Munene: Forget the myths, only massive production will develop Kenya

In Kenya today, the quest to get rich and be part of the growing culture of conspicuous consumerism has become a cult of sorts. We all want to live large, drive fast, expensive cars and generally lead a flamboyant life in fairy-tale citadels tucked inside leafy suburbs.

In its wake, this madness has left a trail of crime, envy, huge loans and, of course, heartbreak when your dazzling spouse leaves you wallowing in your sludgy abode in the slums to move in with your newly rich childhood friend.

This hysteria has added, as it were, a new sub-sector in the economy, where conmen fashion themselves as ‘Mganga Majini Saba from Zanzibar’ who claims, through a manila-paper notice pinned on a tree on Mombasa Road, to be able to ‘trap rich men, accelerate promotion at work’  and perform such miracles as guaranteeing your rich husband comes back home. Or making your business to start giving birth to miracle super profits.

In the political arena, the itching need to get elected and earn a humongous package, keep a well-taken-care-of harem and cream allowances off useless junkets abroad, even when your highest level of education was at a village driving school, has seen many consulting witchdoctors and spewing all sorts of insults and hateful vitriol at political rallies. 

We have even killed one another for it! So you step back and ask yourself, are we getting rich as a country or are we just competing to pocket cash without cutting a sweat?

It is here that the gloomy picture emerges. Despite the huge traffic jams occasioned by debt cars imported from the East, we don’t produce much.

We have armies of young men and women who have no jobs yet they are willing to work.

A good part of them have given up, and spend the nights robbing drunk patrons on Moi Avenue. Their sisters board matatus every evening at Githurai and spend the whole night drugging groggy bar patrons and divesting them of cash.

Of course one may get quite some cash this way, and buy a small car – small enough to pass for a lawnmower with a driver’s seat and a registration number.  But this new ‘wealth’ just like tenderprenuership does not make this country richer, especially if it wolfed down on frothy drinks and half-cooked nyama choma.

We need to, as a matter of urgency, galvanise the energy of our virile youths into productive work and produce more goods and services for export.

I think that should be the spirit of Vision 2030. Unfortunately, every two-bit Nairobi con is now hiding behind Vision 2030 to fleece us.

The politicians thump their chests that they hold the key to Kenya’s take-off but as Walt Whitman Rostow taught the world in 1960, a country’s path from hunter-gatherer subsistence to a life of creature comforts and luxury hinges on its ability to move away from producing food for subsistence to producing enough to afford its citizens a bit of luxury.

It is the trick China’s visionary, poet and statesman Chairman Mao Zedong (Tse Tung), for all his human rights infamy, infused into the 1949-1976 Great Leap Forward policy that catapulted China to where it is today.

It was the path taken by Europe from its hand-to-mouth days, through agrarian and industrial revolutions.
Europe upped their production levels to a point where they had to colonise the rest of the world, including our grandfathers, for cheap labour and to market their overflowing goods and services.

So now, forget the fake city witchdoctors and their miracle capabilities. Forget the clueless tribal chiefs and their electrifying non-speeches and even China and the West  and their fabled development aid.

The key to Kenya’s take-off lies in its ability to produce massive amounts of goods and services – and oil, of course.

Our next worry will then be how to make it all spill all over the world to get us foreign exchange.

So, there you have it. Peel your eyes on the production ball!

The writer is Revise Editor at The Standard