Looking at Israel, I think we lost the plot long ago

Greetings from Mizra in the Galilean territory of Israel. We are in a Kibbutz here which houses the Galilean International Institute of Management.

It is an experience I have not had in many years. Not from the point of view of dealing with debates and theories in the training sessions. Far from it, for that is what we always do by belonging to university life. The real excitement/frustration is looking at Israeli life and comparing it to our own in Kenya.

The last time I was here is exactly almost to the month 34 years ago. That time we were based at the Hebrew university in Jerusalem and since we had a whole two months we must have seen a lot more than I am likely to see within the two weeks we are here.

I have, however, already noticed that the progress that has been made in that period is phenomenal. The first thing I noticed is the money.

That last time I was here, I do remember that our shilling to the dollar was not that different from the Israeli shekel. Today, our shilling is close to 100 to one dollar while the shekel is 3.70.

The amount of development that has happened in the area of agriculture and food production in Israel is simply out of this world. When one remembers that this intensive farming that is happening here is happening on land that was originally a desert, then one has to say that Kenyans are indeed in a bad way.

ON TOP

We have such good land. A lot of it — owned by individual families and individuals — is lying idle and other large fertile tracks of it are being converted into concrete in the name of real estate. Do we ever think of food security?

Israel is on top of the world in terms of technological invention and development. Name it and they have it.

When I asked someone who knows how all these developments have happened, he told me the following: “With no natural resources, no farmland and surrounded by enemies, we had to think very hard and work even harder”.

In Kenya, we have very fertile land that we can work on. We have some natural resources and, until very recently, we have not been surrounded by any enemies.

Could that be the reason we were so complacent as to allow enterprises such as the KCC, KICOMI, Raymonds, Rivatex, KTM and several others to close shop? Could that be the reason Goldenberg, Anglo-Leasing and other scandals actually happened?

Individuals thought for themselves how to access public resources while nobody was thinking about the future. We Kenyans have to reorganise our thinking.

Fr Wamugunda is dean of students, University of Nairobi; [email protected]