Now that we are at gates of prosperity, we need to learn how to handle wealth

Are we prepared for the social consequences of wealth? In the past 10 years, talk of accelerating Kenya into a middle-income economy has been accompanied by sustained efforts to improve levels of production and employment.

These efforts have been underpinned by massive investment in both the infrastructure of ideas (education) and the physical infrastructure of roads, water, and electricity.

As a result, our economy has been rebased. We are ranked among the top 10 economies in Africa and we are now talking of achieving a 6.1 per cent growth rate per annum.

But has anyone thought seriously about the socio-cultural fabric of a wealthy society — what it looks like and what it struggles to overcome?

Developing nations like ours tend to focus a lot of energy on identifying the vagaries of poverty and fighting them as if they are markedly different from the consequences of wealth.

Poor families have little to eat and they suffer ill health as a direct effect of this scarcity. They have little education and so they struggle to find meaningful employment and educate the next generation. Their debased living conditions culminate in all manner of ugliness.

NAIROBI NIGHTLIFE

In what ways are wealthy families different? Anyone who has studied the economy of Nairobi’s nightlife can attest to the fact that social activities in slums are as potentially destructive as those in affluent suburbs. Regardless of whether people are recklessly getting high on chang’aa, cognac, or cocaine, they will soon become a burden to the national health-care system.

A casual visit to upmarket clubs on a Thursday night leaves one wondering about the productivity of this country on Friday morning. How many man-hours are lost to sluggishness, hangovers, and allied truancy?

The shuffling of feet that one finds on construction sites the morning after binge drinking is no different from the cyberloafing that chief executives engage in when they are suffering the epilogue of a long night out.

Similarities aside, there are some serious reversals that we will face as we move from fighting poverty to managing wealth. We talk now of job creation and equipping people to do business, but as a middle-income economy we must also face the growing angst, complacency, and waste that afflict the middle-class. The problem we will now be fighting is not the absence of work but a low desire to work.

Our society has stopped valuing people who do a visible and honest day’s job. The old 1960s mantra of “work hard to secure the future” is hardly one that you hear in these days of instant gratification and naked adoration of wealth, regardless of how it has been obtained.

LACK INNOVATIVE INTERVENTIONS

We acquire degree certificates with a rabid fury, but we remain short of genuinely innovative interventions for our social problems. Worse still, the distinctiveness of work no longer forms one’s identity. People are now known more for the car they drive and the bar they frequent than what they produce.

Some people argue that morality is not the mission of the State, but the garbage bins outside clubs, student hostels, and the clogged sewers of lawmakers’ offices indicate that sooner rather than later, the State will bear the burden of a citizenry that has been ravaged by promiscuity and the irregular purchase of Viagra and the morning-after pill.

A government that is keen on building a robust economy must keep a keen eye on the quantity and quality of its population. It must, therefore, bear responsibility for enforcing the rules that govern the sale of drugs — including that strange brand of medicaments that is casually and absurdly referred to as “recreational drugs”.

You cannot recreate with poison because, ultimately, it kills you.

Additionally, while it is true that some life skills are best taught in homes rather than in prisons, schools, and churches, the government must find ingenious ways to tackle our alarming culture of anarchy.

If we carry these rampant, gutter ways of driving, violent debating, and wheeler-dealing into Konza City and the other mega economic projects we are so keen to see up and running, our bad manners will bring down these developments in months, regardless of the billions of shillings and tonnes of steel that will have gone into building them.

Dr Nyairo is a cultural analyst. ([email protected]).