The electoral cycle is officially on a break. President Uhuru Kenyatta is in office, on a five-year renewable contract with Kenyans. As President Uhuru and his team settle in office, they should be aware of the challenge ahead. The average Kenyan citizen makes Sh76,000 a year. That is just over Sh6,300 a month. The reality is that 50 years after independence the vast majority of our fellow citizens still live close to destitution, without access to electricity, reliable water supply and proper housing. Forget the politics, this is Uhuru’s challenge.
Former President Kibaki set the pace with investments in infrastructure designed to jumpstart the economy after years of stagnation. These investments mostly benefited the middle and upper classes. Uhuru should improve on this by investing in Kenya’s poorest. For a long time our national approach in dealing with extreme poverty has been mere poverty alleviation, which only serves to keep people comfortable in their poverty. That needs to change.
Of course Uhuru will not completely eradicate poverty throughout the country in next five years. Indeed, the Government can only do so much. Actual transformative economic development must necessarily involve private entrepreneurship. But the Government, through deliberate public policy, can create incentives for the private sector to channel investments into specific sectors that will result in faster growth and job creation.
A possible starting point for Uhuru will be to re-invigorate the Vision 2030 plan with a robust industrial policy.
As I have argued here before, factory jobs are Kenya’s best bet at ending mass unemployment. The strong plans in Vision 2030 for infrastructure development and service sector promotion – especially in IT and tourism - need to be reinforced with an equally strong, if not stronger, emphasis on industrial development. Our quest to be digital should not distract us from the conditions in our slums and the countryside. The reality is that despite more than three decades of the IT revolution the story of economic development still remains one of old-fashioned industrialisation.
In this regard, there is no reason to believe Kenya will be different, especially given our historical under-investment in higher education, a key component of technology-driven development in sectors such as biotech and information technology. A clear indication of our limited capacity in technology this far is the fact that the big IT multinationals investing in our dream Silicon Savannah are forced to hire experts because of a shortage of local technical skills and experience.
It sounds odd that in an era of apps and limitless visions of the promise of technology I am advocating for a deliberate industrial policy. But that is exactly what we need. My advice to Uhuru is to make Kenya Africa’s factory and number one exporter. Investment in industrial development will not only benefit the country in job creation and revenue generation through taxes, it will also be good politics. Industrialisation will bring about urbanisation and bring greater numbers of Kenyans from diverse backgrounds together in our towns and cities and on the factory floor. This will undoubtedly improve cross-ethnic relations, and prove a good investment for Uhuru as we move closer to 2017.
Marshalling the resources and private sector buy-in to achieve industrialisation will not be a walk in the park. So is Uhuru up to the task? Let’s consider the following. He is our first President that has never lived in poverty. Being alien to destitution may make him less inclined to tolerate it.
This is distinct from many of our leaders who have tasted poverty and may be disposed to think that because they were able to overcome, the poor should also do the same on their own. Uhuru is also wealthy and therefore best placed to earn the trust of the business community for revenue generation through taxes and investment in the industrial development dream. Because of these reasons, I think Uhuru might just be the right man for the job of industrialising Kenya.
