Will Uhuru’s technocrats succeed where ‘Dream Team’ failed?

By Frankline Sunday

The year is 1999 and Kenya’s economy is at its deathbed. Corruption, inefficiency and bureaucracy are slowing down Government operations. Donor funds have dried up, the cost of doing business has gone up, and investor confidence is at its lowest.

Then President Moi comes up with a strategy that will see the country clean out its decadent systems and at the same time restore investor and donor confidence.

The worrying scenario marked the origin of the infamous Dream Team, a Government-sponsored cabal of well-paid technocrats drawn from the private sector and headed by renowned paleontologist Richard Leakey.

The team hit the ground running with an agenda to streamline the civil service, restore crumbling parastatals back to profitability and embark on a charm offensive with the donor community and investors.

Less than two years later the team was unceremoniously disbanded after several attempts to kick-start the economy failed to bear fruits.

Fourteen years later and Kenya is once again finding itself with an executive that is composed of well-trained and highly educated men and women with long experience from the private sector.

It has been touted as the Cabinet that will push the economy to double-digit growth and move Kenya closer to becoming an African economic powerhouse.

New dispensation

In a departure from tradition, ministries are now referred to as State Departments, which will be headed by Cabinet Secretaries seconded by Principle Secretaries and then followed by directors heading various departments.

However, even as the appointed executives wait public and parliamentary vetting, debate still rages on as to whether the new team will succeed where the dream team failed.

Samuel Nyandemo, an economist at the University of Nairobi, says the economic conditions when the dream team was set up made it difficult for the new appointees to operate.

“In 1999 Kenya’s economy was deplorable and it was not feasible to expect the dream team to turn it around overnight and by their own volition,” he said.

“There was no political good will and the team faced resistance from inside Government and civil service that were against reforms.”

Dr Nyandemo reckons that under the current environment, the economy is relatively stable and the new executive is not starting out from scratch, as was the case with their predecessors.

In addition to this, there is considerable goodwill both from within and outside Government and the general consensus is that Kenya’s economy needs transformatory leadership to take it to the next level.

But despite the optimism, sceptics are quick to point out the greed shown by the MPs in their spirited fight to force a pay hike despite the 2010 Constitution limiting their powers to adjust salaries. This, they argue, is a clear pointer to the political risks that the Uhuru’s technocrats are likely to face. 

“There is no guarantee in politics, good intentions can always be resisted once vested interest creeps in,” explained a senior Government official who declined to be named.

But Nyandemo states that it is important to understand that the success of the new executive is dependent on the entire administrative structure and it would be unfair to expect the new cabinet secretaries to wholly drive the development agenda.

“Economic success is dependent on a balance of technocrats and politicians in the administration because both have their respective roles to play in the leadership system,” he said.

This, however, presents a challenge of politicising the process, a scenario that has played out several times in the history of the country.

Part of the failure of the dream team was attributed to interference from politicians who perceived that the distribution of resources and government appointments was supposed to be done as a political reward.

Political interference was also blamed on the delay of the constitutional reform process, which at one time stalled after politicians amended the draft constitution prompting the public to reject it in the 2005 referendum.

Moses Ikiara, a former executive director at the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis and current head of the Kenya Investment Authority reckons that the recent changes in the structure of government and the civil service places the new executive at a favorable position in terms of turning around the economy.

“The dream team did not fail per se because they planted the first seeds of the overall structure of Government,” Dr Ikiara explains.

 “It takes time to transform public institutions and departments and some of the results we are seeing today in terms of improved efficiency in the civil service are as a result of what the dream team begun.

“However, the situation today is not the same as it was in 1999 and the running of both public and private institutions in the country has changed a great deal. We have performance contracting in place, a new constitution and other layers of the civil service have improved as well.”

He, however, notes that only time will tell whether or not the new team will be instrumental in oiling the wheels of Kenya’s growing economy or whether Kenyans will see a repeat of 2001.