Could Kenya copy South Korea model?

The visit by US President Barack Obama was not just historic, but some of his words in speech should be given fertile ground, nurtured and nourished by the republic he spoke fondly about. The sweetness of the narration of a loving son to his folks should not run away with the hard realities, but should be reduced to a workable formula.

We propose to pick up one point in this discussion. Mr Obama went beyond words and used his hands to explain a point (may be because of the weight of the matters)on the economy. 'Kenya's economy is also emerging - and the entrepreneurial spirit that people rely on to survive in the streets of Kibera can now be seen in new businesses across the country. When I came here as a US senator, I pointed out that South Korea's economy was the same as Kenya's when I was born, and then was 40 times larger than Kenya's.

Think about that. It started at the same place - South Korea had gone here, and Kenya was here. But today, that gap has been cut in half just in the last decade. Which means Kenya is making progress.' Kenyans have heard enough about bringing their economy to be at par with South Korea. What they have never been told is the South Korean blueprint. The proverbial devil's details. The thrust of the model is an appreciation that the majority of people live in the rural areas. May be 80 per cent if not more in most economies.

So that even if there are super highways at the city – like Thika Road- the rural areas may not 'feel' the changes directly. As the middle class continues to become urban, the rural remain ever more poorer. The South Korea genius was what has popularly been called the Saelmaulundong. The new village movement, a movement that brings together politics, belief systems, capital and human resource in concert to achieve an objective. This time it was to rectify living standards between the urban and the rural.

The Saemaulundong movement was a movement associated with the administration of the late President Park, the father of the current President Geun Hye Park. The campaign started as a village - rural infrastructural development, capacity building and attitudinal change and income generation.

President Park started the phenomena that is now celebrated the world over. He made the movement the top priority of government. Visiting villages, inviting villages to Cabinet meetings in order to create a holistic and horizontal mobilising machine. Everybody in government sang the song. Until it was ingrained in the national psych. The actual deliverables then came automatically.

The focus should be empowering the villages to start thinking and doing things in concert. Empowering them in their local ideals. That template needs to be relooked for our 80 per cent rural economies if Kenya is to stride towards reducing the 20 per cent Mr Obama spoke about. President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy have an opportunity of a Kenyan equivalent of this concept by political commitment, motivation, political rallying call and incorporated in every local context.

This, we propose, is what will put a firm stop to the slip of the shilling as Kenyans stop the temporary measures of raising interest rates. It is a call for economic warriors at the national level to look at how what is stated above can be actualised. Any meaningful economic development cannot take place without requisite legal instruments to prop and support it.

In Kenya, the fastest growing areas of the economy are in ICT and telecommunication related fields and we need warriors to put in place necessary laws and enforcement agents that truly believe that economic development ordinarily receives constant jabs from sound laws.

The decision by the Attorney General to block or reprimand the minister in charge of ICT for drawing regulations "without consulting him" is a pointer to how to some state actors can use their positions to prevent the protection of the consumers and the development and advancement of entrepreneurs in the ICT field.

The Attorney General by his action has demonstrated double speak and double standards for when the Security Amendment Bills were being discussed last year, he took an ambivalent position tantamount to suggesting that he was not supporting the drafting that informed the said laws, but at the same time, went ahead to defend them in Court.

Not all bills and proposed regulations should pass through the Attorney General in order for them to acquire any legal efficacy if in the long run, they are enacted by Parliament.

The Attorney General, the Competition Authority of Kenya and other regulators should work in tandem with other institutions recognised by law to drive a true economic development agenda. Obstructionist attitude cannot spur economic development and possibly make us achieve even a quarter of what Mr Obama said.