Governors’ daunting task to uplift the poor

By Ken Opalo

This week, 47 county governments officially began their operations after the swearing-in of elected Governors and assembly officials.

Part of voters’ attention now shift from the central government in Nairobi to the county units. Expectations remain high on what county governments will achieve for wananchi. But will these new leaders deliver?

Their first task will, undoubtedly, be to manage expectations. Most voters do not understand the functions of the county governments as stipulated in the Constitution. Governors, therefore, must articulate what they can and cannot do for voters. This is especially critical in the wake of election promises made without regard for available resources. Beyond that, leaders must also think of ways to economically transform their counties. This is where their leadership abilities will be most tested.

Governing is hard. You just need to look at the history of the world to discover one failed government after another, even in cases where leadership had the political will to do what their citizens demanded. This should tell us that our culture of jua kali government – in which leaders govern based on personal discretion as opposed to sound public policy – will not deliver sustainable development and responsive Government.

For county governments to succeed, they have to adopt professional ways of designing, implementing and evaluating their projects. They will have to go through steep learning curves in order to master the intricacies of budgeting and general public finance management. And that is just the technical part. Real success will require Governors to provide transformational leadership and work with their neighbours. Unfortunately, many will fall short on this score.

Throughout the campaign period many of them were light on actual policies but heavy on theatre. Indeed, most rallies were more like entertainment concerts than political events.

The preferred campaign tactic of theatre over substance betrayed what these leaders think of Kenyans who still live in abject poverty. Many of them appear to believe for the common Kenyan there is a ceiling as to what they can achieve; that there are classes of wenye nchi and wananchi. That is why the leaders – and the wider economic upper class – live comfortably with the existence of slums that ring their leafy suburbs and provide cheap labour in the form of cooks and watchmen.

This is where we risk failure in the quest to achieve transformational economic change. A look at developed countries reveals that part of what drove their economic success was a desire by their economic and political elites to remake their respective publics in their own image. For instance, the great industrialist Henry Ford desired for the same factory workers that made the Model T to own them. That meant good pay and an infusion of middle class aspirations among even the working class.

As a result, today, in America, everyone aspires to middle class life. Back in Kenya, how many of our factory owners desire for their workers to be able to purchase the products they manufacture? How many of our politicians desire for real economic empowerment through decent jobs?

This neglect of our poor is reflected even in the ambitious Vision 2030 plan. The plan is laudable in its emphasis on infrastructure development. But it is short on concrete ideas for mass job creation. The emphasis on high tech jobs ignores the fact that the tech industry will only benefit a small group of Kenyans, most of them university graduates. What is needed for average Kenyan high school leavers – and this is almost two thirds of people who finish high school – are eight-to-five factory jobs paying a decent wage. So, as we set up our county governments, we must press our leaders for plans that will transform our socio-economic life, and not merely make us comfortable in our poverty. We must insist on the professional management of the county governments.

 Failure to do so will result in a two-tier devolved system in which some counties excel at service delivery and in promoting economic growth while others exist as cash cows for elected officials at the expense of wananchi.

The writer is a PhD candidate at Stanford University