Kenya in 2023: A case of being in motion without any movement

Labourers sharpening knives in Nyeri Town. [Kibata Kihu, Standard]

If 2023 was the year of “finyaa!” and pain for Kenyans, doesn’t 2024 already feel like it might be “finyaa squared”?

Yes, the New Year is a time of hope and optimism but, barely a fortnight in, the final part of Finance Act 2023 kicked in (even though technically all still in court) and, right on cue, President William Ruto has decided the time is right to put the Judiciary on trial for frustrating his flagship programmes (or as Senator Okiya Omtatah put it in his coruscating response “pet projects”).

An interesting point emerges from this Judiciary debate. We were made to understand that voting in the Kenya Kwanza administration was never about any war on corruption.  It was about “the economy”, not about “governance and the rule of law”. We will return to the whole question of an anti-graft agenda in the second part of this article, including the now copywrited sudden leadership discovery that “mambo ni matatu” as a response to real delivery challenges.

But there is a larger thought in play. In the daily lens of everyday Kenyans, the Kenya Kwanza administration has plenty of motion without movement. Moving into 2024, it is not unreasonable to suspect that we might move from this motion without movement to rhetoric without results. In this pessimistic context, by the time we get to 2025, we will be focused on the 2027 election as the next battle about zero-content “whom” when it should be about “what”. God help us!

Indeed, this administration might not have delivered on a manifesto self-described as “The Plan”.

Of course, this plan has not been translated, then published, as an actual sessional paper, policy or strategy available to our pliant Parliament and the general public (which might suggest that the entire Kenya Kwanza program (and budgets therein) lacks the imprimatur of legality or constitutionalism), and we will continually imbibe the regular regularity of roadside declarations.

To be clear, Narc took the time to translate their election manifesto into an economic recovery strategy. Actually, even Kanu had manifestos that they translated into development plans. It didn’t matter whether or not we liked these parties. At least we knew what they planned for us.

We are still prefacing 2024. The Azimio minority that was a majority straight after the election is tongue-tied on these basics. At the technocratic and bureaucratic level of our civil service, translating Kenya Kwanza’s Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda (BETA) into medium-term strategy, and daily operations has become, to quote an insider who shared thoughts, an experience of “announcements from car rooftops”. Before wondering what work our national Monitoring and Evaluation directorate is up to.  Remember, we still have not seen the Fourth Medium Term Plan under Kenya Vision 2030 as the policy vehicle to deliver “The Plan” and BETA.

This is probably why our media was boringly stuck with the same questions to the president in late 2023 as they had in early 2023. There are no official targets on which to base questions seeking answers. Indeed, a quick scan of recent sector reports that are supposed to inform the budget tells us, other than the budget impunity of over-bidding for resources, that the administration’s agenda is far from being mainstreamed into daily bureaucratic action. This is probably fantastic influencing territory for our development partners.

If we don’t have an agenda, then their agenda works. This would be terribly disappointing.  If we were honest, BETA (in its implications because it is not in official writing) could be transformational for Kenya in the long run. An objective view would understand the upheaval necessary to transform the economy we call Kenya. This view would better communicate winners and losers in this policy adventure.

What is Kenya Kwanza’s policy adventure? In simple terms there are two parts. The first is to “stabilise” the monetary economy. This has necessarily been reactive, by example, raising interest rates to slow inflation and invite foreign money to pay for the cost of government even as private sector borrowing faces a rising squeeze. At the same time, raise revenue from every source humanly known to rapidly fix what looks like our deadly Sri Lanka/Ghana/Zambia debt combo.

With Bretton Woods support, of course. Sadly, we are fiscally indisciplined without this support.

The second is to “transform” the real economy. Not only is this an exciting idea but, done well, is probably an importantly proactive economic moment for Kenya. Agriculture and its value added will be an important base for our economic transformation. But it’s more than that.

Value adding agriculture accelerates us to agro-processing as our stepping stone to actually making real things (manufacturing), aggregating them (trade), clustering them (industrialization) and supporting them (services).  This is the disciplined path to the local jobs we need and deserve.

Let’s continue with agriculture as our example. The sector budget bidding report offers us stuff like public-private partnerships, ICT for e-subsidies, e-extension and digital food balance sheets.  The last Kenya Kwanza powerpoint I saw spoke to three pillars – food security, reduce imports and grow exports. This all sounds like we have a government agenda without government.

Yet, it is the real economy that we must fix. This probably requires an official realisation that the government is not the economy, and more importantly, the economy is not the government. Without this realisation, the ongoing policy adventure is mutating into primitive accumulation.

As said, we will return to the question of graft in the next piece. It determines our elections.

Once anger about courts is cooled down, here is what I expect of this policy adventure in 2024.

On Kenya Kwanza’s six outcome promises. Real action on the cost of living. Better results on jobs (with visa-free we want to export jobs and import visitors?). Actual food security and sovereignty (starting with farmers owning Kenya Seed, New KCC and the two rice mills). Think of these as the people outcomes that really need to be the basis of official communications.

Then governmental outcomes. Enhanced tax base. Improved forex earnings. Inclusive growth.

Let’s put this more easily. This Kenya Kwanza administration – working without a normal planning document in policy and law – promised six outcomes based on five pillars (agriculture,  health care, housing, MSMEs and digital/creative). Three of these five pillars are now in court.

Which explains reality in the president’s apparent anger. If this unpublished agenda works, we begin to fix the real economy. The trouble seems to be that not all the wheels are turning the right way. The housing agenda should not mean painful evictions and reckless demolitions. The universal health agenda might have started with a baseline to clean up the 40 per cent that are our “bad hospitals”.  Lest we forget, the Hustler Fund is still in court with public/private questions.

In proper English, we might say the ideas are good, but the execution is terrible.  Kenyans want serious transformation, and this requires serious transformational leadership, not bad moods.

If we go back to the beginning, Kenyans will accept “Finyaa squared”.  It starts with our leaders.

It also starts with a real war on graft, waste and corruption that always seems to define how we vote (at elections), and behave (between elections).  Let’s talk about this in Part 2 of this article.

Meanwhile, 2024 is an opportunity to deepen Kenya’s policy adventure. Less anger is needed. If 2023 felt like motion without movement, this year we cannot afford rhetoric without results.