Be grateful Jubilee didn’t waste your taxes on 5 stadiums

As election season progresses, Kenyans have been ticking boxes to check what the Jubilee administration has achieved in the four years it’s been in office.

It has been mentioned that given the slicing up of Kenya by demography, any political formation that fails to meet its promises to the youth will almost certainly pay a high price at the ballot box.

Here goes another fallacy based on the assumption that youth form a homogenous political group, with similar interests and thinking about the connection between politics and their welfare.

I am not sure this assumption is correct, except perhaps because certain political commentators, including those who had hands all over the lost cash at NYS, state it

This situation worries students of policy, especially because the campaign season will be filled with more promises to create jobs and provide opportunity for the youth, all without clear statements on the mechanisms for reaching those goals.

My cursory observation of the clever turns of phrase on social media reveals that many people, young and old, think this administration is under pressure due to failure to keep its explicit promise to construct five sports stadiums during its term.

Whether this promise was let unmet by default or mendacity does not matter. By not constructing five stadiums in Kenya, the Jubilee administration has shown uncharacteristic prudence, and it’s also a good thing Parliament did not approve the spending.

Here are the reasons why.

Let’s begin with the fact that while spokespersons and executive officers deny public debt is growing too fast, they never cite the correct figures for debt as a share of GDP.

The Jubilee administration has run budget deficits of not less than six per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for virtually all its term.

Constructing those five stadiums would have happened through expanding the deficit, meaning one generation would have borrowed to please so-called youth and then passed the bill to them through higher taxes. Now, that is not kindness or love for the youth at all.

It is good that these stadiums were not built at all, given the state of public finances. While the false belief that infrastructure is an elixir of growth is convenient, it is also true that this was a titillating campaign promise with neither social nor economic value.

In addition, even if this money were available to spend today, the construction of stadiums would probably be the worst way to spend billions of shillings.

The economics of the construction of sports arenas is telling and shows they have historically contributed nothing to the local economy and are hardly sustainable as going concerns.

PENTAGON OF WHITE ELEPHANTS

Consider that Brazil hosted the FIFA World Cup in 2014 and the 31st Olympiad two years later. The magnificent Olympic Stadium stands in derelict display today, less than a year after the Olympics.

This is because the stadiums they built are difficult to put into frequent use. They invariably become white elephants that neither create enduring jobs for youth nor enervate the surrounding economy.

The only beneficiaries of stadium construction in Kenya will be the construction companies that win lucrative contracts, and certainly none of them are owned by Kenyan youth.

I have been unable to find evidence that nations with a multitude of sports arenas have better economic outcomes for their youth. No doubt the construction of a stadium would provide excitement at the commissioning and ribbon-cutting ceremonies, but the stadium curse is almost assured.

Nairobi already has three stadiums that are not fully used and to spread some more throughout the country is to spend money badly.

If this money must be spent, it would be a far superior idea to split the money evenly among Kenyan youths, by issuing a voucher that allows for skills acquisition, purchase of equipment for a trade or even simple consumption. Building a stadium in the belief that it will make Kenya a sports superpower is woefully poor policy thinking.

While this administration should rightly account for the shortfall in promises that it made to the youth and other voters, the failure to construct stadiums has saved the taxpayer money that would have been spent on a pentagon of white elephants. We have had enough of that already.

Kwame Owino is the chief executive officer of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA-Kenya), a public policy think tank based in Nairobi. Twitter: @IEAKwame