Go beyond figures, statistics to raise the happiness index

It was the ever-so-witty Mark Twain who first said there are three levels of lies – lies, damn lies and statistics. And in the past few weeks, developments in Kenya have conspired to lend credence to this age-old quip. First came the rebasing of our Gross Domestic Product.

I’m not an economist, so let me try to break down for you how we went to bed one day a struggling, low-income (you might say third-world) economy and woke up the following day as a middle-income, happy-go-lucky economy.

Well, what happened is that we stopped using old estimates from 2009 to calculate our national wealth. We now based our statistics on more recent figures because, in the intervening years, we have rapidly developed from telephone booths where we asked for ‘reverse calls’ from shifty operators, and carried loads of coins that the booths swallowed for poor services, to a world where Kenyans are up there with the best in terms of mobile telephony penetration, mobile money and internet-based trade, among other new things.

So was the leap to middle-income level a lie or a fact? Yes and no, and here is why. Yes, in terms of growth, Kenya has been on a roll. I would not even be surprised if someone suggested the economy has grown by more than the touted 4.5-5.5 per cent, depending on who you have been listening to. To the 10 per cent that controls more than 47 per cent of the economy, these truths are held to be self-evident. But they are all an ugly white lie to the more than 53 per cent that survives at the periphery or totally outside the formal economy.

Actually, when the Ministry of Industrialisation came out this week to strongly oppose the World Bank’s ranking of Kenya, arguing that the global lender ignored recent reforms and interventions by the Government to boost the economy, I chuckled. You see, the trouble with basing economic growth on figures and esoteric econometrics is that you miss the humanistic point. What is the use of economic growth if more than half of the population survives by the grace of God? And how can we explain the fact that sections of the country are surviving on relief food while pastoralists have nowhere to take their stock as death from drought stalks them to every parched patch they pitch tent at?

And pray, how can a middle-income economy have more than half of its virile youth lazing around doing nothing but waiting for politicians to come and lie to them for a few handouts? The answer lies in the scary fact that our distribution of wealth is so atrocious that world bodies are warning us that unless we do something, more than half of us could slide further into desperation even as the super-rich among us continue making super profits. With catastrophic consequences for security and other social conveniences. It is like taking 10 children to a candy shop and giving enough money for all them to only three. Fine, on average the team would be spoilt, but the seven who have nothing would just be drooling from the sidelines as the lucky three have a ball. So what to do? As we tighten the bolts and rev towards Vision 2030, we must avoid a situation where half the population could miss the bus to the 2030 economic Canaan. And I am not suggesting that one day we go to Uhuru Park or some other place and have the rich dish out some of their wealth to the poor from gunny sacks, as they do relief food.

No, the Jubilee government’s performance, in my non-expert view, will be judged on the question of equity. With all the fundamentals – read Vision 2030 flagship projects – in place, the challenge is to ensure that there is equity post-2030. The plan to lower schools fees is a good start as it will help children from poor families have a fair chance at upward economic mobility. The real game-changer, in the short and medium term, however, will be putting in place strategic policy interventions for creating jobs for the largely idle youth and ensuring all hard-working Kenyans have a fair chance at lifting themselves out of poverty. Otherwise, our children will still be quoting Mark Twain even as growth figures get sexier.