Should Kenya face East or West? What the data says

Conventional wisdom seems to suggest that Kenya is economically facing East. The evidence cited includes increased imports and exports from China, and the increased presence of Chinese firms in Kenya, mostly in big projects like road construction and, more recently, railways. However, the Chinese had come to East Africa earlier — they built the 1,860km TAZARA railway line from Zambia to Dar es Salaam from 1970 to1975.

The Japanese, Koreans and Indians had come before the Chinese, and no one raised the issue of facing East.

Economic dominance

Historically, Kenya has always looked East or North East, and the main reason is geographic. Until the advent of air travel, water transport was the preferred mode of transport.

Even today, most of the world’s leading economies have a seashore. That is why the Arabs came to our coast, enriched our cultural heritage and bequeathed us Swahili, our national language. The Portuguese came from the West but through the East, the sea again. They did not have a lasting influence like the Arabs.

The Indians followed, changing our commerce by building the first railway line and then settling — it seems the East will always be part of our railway system.

The Indians have been here for over 100 years and no one raised the spectre of facing East — that awaited the Chinese. Perhaps it is their economic dominance, both current and potential, that has spawned this myth of facing East, which we can explore empirically.

To do so, we need to look at Kenya’s economic growth and projections from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the period 1980 to 2019.

We correlate our economic growth rate with that of China’s, UK and USA, and for the sake of comparison, Uganda and Tanzania, our nearest neighbours and traditional trading partners. The data is surprising.

For the sake of those who slept during statistics classes, the value of the correlation coefficient varies from -1 to +1. A high correlation coefficient shows the two variables move together like friends taking a walk.

Correlation between Kenya’s economic growth rate and other countries (1980-2019, data from IMF)

Kenya and USA -0.11

Kenya and China -0.3

Kenya and UK 0.09

Kenya and Uganda 0.13

Kenya and TZ 0.55

Kenya and India 0.4

USA and Canada 0.84

USA and UK 0.71

The correlations are: USA vs Canada is 0.84, USA vs UK is 0.71, Kenya vs Uganda is 0.13, Kenya vs TZ is 0.55, Kenya vs China is -0.3, Kenya vs India is 0.4. Kenya vs USA is -0.11, and Kenya vs UK is 0.09.

Clearly, this data indicates we have not been facing East as much as popular media seems to indicate. In fact, our economy seems closer to the USA and UK than China. Also, we are closer to India than China and USA. Why do we ignore India in our economic and political discourse? Is it because of familiarity? How do we ignore India, yet it is more democratic and speaks more English than China?

Another curious observation is that we seem closer to Tanzania than Uganda. This could be explained by the upheavals in Uganda during the 80s; data is very sensitive to extremes (recall your statistics, let me stop awakening ghosts).

Conventional wisdom

If you analyse more recent data, from 2000 to 2019, you find the correlation with China is -0.02, meaning China is catching up. India goes up to 0.52 and USA to 0.31. USA has done much better than China in this period, yet conventional wisdom says we are facing East!

The recent headline that USA has caught up with China in trading with Kenya seems to get support from our data. Despite all the talk of facing East, we are still tied to the West. The US overtook China because of the purchase of Boeing jets, high-value items. The West still dominates the world in hi-tech manufacturing and, critically, in the thought process. It influences most of our thinking on philosophy, politics and culture. Look at our Constitution, any Eastern influence?

Despite Indian presence in Kenya the last 100 years, I’m yet to meet an indigenous Kenyan professing Hindu or called Chandrasekhar Kamau. I’m yet to find a Kenya calling himself Xi or Chiang. All our intellectual references are from the West and we only quote Easterners if they are in the West.

This big debate about facing East does not seem to get support from reality. However, if we include India as part of the East, the data seems to show we are really facing the Near East.

So, should we face East or West? When the world was divided between East and West ideologically while the Cold War raged, we were non-aligned.

We should do the same economically; we should simply diversify our trading partners without bothering if they are from the East, West or North.

The obsession with East/West thinking is denying us great economic opportunities.

For example, projections show that by 2050, Nigeria will have a population of about 390 million, Indonesia 290 million and Congo 145 million. How much focus are we putting on these future markets? I’m surprised we do not have an embassy in Indonesia where the latest BlackBerry model was launched.

In the next few decades, the East/West divide will get blurred as more economic powers rise. We can prepare for that period by proactively looking for new trading partners outside the East/West axis.

We could look even look upwards and explore the endless universe with its myriad galaxies. Who knows, some day we might discover a habitable planet or aliens come calling. Do you think we are the only intelligent beings in this vast universe?

The writer is a senior lecturer at University of Nairobi’s School of Business. [email protected]