of poverty would have been solved. It is through this economic system that Islam under the custody of the Khilafah "Caliphate" State will be capable of obliterating poverty of all its citizen Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Allah willing when the Khilafah "Caliphate" State is soon reestablished, the issue of poverty shall be buried in the graveyard of history.

Shabani Mwalimu

Media Representative of Hizb ut Tahrir in East Africa