Singapore narrative here to stay, let us use it as a yardstick

President William Ruto, Deputy President Prof. Kithure Kindiki, KNUT Chairman Patrick Karinga (right) and KUPPET Chairman Omboko Milemba during a meeting with over 10,000 teachers at State House, Nairobi.[PCS]

As we close 2025 and begin the New Year, it is worth pondering what makes us tick as a nation. At the moment we are at a turning point in our political economy. On the political front, we are turning the page on how politicians mobilise voters.

In the past ethnicity was the dominant organising principle. In the new order, it will have to compete with voters’ economic concerns. This is not to say we have magically become de-tribalised. Far from it. Ethnicity still matters. But it is no longer the only game in town. Which is to say politicians who choose to only play ethnic census politics will lose badly moving forward.

On economic front, Kenyans are getting more impatient with poverty, generalised underdevelopment, and mediocre policymaking from our leaders and bureaucrats. Those who refuse to see this impatience are deluding themselves. And if left unattended, the impatience will drown us all in rising crime and political disorder. Our youth need jobs. Full stop. Every shilling spent by the government must have a jobs agenda. And I mean real jobs in real (big and growing) firms, and not gimmicky workfare projects cooked up in foreign capitals.

Something that speaks to this hunger for economic transformation is the stickiness of the “Singapore” narrative. The president and his allies keep telling us they are working to drag us from third to first world. This is not a bad dream to have.

The only problem is that the president and his men and women do not appear to understand how Singapore and other countries that escaped poverty, did it. This is where the president’s detractors have a point. There does not appear to be much substance behind the invocations of Singapore.

So how did the East Asians do it? By maintaining a remarkable level of policy discipline over long periods of time. Their leaders did not just dabble in banter atop cars in dusty shopping centres. They spent time and enormous effort seriously working on policy design and implementation – in varying sectors like agriculture, education, health, infrastructure development, industry and trade, and the like. And above all, they relentlessly sought to get the basics right, and then give people freedom to flourish economically.

The point is we can always argue about specific policy initiatives, but without losing track of the strategic vision of wanting to expand our people’s material wellbeing. And the brutal truth is at the moment the system we have and the leaders that staff it lack strategic vision. You see it in our focus on shiny things with little overall economic impact (like stadiums) over initiatives that have a chance to catalyse structural transformation (like agricultural productivity).

And then there is the question of corruption. It’s true that corruption is not a precondition for development. The East Asian successes were and remain corrupt places. However, it made a difference that they were publicly anti-corruption. In other words, they did not cynically capitulate to corruption in the manner we have done.

Cynicism corrodes trust, legitimacy, and makes it very hard to mobilise the general public towards a transformational agenda. These are the lessons we should learn as we head into 2026. Happy New Year!

Writer is a professor at Georgetown University