Mixed opinions have greeted President William Ruto’s performance as he marks one year in office as Kenya’s fifth head of state.
A year ago today, Ruto took the reins of power at the colourful inauguration held at the fully packed 60,000-seat Kasarani Stadium after the hotly contested polls.
Ruto beat state-backed Azimio candidate Raila Odinga by starting early with four years of populist campaigns that largely targeted the ordinary man and woman, known as the hustlers and go-getters.
At the installation, the President delivered a colourful speech, loaded with promises that sought to give hope to the vast numbers eaten by the high cost of living.
The promises were heavily borrowed from his Kenya Kwanza manifesto that anchored the Bottom-Up economic model that envisioned ‘The Plan’ to transform the country.
“Our people are confronted daily with increasingly unaffordable prices, especially food and transport. It calls for an urgent and decisive resolution,” Ruto said.
The President anchored his promises on five pillars of his manifesto that he said would turn around the country’s fortunes.
They include revamping agriculture to improve food production, boosting the micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) economy and rolling out massive housing and settlement projects to create permanent jobs and bridge housing shortage.
Ruto also promised to overhaul the health sector and implement the elusive Universal Health Care (UHC) and leverage the digital space through a digital superhighway and creative economy to provide jobs.
While the President’s allies have termed his performance stellar, critics have dismissed his record so far as a big disappointment.
“The President is getting 10 out of 10 because what he promised Kenyans in the last one year, he has delivered,” Nandi Senator Samson Cherargei said.
The vocal lawmaker said Ruto has ensured timely disbursement of funds to counties, delivered subsidised fertilisers to farmers, restored security in North Rift Valley and launched reform if the health sector.
“The problem is that many critics want him to deliver in one year what he’s supposed to deliver in five years,” Cherargei said.
Tharaka Nithi Senator Mwenda Gataya said the head of state has stabilised the economy and managed public debt.
But Homa Bay Senator Moses Kajwang said the President has failed in all aspects – stumbling with incoherent foreign policies, poor governance, inadequate health services, substandard education and a still-stumbling economy.
“Education policy is a mess. The CBC experiment has not stabilised and other efforts to reform higher education sector have failed,” Kajwang said.
“Even though the price of food has gone down, not because of any government intervention, but because of good rains, everything else is expensive because we are importing most of the things using the dollar and as such, the cost of living is still high,” he said.
In his plan to deal with the high cost of living, the President promised to provide adequate affordable working capital and other incentives to enhance food production.
“The cost of living that we are experiencing can only be resolved by raising agricultural productivity,” the Kenya Kwanza manifesto states.
Ruto pledged to provide adequate affordable working capital to all farmers through cooperative societies and deploy modern agricultural risk management instruments to ensure farming is profitable and income is predictable.
The President promised to transform two million poor farmers from food deficit to surplus producers through input finance and intensive agricultural extension support. He said his aim was to generate minimum revenue Sh50,000 per acre.
“Our priority intervention, therefore, is to make fertiliser, good-quality seeds and other agricultural inputs affordable and available,” Ruto said.
He pledged to raise the productivity of key value food chains, for instance, increasing the number of bags of maize per acre from eight to 15.
A year later, the cost of living has remained a thorn in the flesh for the President, despite the government’s rollout and promises to lower it.
The government has distributed more than five million bags of subsidised fertiliser to registered farmers countrywide.
Initially, prices were reduced from Sh6,500 to Sh3.500 per bag. This declined further to Sh2,500 in what President Ruto says reduces the burden on the farmer and motivates him and her to produce more.
“We are supporting farmers with fertiliser and seeds and an additional 200,000 acres has been put into production,” the President said in May.
However, the cost of living has remained high – if not virtually unaffordable for many Kenyans. The price of maize flour has stalled at about Sh200 per 2kg.
A 2kg bag of sugar has ballooned to about Sh500 from about Sh300 a year ago. This is the case with other basic commodities.
The situation has been worsened by the removal of unga subsidy and doubling of the VAT on fuel from eight to 10 percent in the recently enacted Finance Act, 2013. Earlier gains were nullified by the high cost of fuel and end of subsidised unga, critics said.
To change the fortunes of mama mboga, boda boda riders and kinyozi who fall under the micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) economy, the President pledged to provide affordable financing.
“An estimated 10 million informal MSME operators and workers generate less than Sh5,000 income per month on average, which is below the living wage for one person,” the Kwanza manifesto states.
Consequently, the President committed to provide Sh50 billion a year to MSMEs with 100 per cent access to affordable finance through Saccos, venture capital, equity funds and long-term debt for start-ups and growth-oriented SMEs.
He pledged to decriminalise work by enacting a right-to-work law, making trading licences and provision of a trading location the right of every citizen who applies.
“We will review and rationalise all business licences, cap total licences at 1.5 per cent of turnover and enact administrative burden law,” the Kwanza blueprint states.
Soon after his election, the President introduced affordable loans, commonly known as the Hustler Fund for individual and group borrowers to boost their business.
“To promote inclusion, the Hustler Fund is going to deploy groups such as chamas and Saccos to overcome exclusion and barriers to participation in credit, savings, social security, health insurance and other socio-economic amenities,” Kwanza promised.
Critics, however have termed the loans too small to have significant impact on businesses run by hustlers.
The intervention has also been diluted by the introduction of payment of a minimum tax of three percent on small business making between Sh500,000 – an average of Sh1,300 a day – and Sh25 million a year.
Small-scale traders – mainly mama mboga and boda bodas – and micro, small and medium-sized enterprises are the majority in the targeted group.
Further, the President pledged to embark on a massive social housing programme by constructing at least 250,000 units every year.
The Sh150 billion programme is aimed at creating jobs for millions of jobless youths and reduce the huge housing deficit.
“We will achieve this by structuring affordable long-term housing finance schemes, including a National Housing Fund and Cooperative Social Housing Schemes, to guarantee offtake of houses from developers,” the Kwanza manifesto states.
The government has yet to fully roll out the programme.
In addition, the project has been criticised for the introduction of a Sh1.5 per cent housing levy.
On healthcare, Ruto’s Kenya Kwanza promised to deliver universal health coverage “in the shortest time possible”.
They promised to roll out a fully publicly financed primary healthcare focusing on preventive, promotive, outpatient and basic diagnostic services.
Ruto pledged to introduce a universal seamless health insurance system comprising mandatory national insurance (NHIF) and private insurance as complementary covers, with NHIF as the primary and private as secondary cover.
Further, Kenya Kwanza promised to establish a national fund for chronic and catastrophic illness and injury costs not covered (or with very restrictive cover) by insurance.
The government has yet to roll out UHC as pledged. This is the case with the funding of chronic diseases.
However, the State has drafted four bills that seek to anchor UHC. They mainly focus on primary health care, health insurance, health facilities and digital provision of services.
They are The Social Health Insurance Bill, 2023, The Primary Health Care Bill, 2023, The Digital Health Bill, 2023 and The Facility Improvement Financing Bill, 2023.
In the Social Health Insurance Bill, 2023, the government creates the Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF) to replace the NHIF.
The Bill changes the contribution model towards SHIF, from the current flat rate of Sh1,700 to a percentage of one’s salary, a move that has triggered fierce criticism.
The Bills, which have been cleared by the Cabinet, are undergoing public participation before they are sent to Parliament for consideration.
On the digital superhighway, KK pledged to enhance government service delivery through digitization and automation of all government critical processes and make available 80 per cent of government services online.
The coalition also pledged to increase and fast-track broadband connectivity across the country by the construction of 100,000km of national fibre optic connectivity network.
Already, the Ministry of ICT and Digital Economy has moved to digitise the more than 5,000 government services. The services have been uploaded onto the e-citizen platform.
The government also embarked on rollout of free Wi-Fi in public places, including market centres.