What is the point? The reality is that economic growth rates alone, however high, do not necessarily result into economic prosperity for many citizens. What really transform lives of the majority are the economic policies a country puts in place and pursues to eradicate poverty.  These include prioritizing economic sectors that bring on board many citizens (farming and services in Kenya and manufacturing in Japan for example), addressing inequality (Kenya has one of the highest inequality or Gini index in Africa at 50% …cf: Tunisia and Tanzania about 35%), controlling population growth, and purging waste through corruption, embezzlement and nepotism.

Tunisia for example had the lowest extreme poverty levels in Africa in 2015 (and second in the world only after Taiwan) at just 4%, but its mean GDP growth over the past 10 years has been about 3%. Singapore, whose GDP was less than that of Kenya in 1962 and now stands at more than 5 times,  has about 20% of its population below extreme poverty (note that a “poor” person in Singapore 5 times richer than a poor person in Kenya) and with a mean GDP growth of less than 5 over the past 5 years . Only 10 African countries including Tunisia, Djibouti, Uganda, Ghana and South Africa) recorded poverty levels below 30%. (Kenya was ranked among the top 30 countries out of 162 with the highest extreme poverty levels).

Another common fallacy that some people still hold is the attribution of poverty to personal or communal laziness. This fallacy was long debunked many decades ago, as it is sheer racial or tribal chauvinism. Countries that have immensely transformed its citizens beyond the yoke of poverty (Tunisia, Ghana, Mauritius, Botswana, japan, China, Singapore, India, South Africa, etc) in the last quarter century have done so through implementation of rigorous economic policies that unlock  opportunities and take on  board the participation of majority of citizens.

In my opinion, there have been only two efforts to address extreme poverty in Kenya: in the mid- 1960s through implementation of the “Sessional paper #10 of 1965 on African socialism and its application to planning in Kenya” which transformed education levels in many parts of the country through self- help (before Harambee became corrupted), and in 2003-2007 when the Narc Coalition Government implemented the “Economic Recovery Strategy for Wealth & Employment creation”. The economy grew to a peak of 8% in 2007 and extreme poverty dropped towards the 40% mark for the first time in many years. There seems to be a common thread that links the phenomenal growth coupled with poverty reduction of those two eras (1965-1975 and 2002-2007): The Governments of the day comprised both conservatives and social democrats in powerful positions. It seems that conservatives alone in power have never phenomenally lifted a country out of poverty anywhere in the world – not in Japan, not in India, not in USA not even in China. Our economy also remains vulnerable to our politics, which is rooted in tribal brinkmanship and like the sea, ebbs and flows every five electoral years.