Don’t choose economy over people’s lives

The security challenges Kenya is facing have stirred up unprecedented reactions. There is increased pressure on the government to seek solutions. Concern is also growing about their effects on the economy.

Almost two weeks ago, days after Mr David Ndii argued in his Saturday column that economic growth is merely a means to an end, another columnist, Mr Jaindi Kisero, wrote that terrorist attacks were not just about lives lost, but also about the economy.

Now, it is reasonable to be concerned about Kenya’s attractiveness as an investment destination, but the idea that the importance of the economy could, in any way, trump human life is worrying; the dead cannot invest.

To the cold bodies at the City Mortuary, our attractiveness as an investment destination, the ratings of Kenya by Fitch and Moody’s, the booming real estate sector and the euro-bond chit-chat count for nothing.

Economic policies that downplay the importance of human life are typically pushed by those who are reasonably confident that the problems which plague the working poor will never befall them.

For such people, the loss of life during conflicts or from violent crime or unsafe workplaces is not a problem to be solved, but merely a filter through which to extract the nimblest and toughest.

Take the case of Andrew Carnegie, an astoundingly successful steel baron, who today is remembered as a philanthropist.

The Economist cites the author of his biography, Peter Krass, who writes that deadly accidents in Carnegie’s steel mills “accounted for 20 per cent of all male deaths in Pittsburgh in the 1880s”, and that “newspaper lists of men killed and wounded each year were as long as a casualty list for a small battle in the American civil war”.

Another example is Thomas Leyland, a slave trader and one time mayor of Liverpool. He invested his earnings from slave trade into a bank, Leyland and Bullins. Through mergers and acquisitions, it became the Midland Bank.

These people did wonders for their countries’ respective economies, but their wealth was soaked in blood.

Could our country be heading in this direction? The trend seems clear. While the Thika highway was already a dual-carriageway before its recent expansion, the highway from Mombasa to Nairobi, remains for long stretches undivided.

Its planned expansion is clearly driven by the need for Kenya to be regionally competitive.

Had saving life been our first priority, that highway would have been widened long ago and we would still have reaped the economic benefits. But for now, the casualties continue to climb.

Saving life should be at the centre of our economic goals, not an afterthought. Our economy is expressed in numbers, but it is people who give those numbers meaning.

Mr Ng’ethe is the Nation Media Group’s Syndication Editor. (www.nationmedia.com).