Poor execution, inaction always attract barbs

What you need to know:

  • President Uhuru Kenyatta’s flagship legacy projects under the Big Four agenda are all hobbled by challenges of poor execution or inactivity of the most baffling kind.

  • More alarming is the unflattering fact that the country’s policymakers and key implementers of plans seem not to learn from these many glaring shortcomings.

The answer to why there is so much criticism directed at government apparently for little or no action on a wide range issues lies in which part of the half-empty or half-full frame of analysis one chooses to apply.

HEALTH DELIVERY

Yes, plenty has been done in key areas of development — access to health and education for most Kenyans, in infrastructural development, in energy supply through initiatives like the last-mile connectivity that intended to provide universal access to electricity by 2020, etc.

But the degree of success of most of the public and/or donor-supported programmes has been unsatisfactory or outright abysmal. Further, corruption, dithering, procrastination and lack of coherent and decisive execution from key individuals and institutions have suffocated opportunities.

In health, for example, despite billions invested over the years, the public health delivery system is operating sub-optimally, riddled with a phalanx of challenges from shambolic delivery of drugs to public institutions, a ridiculous dilemma of doctor scarcity with thousands of unemployed ones. What was supposed to be a seminal project to equip hospitals with advanced diagnostic equipment — the Managed Equipment Service scheme — is working in fewer hospitals than it has failed.

GLARING SHORTCOMINGS

This and the other project to deliver 1,000 mobile clinics to areas with little or no access to medical facilities are now the poster boys of corruption in that sector.

The last-mile project laid cables to many poor rural schools and homes that cannot use electricity because they cannot pay. The reward for the supplying entity — Kenya Power — is a loan it can barely service. Another example of good intentions clouded by the short-term urgency to provide positive political illusions to boost chances of re-election.

The initiatives in education, those to improve food security and indeed even President Uhuru Kenyatta’s flagship legacy projects under the Big Four agenda are all hobbled by challenges of poor execution or inactivity of the most baffling kind. School facilities (physical and human), for instance, have been stretched well beyond the existing capacity without matching capital resources being made available to expand the facilities.

More alarming is the unflattering fact that the country’s policymakers and key implementers of plans seem not to learn from these many glaring shortcomings and improve on the speed of rolling out initiatives and managing them in the standard project management format.

PEDESTRIAN REASONS

Take the example of trade and industry. Nairobi continues to lose investment opportunities that ideally belong here to neighbouring countries for almost pedestrian reasons.

Significant progress has been made to ease the burden of doing business in the country through, for example, the setting up of the one-stop shop at the Kenya Investment Promotion Council. In November last year, the council launched the Kenya Investment Policy document, to give effect to decisions like the creation of the National Investment Council that was first mooted in 2010!

This is an apex council chaired by the President. This council is yet to meet but critical decisions on fast-tracking projects like the contemplated Naivasha Industrial Park and the Export Processing Zone on Thika Road are pending. This is frustrating to investors, who then find destinations like Ethiopia and Rwanda highly attractive.

INVESTMENT DECISIONS

Grand plans that are poorly thought out or ineptly executed are just as corrosive as inaction or delayed action on key investment decisions. Both reduce the attraction of the country to critical opportunities and give fodder to critics to bash the system.

Tom Mshindi is the former editor-in-chief of NMG and is now consulting; [email protected]