Kenya is now poised to lose its position as the third largest economy in sub-Saharan Africa to fifth after Angola and Ethiopia respectfully.
This is due to the fact that the oil prices have gone up and Ethiopia’s crisis in the tigryan region has eased up. This means that increasingly, we are losing out on our competitiveness as a country.
I was in Ethiopia early this week and I couldn’t help notice how the country has transformed over the last 17 or so years since I first visited in 2005.
Then, Addis Ababa was, to a large extent, a big slum with only some few key installations. There were so many beggars on the streets and people spoke broken English, including how newspapers were written.
Today, thanks to the Meles Zenawi policies, the capital is like a construction site, with skyscrapers mushrooming everywhere along the good roads constructed by the Chinese. Their urban rail system seems to be working and an urbane burgeoning middle class that can speak confidently and is well-educated is evident.
Ethiopia was under socialist rule for quite some time until they embraced capitalism in recent years, after protecting their market for quite some time.
It’s now that the government is on a drive to open up this market of 110 million people with about 11 cities; the second biggest population after Nigeria. Their sense of national discipline and identity is evident complete with the popular national dress.
Kenya, on the other hand, is still struggling with the question of nationhood and what political ideology that is best placed to govern our great republic.
At independence, we inherited a parliamentary system with Jomo Kenyatta as the first Prime Minister. Kanu, having won most seats, was invited to form government.
Soon, we created a mongrel government that merged some elements of a presidential system with that of parliamentary.
Ideologically, we embraced capitalism, while our neighbour Tanzania went the Ujamaa way. While on paper we called this African socialism, it was indeed capitalism clothed with socialist rhetoric. This is the heart of our mongrel ideological model that in retrospect hasn’t brought about the best in us so far.
Its appears that we made what I can call the Kenyan consensus whereby the big tribes could win the presidency since they had the numbers, while the small tribes could have a majority of parliamentary seats.
On resource distribution, the colonial policy was to invest in high potential areas, while ignoring the marginal ones. However, the 2010 Constitution introduced 47 counties, and the revenue sharing formula has skewed resources to the marginalised ones.
Considerably, a lot of change has been witnessed in these heretofore forgotten places. However, monies siphoned out of the areas are being re-invested into the high potential areas, especially the urban cities of Nairobi metropolitan area and Mombasa, in what I call counter-devolutionism
Our economic model has produced very wealthy small elite at the expense of masses of poor people. While there is a sizeable middle-class in Kenya, its growth has shrunk over the last 10 or so years due to the govt policies that encouraged state capture.
In fact, this was the single most issue that determined the outcome of the last general election. This to mean that while the colonial state was aimed at extracting our resources to benefit Britain, the successive governments have also diverted its purpose to meet the desires of the rulers, their families and associates.
Clearly we need to know that our competition is not internal but external. This means we need to know what we want to begin with, and that can only happen if we leverage on internal political competition based on our own ideologies that speak to our realities.
To a considerable degree, the last election had the Azimio leaning on the left of centre policies of hand outs Sh6,000 pledge-, strangely backed by the right wing conservatives, the moneyed and the who is who in society.
The Kenya Kwanza side comprised of grievances of the petty bourgeoisie whose businesses had been vandalised, and access to credit stifled; a right of centre approach lased with hand–up policy proposals.
The latter won thanks to a robust institutional independence on the part of the then IEBC chairman, the cooperation of the police, and a resurgent Judiciary keen to stamp its authority.
However, if we are to remain competitive, we must harness our nation-building credentials to know what we need out there to remain competitive. This can be done through nation-building activities such as an education policy that robustly encourages integration of students across the country.
Public Servants should also be deployed across the nation, despite their origin and intermarriages be encouraged. Sporting activities such as athletics and football need to be de-tribalized. Music, the arts and the official use of Kiswahili will go a long way in helping us have a true national identity.
If we ended up with two strong political parties since we are a de-facto two party state, it will go a long way in strengthening our common sense of purpose.
This way, we can be truly united in hunting what is out there within EAC, the continent and beyond.