Has age of affluence arrived unexpectedly?

In the last week, I have witnessed fist fights over parking spaces in estates.

In Nairobi’s central business district (CBD), hordes of young men guide you into a parking spot, hoping to get a tip. Failing to find parking in the CBD is not unusual, which has made providing parking space one of the most lucrative businesses in the city.

The cost of running an automated parking space is almost zero. If I had idle space, I would convert it into parking. New office blocks are making money selling parking spaces. Even shopping malls are charging for parking, which is unexpected.

The city council and other towns think the best way to deal with more cars is to raise parking fees. Why not introduce parking meters that were once ubiquitous in Nairobi? Why not build more parking bays?

In the suburbs, car owners pay watchmen to watch over their cars parked on the streets and pavements overnight. Houses were built for citizens who cannot drive. In some estates like Ngong, the roads were made for pedestrians – you may have to drive into someone’s home to give way to oncoming cars.

Young graduates want to use their first salary to buy a car. It is the new status symbol. In our day, we bought land.

All these observations seem to point to one fact – we expected Kenyans to remain poor, walking to work.

Car ownership may be a necessary but not sufficient indicator of affluence. The Government thinks it is a sign of affluence with all the taxes it levies. This thinking that poverty is not transient ensured we never built new roads or parking bays.

But it is about more than parking – there are no spaces for schools, hospitals, churches, quality rental houses, parks and, of all things, cemeteries.

Instead of building these facilities, we do the simplest thing; we come up with new laws. It is time bills in Parliament were scrutinised by economists.

Prepare for wealth

This thinking perplexes me because the dream of becoming affluent seems in-born. Why then don’t we prepare the country for affluence?

The data on motor vehicles registered in Kenya every year shows the exponential growth in car ownership. Using the Ishikawa diagram, one can easily predict what we need for these cars and their owners.

Did the command economy before liberalisation have such a lasting effect on our dreams and aspirations? Is it a hangover from the old colonial days when the only person who owed the car was bwana and memsahib or the DC?

Could it be that our curriculum has failed to fire our aspirations? Noted that we still think becoming rich or affluent is about luck? Astrologers and their relatives, like fortune tellers and waganga from all parts of East Africa, have been making money from this thinking for decades. The latest group to exploit this thinking is gambling firms.

Some have argued that this mentality has fuelled corruption – why wait to accumulate wealth when you can get lucky, steal and never be caught.

It seems that despite bowing to the West for our intellectual and religious inspirations, we are still very traditional in our views on affluence.

We read lots of textbooks on Western systems of wealth creation, but when it comes to real life, we regress to our local thinking.

Not many Kenyans have escaped the poverty trap. Truthfully, the vast majority of Kenyans still live on the periphery of affluence.

The possibilities

What can we do? Do we lament forever?

We must accept, from the top leaders to village elders, that economically, this country has changed. Becoming affluent is almost a religion, echoed in churches as the prosperity gospel.

Kenyans have tasted the symbols of wealth, defined to us by the media and our opinion makers. They are not going back. The public sector, read governments, both national and county, should create an environment that will help Kenyans enjoy their affluence.

It is not just the cars, but eating places, too. There is no way Pizza Hut, Subway, KFC, Ocean Basket, Raddison Blu, Kempinski, to name but a few, are just trying their luck in Kenya.

To address affluence, we must start seeing our lives in totality. What do babies need to grow into happy adults? What of school children? The youth? Young parents? Those suffering from mid-life crises? The elderly? What are the needs of the affluent at all these stages?

We can look at the day, too. What do the affluent do from the rising to the setting of the sun? How can you address their needs? Needless to say, we need more Kenyans to believe in the possibilities of our economy.

Entrepreneurs are making money from Kenya’s affluent; the rest are spectators. It seems to me that in Kenya, the age of affluence has arrived prematurely, taking us by surprise. And oil bado.

By the way, do you consider yourself affluent? Why or why not?

The writer is senior lecturer, University of Nairobi.

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