Value local interests when rooting for foreign investors

President Uhuru Kenyatta deserves credit for saying, “Kenyans do not aspire to do back-breaking work for little gain,” recently. The expectation is that those selected to the cabinet will ensure rules of engagement with foreign and local investors are clear and straight-forward; that workers must be paid a fair living wage.

Although the International Labour Organisation, of which the Central Organisation of Trade Unions is a  member, has clear guidelines on how to compensate workers, the sad reality is that developing countries pay little attention to them in their scramble for foreign investors.

Yet, there is ample evidence that many of these countries benefit little from these investments. Investors routinely take huge money that they recoup their investments in a short while — routinely between three and five years, depending on the industry — and go on to drain the local economy for years.

It is heart-breaking to imagine that Industrialisation and Enterprise Development Cabinet Secretary Adan Mohamed may have fallen into the trap of welcoming foreign investors at any price. This fear arises from his announcement last month that the Government is in talks with foreign investors to inject Sh36 billion in a textile venture is expected to create 40,000 jobs.

At first sight, this might appear like good news for the unemployed Kenyans until it is viewed against the background of earlier reports that representatives of Jiangsu Lianfa Textile Company, China were  recently in the country. They held meetings with cabinet secretaries for Energy and Industrialisation.

The unsettling aspect of those talks was that the prospective Chinese investors were also asking the government to provide them with about 50,000 hectares of land to grow cotton.

Yet, a short walk down memory lane reveals that any crop grown on a plantation thrives on the backs of thousands of workers who are usually paid a pittance for their back-breaking work done under a scorching sun. Sugar and cotton are perfect examples of these crops and it was no surprise that their appetite for cheap but hard-labour is what gave rise to the trans-Atlantic slave trade that sucked in millions of Africans.

It is equally not surprising that the people stuck in those plantations still live some of the most wretched lives in America and the former West Indies despite being free agents and the produce being heavily subsidised.

European markets

It is these poor working conditions and State subsidies that make it difficult for cotton and its products to be competitive in the US and European markets unless their producers are paid even more wretched wages. Given these realities, the conclusion should be that these expected investments need to be more closely scrutinised. At the very least, the investors should not be given the land they are asking to grow cotton.

Instead, the Government through the ministries of agriculture, water and industrialisation should come up with a strategy to help farmers in the cotton growing counties get the best out of their produce. The beauty of this is that the farmers will grow other crops to supplement their incomes.

A plan similar to the one being mooted and dubbed, “Green Agri-Business Initiative” to be implemented by the Ministry of Devolution might be a good place to start. The Ministry of Industrialisation might do well to go back to the drawing board to craft a strategy similar to the brilliant one it recently unveiled for the leather industry that involves scores of local investors.

This is unless, of course, the inspiration, time and resources that went into drawing up the leather industry strategy were industry specific and are not transferable.

This is where governors from the counties that previously thrived in cotton growing can make their contribution by using their powers of persuasion to goad the national government into action and contribute seed money from their own budgets.

One immediate benefit would be that the country would save part of the over Sh50 billion it spends importing raw materials to manufacture vegetable oils which would most likely have been exported to China.

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