Counties need to leverage comparative advantages and craft specialty that is tradeable across places

The World Bank Group in Kenya recently released an interesting “deep-dive” study that delves into the ease of doing business across 11 of Kenya’s 47 devolved units. The report is more easily associated with comparing countries globally.

So for the World Bank Group to produce this report with respect to Kenya’s county governments is in youth lingua “cool”, perhaps with more global face time relative to the investment summits already held in some counties to attract business. It certainly is an indication that beyond Kenya, the counties are viable investment destinations in their own right. The question is whether the county “presidents”, read governors, see the great opportunity they have been presented.

Five years ago, the Constitution bequeathed Kenyans the chance for a fresh start, an opportunity to reboot, with county governance perhaps the most significant departure from the old Kenya. When governors came to power, they were literally handed a carte blanche, a blank answer sheet in an exam room to set and answer their own questions, complete with reading material from their electorate and at the end, to mark their own answer sheets.

As the clock ticks on that “examination time”, it is apt to turn the spotlight on governors and ask: what will they be remembered for after their five years in office? Other than the general rhetoric that “devolution is working”, what specific successes will each governor be remembered for? Do they even care, seeing as they have only a few months to live, speaking politically?

PIONEER GOVERNOR

Put another way, after you have been in charge of 30-40 per cent of billions of Kenya’s tax revenue, what do you want to be remembered for as the pioneer governor? Some may rationalise why they needed to “eat” where they work, but what more after the eating? After all, the stomach is just fist-sized.

There were considerable teething problems in transitioning to the new dispensation. Therefore, the governors deserve a pat on the back for getting the counties off the blocks. Even then, it was meant to be about the people, Wanjiku. A nagging concern must be if the governors made the best of the chance they were handed.

Kenya’s landscape is a microcosm of the continent, with no single part of the country exactly the same and the endowment equally different. When you are the governor of Nairobi, or Mombasa with its sandy beaches and teeming hotels, chartered planes and tourist voyagers docking every so often, your endowment is significantly different from the governor of Turkana or, for that matter, Mandera, where the challenges and opportunities are significantly different.

So, what is that one project you want to complete for posterity as the pioneer governor of Laikipia or Vihiga? How did you leverage your opportunities with the resources available? Did you put your imprint on the county map that will stand even when you are long gone? How will your “the doyen of x-y-z” statement read like?

MASTER PLAN

Many times, Kenyans cite Singapore and how the Asian tiger “lifted” Kenya’s development master plan and leaped ahead. But the Singapore leaders’ secret may have been in recognising that their country could not be Saudi Arabia or Germany.

Given its size and all, the leaders chose the road less trodden, one that defined them as Singapore – without oil wells but specialists in service delivery. And an international service hub Singapore became.

So as governors digest the World Bank Group report, the example of specialist Singapore speaks for national and county governance models as it does for regional economic blocs. While Kenya and her neighbours increasingly enhance economic integration, Kenya’s counties need to leverage their comparative advantages and craft their specialty that is tradable across counties.

As the report shows, county or indeed country size does not matter. Focus and business attractiveness do. Without tangible results, governors risk retiring with the tag Nato: no action, talk only.

Jackson Kiraka is consultant, Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa and executive director, RiimNet-Africa.

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