Cookery, tourism still Kenya’s only investment hope

People in costume with the Kenyan and American flags in Nairobi on July 24, 2015. PHOTO | RAPHAEL NJOROGE |

What you need to know:

  • Kwamchetsi Makokha’s sideways look at Obama visit.

Between visiting US President Barack Obama and Kenyans, there is little space for deception given the intimate knowledge the two have of each other.

After Mr Obama’s visit — his fourth to the country — and the speeches, the amount of Kenyan coffee, tea, flowers or maize heading to the US will not increase since America still pays farmers to not grow extra produce.

There will be no extra vans of Gringo tourists heading to Home Cubed, the birthplace of Mr Obama’s ancestors in Siaya, or sampling poorism in Kibera, Nairobi.

Mr Obama has arrived with a posse of tycoons, who are not interested in reviving any of the cotton ginneries, hides and skins factories, or even the oil and gas recently discovered in the north of the country.

ARAB SPRING

Kenyans have to ask why Mr Obama is bringing so many people who seem to want nothing from them. They are interested, or so they say, in new ideas and innovations.

Kenya has laid out its best display of hospitality, curios, cookery and county governments in the hope that investors will pump money into these inventions. The effort going into landscaping, housekeeping and entertainment speak of the country’s innovativeness and enterprise.

Entrepreneurship became an important catchphrase on June 4, 2009, when Mr Obama told an audience in Cairo, Egypt, that education and innovation would be the currency of the 21st century. Barely 18 months later, a vegetable vendor in Tunis, Mr Mohammed Bouazizi, set himself on fire to protest injustice at the hands of the police. It was also the beginning of the Arab Spring, which ushered in regime change in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, as well as political turmoil in Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan, Morocco and Syria.

INCITEMENT

It is not unlikely that the failure of the Arab Spring to spread to sub-Saharan Africa greatly frustrates Mr Obama, hence his renewed focus on the region and Kenya’s caution in laying out its best ideas.

For starters, neither Mr Obama nor America is bringing any real money — despite schmoozing with President Uhuru Kenyatta for a whole three days at the US-Africa summit last year.

Where China is loaning Kenya serious money to build railways, roads and bridges, America only brings words of incitement to rouse hopeless youth.

So far, the US has committed a measly $3.2 billion (Sh320 billion) to support micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises and mobilised another $80 million in private capital for start-up accelerators in the whole developing world. This is the equivalent of the Sh327 million China is giving Kenya to build the standard gauge railway between Mombasa and Nairobi.

Over the next three years, the US hopes to spark $1 billion in new private investments for entrepreneurs worldwide, including social entrepreneurs — or people who start business to solve social problems or cause social change.

Kenya must be watchful that America does not resource dissident groups to destablise popularly and democratically elected governments under the guise of funding start-ups. Kenyan officials have previously outed a former US ambassador before he could confuse youth with donor cash.

After the entry of the Chinese, entrepreneurship seems to be the only avenue for America to lecture Kenyans about creating the right conditions for business to thrive. It is not unlikely that President Obama will start talking about fighting corruption, promoting transparency, creating functioning capital markets, reducing regulation and protecting intellectual property.

Last year, at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Marrakesh, US Vice President Joe Biden said: “Fighting corruption is not just good governance.  It’s self-defence. It’s patriotism.”

Well, China did not become a world economic power by doing any of these things — or even manufacturing original stuff.