Ridding country of corruption sure bet for progress

DPP Noordin Hajji leads the charge in the fight against graft. [Photo/Courtesy]

Former US President Barack Obama commended Kenya for the progress in the fight against corruption during a speech he gave while opening the Sauti Kuu Foundation centre in his father’s home village of Kogelo in western Kenya.

He talked about the enormous strides that have been made in recent times and that the barriers of progress have become less rigid over time, singling out the issues of corruption and ethnic differences. 

The theme of his speech was opportunity and he said that the youth education centre he was there to open, founded by his sister, was a sign of broadening opportunity that his father never had.

It is clear that the issue of corruption and opportunity are closely related, especially in today’s Kenya.

What the Big 4 offers

Thank goodness, through the Big 4 Agenda, President Uhuru Kenyatta has placed opportunity at the centre of things. Well executed, the goals of manufacturing, universal healthcare, affordable housing, and food security will afford millions of Kenyans great opportunity.

This agenda is not general but very specific. It is akin to killing four birds using one stone.

Among the plans is the creation of 1.3 million manufacturing jobs, achieving a 100 per cent health coverage for every Kenyan, raising the share of manufacturing sector from nine to 15 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP), expand food production and supply and build 500,000 affordable houses, by the end of his final term in 2022.

This agenda is about opportunity; the opportunity for Kenyans to have access to healthcare regardless of finances, the opportunity to have adequate shelter and a decent job. This is a vision which if met, will put Kenya well on the way to meeting the goals of Vision 2030, which are turning our nation into a newly-industrialising, middle income country “providing a high quality of life to all its citizens in a clean and secure environment”.

This will become the rising tide that raises all ships, because a nation which achieves these goals on the macro level will certainly ensure that a higher quality of life and greater opportunity will reach every Kenyan of all backgrounds.

We do not need President Obama to tell us that we have all the resources available to us in Kenya to succeed, from our hard-working people to our rich soils and strong industries. We know we have the wherewithal to get things donw. The only limitations are what we dare to dream and the ever existent scourge of corruption.

For far too long, great visions and strong agendas faltered because of the canker of corruption. It led us down the road to inequality of opportunity. The few made more and the many had their pockets pilfered time and again.

This has contributed to the rise in the income gap. That is an indisputable fact.

Hopefully, with Mr Kenyatta’s new double-headed agenda: matching progress and development with an unrelenting war on corruption, the tide could be turning and for once, our goals as a nation can be adequately met. And all of us will be happy.

Sometimes it takes an outsider’s voice, or in President Obama’s case, “a foreign-born son of Kenya”, to see what many have missed. Luckily, we have someone with equal vision and foresight who is tackling the issue head-on.

President Obama talked a lot about the challenges his grandfather and his father faced, and how they have withered away over the years; with his grandfather’s generation’s struggling against colonialism and foreign rule and his father’s generation struggling to receive an education for which he had to travel far from home.

It is hoped that at some point in the future when Malia and Natasha, President Obama’s daughters, visit, they will experience a Kenya unrecognizable even to their father.

Big dreams

It will be a place of great opportunity, where large-scale corruption represents a forgotten past and our republic will be a higher middle income nation with healthcare coverage for all, decent affordable housing, jobs and a bright future driven by our Silicon Savannah that is the envy of the world.

Don’t we dare to dream big? Our forefathers did and handed down a free country free from repressive colonial rule; others put their lives on the line for the so-called Second Liberation. Still we haven’t gotten the Kenyan we are all proud to call home. That goal is achievable.

Yes, we can.

This is the gauntlet laid down by President Obama. Let us pick it up.

Ms Korere is a Strategic Communication Consultant in Nairobi