How to get Kenya out of the rut

I have noticed a trend among young people which has knocked me off my feet and rekindled my hope that this country may yet get its stuff together, after all.

Kenyan youth love money, but they have given up on ever getting a job. As a matter of fact, many of them are not interested in jobs; they are dreaming of small businesses — salons, little shops, restaurants, garages, their own supply companies.

A pool of hungry, clever young people willing to work hard and take risks is half the job of getting us out of the ditch.

So I thought about what we can do to fire up the furnace and keep it burning.

Number one, we need more babies in this country; a family should have no less than four children. We need labour and consumers. Children in the house drive demand for goods and services; they also keep parents grounded, disciplined and working.

If you look at Russia, which has all the minerals in the world but not enough people to exploit them, you realise that the worst poverty is not a shortage of resources; it is not having people. We have lots of land and strong backs.

Number two, our country’s managers must have the smarts to play the players of this world, principally the Bretton Woods; they are the P Diddys of the financial world, powerful but nasty.

The IMF and World Bank should only be partners in crises: If you give them free rein, they turn your economy into a debt-servicing machine, beating the people into pulp in the process, as they have done to us. 

Mature politics

Any time we a structure a deal, we must always remember: 99 per cent of these folks don’t give a hoot about us; they are here for what they can get out of us, and that’s a good place to start.

A debt servicing machine can’t generate welfare or prosperity for the people, only suffering. We must be masters of our own affairs.

Number three, we must remove conflict from the dynamic. Creativity, innovation, deep thinking, even cooperation, can’t take place in an environment of conflict and contestation. Our polity, somehow, must be bled of all this anger and desperation.

We must transition to mature politics, based not on ego, showing off, revenge or ethnic animus but a clear national objective of rebuilding this land into a powerful economy backed by teeming millions of young, healthy, well-trained, and eager workers.

Number four, focus on the youth, and guide them to direct their energies into manufacturing innovation and the ability to sell things.

Offer incentives to Asian artisans to flood the rural economy and set up small manufacturing interests, transferring skills to local youth, allowing them to transition from service-based business to industry. Industrialisation has to be seeded.

Number five, so long as Al-Shabaab exists as our enemy, we shall never know peace and our tourism will always be in its shadow. They are daily sabotaging our country, killing our police, massacring our people and, in places like Malindi and Lamu, they are very close to finishing off our tourism.

In my way of thinking, there are two approaches of dealing with this. We can make peace with Al-Shabaab, make a deal that keeps them out of our affairs and us from theirs and surrender the folks in Mogadishu to their fate. Or we can re-arm, mobilise and go across and wipe them out. As it is, they will surely bleed us to death.

Leverage diversity

Number six, for God’s sake, market Kenyan tourism. Leverage every star and Kenyan connection, make Eliud Kipchoge a mascot for Magical Kenya. Trot out Lupita Nyong’o and Elsa Majimbo and pay them handsomely to market their country.

Get the industry to refurbish their establishments and expand into the region so that we can also capitalise on growth abroad. Invest more in training and export hotel, tour and cruise workers to grow a pool of labour with international exposure who can return to boost our competitiveness.

Seven, it’s about the household, its capacity to earn rising income, its ability to invest, consume and create the consumers and labour of the future.

If it does not put money in the households’ pockets today or tomorrow, what the hell is it for? Let us stop talking abstractly about economy, country and people. Let us make the house the basic unit of public policy.

Eight, leverage diversity. Kenya is run by villagers, euphemistically referred to as “rural achievers”. Open the government to all Kenyans, African, European and Asian; let the face of the government reflect the face of the nation; give them a reason to be patriotic, let them make a contribution.

Nine, build the military. Fix the corruption in procurement, end political interference in military affairs and pour money into good equipment and training. Build a gargantuan reserve by imposing a compulsory two-year pre-university military service by everyone.

Lastly, let us all please go to our witch doctors and ask them: How can we break the connection between political power and wealth?

Until we block these hungry “rural achievers” from public resources, those bright young people and their entrepreneurial dreams are doomed.

Mr Mathiu, a former Editor-in-Chief of Nation Media Group, is a media consultant at Steward-Africa. [email protected]