President William Ruto says he will make Kenya the next Singapore. He can pull it off, even with just 14 months left in his term. His 30-year master plan is rare in our politics. It’s not fantasy or political theatre. But speeches don’t build nations. Discipline does. So does fearless leadership, a merciless war on graft, and a relentless, passionate drive for industrial growth, fiscal sanity, and sound management. Nothing ventured, nothing won.
Singapore rose on steely leadership, skilled people, strict public accountability, and a business climate that drew capital from home and abroad. Countries don’t fail for lack of opportunity. They fail when they tolerate waste, laxity, impunity and weak institutions. Kenya can mirror Singapore. But ambition must be matched by structural courage and total commitment.
Singapore’s small size helped, but Kenya still has much to learn to stand with the Asian Tigers: South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong. As André Gide put it, man cannot discover new oceans without the courage to lose sight of the shore. Lee Kuan Yew turned Singapore from Third World to First in a generation. Dr Ruto should seize the moment to spur Kenya, or squander it.
The late President Mwai Kibaki left a robust economy by building domestic capital instead of borrowing. He showed that growth depends on prudent fiscal planning, higher local revenue, and accountability. Yet Kenyans today face heavy taxes while accountability at KRA is weak. So why do we keep piling on foreign debt that could trap us? Borrowers become slaves to lenders.
Kenyans rightly fear for the Port of Mombasa or JKIA if unchecked borrowing from China continues. Sri Lanka lost its port to Beijing in 2017 after defaulting. The lesson is plain. Over-representation is bleeding Kenya.
For Singapore-level results, Ruto should call a referendum and cut wasteful organs. That won’t weaken democracy. It will impose fiscal discipline and free billions for real development. He opposed the 2010 Constitution, so he is best placed to fix it. Our system is bloated: A bicameral Parliament on top of 47 devolved units, each with governors, deputies, women's reps and assemblies. The outcome is duplicated mandates, turf wars, excess, and lost funds. Why keep two chambers when wananchi struggle to feed, clothe and educate their children? To match Singapore, we should scrap one chamber and stop the waste.
How do we service huge debt while funding over-representation? In counties, little goes to development; most is recurrent. Merge small units: Vihiga with Kakamega, Lamu with Tana River, and Nyamira with Kisii. Can 50 million people sustain 47 governments?
America, a superpower, runs 50 states with 50 governors and 100 senators. Compare that legislature and economic muscle to ours, and one conclusion stings: We’re either naïve or indifferent to fiscal discipline. The Bureau of Economic Analysis pegs Jacksonville, Florida, as Kenya’s GDP twin. Picture it, the US’s 10th largest city, just 1.2 million people, matches our whole economy. We need to reduce waste lest we cry as a nation forever.
We must slay endemic graft. Kenya leads East and Central Africa economically, yet corruption chokes growth, deepens poverty, delays infrastructure, drives joblessness, weakens services and deters investors. Rhetoric alone fails.
The state owes its citizens transparency. The Ruto government must stop abandoning past programmes and build on them. Recovering billions hidden abroad, with Western backing, would hit plunder hard. We deserve answers on whether the July 2018 Uhuru Kenyatta and Swiss counterpart, Alain Berset, deal to recover illicit wealth from Swiss banks yielded results.
Agriculture, our backbone, remains underused. The semi-arid belt of Garissa, Mandera, Marsabit, Turkana, Kajiado and Wajir holds vast potential. Large-scale irrigation, land reclamation, modern water management, drought-resistant crops and agro-processing can turn these regions into productive zones, cutting food imports, saving forex, strengthening food security and creating jobs.
To become another Singapore, Kenya must act. We should tap our ties with Israel, a leader in irrigation and arid-land farming, to unlock dry regions. President Ruto’s 2019 call for crop diversification still rings true.
