No amount of bad press is going to cramp Kenya’s style

Quartz Africa this week joined the horde of international media giving Kenya a bad name.

If it is not the Financial Times pummeling the country’s reputation, The Washington Post and The New York Times are running a smear campaign to brand Kenya as a banana republic.

Notwithstanding the bad press, the world continues to be pulverised with propaganda and public relations from the efforts of committed lobbyists abroad, resulting in every international bond being oversubscribed.

No sooner had the country exhaled from blowing out the flame of fake Bloomberg news about losing the Sh1.5 trillion International Monetary Fund loan facility, and fought off rumours of a national debt crisis than Quartz Africa published the PriceWaterhouseCoopers Global Crime and Fraud Survey.

RANKING

Nothing can be as insulting as ranking Kenya second to South Africa in global white-collar crime, closely pursued by France, Russia and Uganda.

If Kenyans were even remotely in the running for economic crime rankings, there is no way they would deputise South Africa on such a serious matter.

Kenyans pride themselves in supplying goods, repairing broken eggs and offering a host of discreet services.

They spare no effort in putting shoulder to the wheel: There are no half measures and none of that sneakiness of stealing through the biro pen.

If Kenyans steal something, they do so in blazing daylight with witnesses, and armed guards at the ready.

CYBERCRIME
Kenyans are not afraid of getting their hands dirty with sheer hard work, as demonstrated by two brothers and their friend digging a 30-metre tunnel into bank vaults to cart away Sh52 million.

Kenya is the country where youth like former hairdresser Josephine Kabura carry money in gunny bags to pay quarry workers round the clock — under police guard.

Ask the abstemious Patrick Njoroge, Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya, who stayed up late into the night trying to save Imperial Bank from going under on account of Sh32 billion theft due to a cooking of the books, only for his spirit to be broken by the sight of suitcases stuffed with cash in the boots of cars.

White-collar crime is not a Kenyan thing.

Cowardly theft through the computer and the pen without the thrill of risking life and limb is for Bitcoin people and anonymous cyber bandits.

COMPANIES
Ranking Kenya as having the second highest rate of economic crime in the world at 75 per cent, behind South Africa’s 77 per cent, is an insult to the industry of economic banditry, robbery and profligate spending.

The lucre of grease and grime and goo that oils the wheels of prosperity changes the colour and texture of every shirt collar.

Kenyans do not pilfer and squirrel away things like shamefaced thieves – they take them.

Were Kenya even remotely interested in the white collar crime trophy, the balance sheets of companies such as East Africa Portland Cement, Longhorn Publishers, KenGen, Kenya Power and Lighting Co., Uchumi Supermarkets, East African Breweries and Mumias Sugar would not be showing losses and reduced profits for the half year ending December 2017.

They would have been perfumed to smell just right.

REPUTATION
The day Kenya decides take to the white-collar business, it shall be 1-2-3 as is the custom in the steeplechase.

For now, it is comfortable handling hard cash.

Foreign media hardly write about Kenya from a position of knowledge, and almost never from a position of goodwill, hence the numerous errors and falsehoods they publish.

These organisations need to borrow a leaf from the country’s patriotic media and focus on positive stories.

The writer is a Programme Adviser, Journalists for Justice. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect those of JFJ. [email protected]