Kenya has become difficult to invest in: Its culture criminalises enterprise

I was seated on the roadside one day feeling tired and discouraged. I was trying to do a small project. Everyone thought I had the money and a plan how to get it done. Truth is I was broke and my usual optimism and confidence had deserted me.

I had had a humiliating phone conversation with no less than Mr Frank Ireri, the managing director of Housing Finance about a small loan I didn’t qualify for. So I sat there to catch my breath, unsure whether to break into tears or get in my car and drive off, never to come back.

An old couple, walking past, paused to marvel at the equipment and workers milling around. “It’s moving very fast,” the woman observed.

“It must be these people who have stolen from the government. They have too much money,” the man  said with an airy sagacity. Red hot Meru temper fired through my blood like a volcano. Thankfully, there was no pyroclastic explosion. I sat calmly and smiled peacefully at them. My mind is good at managing my emotions.

In Kenya, people who do not have the courage to risk their money, the discipline to deny themselves in order to save, or the capacity for hard work, have created a culture that criminalises enterprise and investment.

If you are successful, you must have stolen. Yes, the country is awash with thieves. But they are not rich or successful. They are merely experiencing a temporary abundance of cash.

HOSTILE TO SUCCESS

I can tell you for free that Kenya is the most difficult society to invest in and to get an investment profitably working. On top of an entire system of local and national government packed with piranhas nibbling at your every extremity, you have a culture that is hostile to success. That culture has becoming institutionalised in our toxic, corrosive, tribalised politics.

And I have in mind the call to boycott Brookside products by seven Orange Democratic Party MPs on Wednesday. To me this is the shallowest, most malicious, backward and thoughtless position ever occupied by a political party.

First of all, business should never be subordinated to politics. It is the work of Kenyans which pays for politics. Taxes pay the salaries of MPs calling for the boycott of products. Without business there would be no politics.

In my own professional life, I have suffered this boycott madness twice: During the referendum in 2010 driven by the church, and in the lead up to the 2007 election canvassed by ODM. It is a tactic employed by people with a tendency to go below the belt when they don’t have an honest case.

Secondly, Brookside is a successful business which deserves the support of leaders because it is creating jobs for the people and wealth for the nation. Its success has nothing do with Jubilee politics or Ugandan sugar – it is already one of the biggest dairies on the continent.

I remember meeting the man responsible for that success a couple of years back, Mr Muhoho Kenyatta, and he was a solid fellow and a very hard working man. He built the company and though I am sure the Kenyatta name and wealth didn’t do much harm, he went through the pain that every Kenyan entrepreneur goes through. Why should the success created through hard work over decades be destroyed because of a week in Jubilee politics?

How many businessmen did President Barack Obama bring on his recent visit to Kenya? How many did David Cameron take to Asia? Are Americans and the British calling for the boycott of the business people in those delegations? Power is business by other means.

Thirdly, the factual basis for that boycott is tenuous, at best. The Kenyan sugar industry is dead. It wasn’t killed by Ugandan imports. A report was prepared and tabled in the House explaining the problems at Mumias Sugar Company and recommending action against those suspected of having precipitated the crisis. What did some of those local MPs, maybe now advancing the boycott theory, do? They tore up that report and ensured no one was punished.

We should analyse, diagnose and fix the problems of the sugar industry – especially the corruption and mismanagement therein – and fix it, not for politics, but for the sake of the people of Western whose livelihoods have been destroyed. The problem is not Uganda or Brookside.

Finally, you don’t need a deal to sell goods in the common market. Exports support our jobs, our currency and our economy. If you think you can export without importing, you shouldn’t be calling for boycotts. You should be taking your head for examination.

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