Pegging State projects, services on people's loyalty is unfair

President William Ruto commissions the Othaya Sewerage Project in Othaya Town, Nyeri County, on August 7, 2023. [PCS, Standard]

Development is another word for peace, says Pope Paul VI. If we want peace, we should create an environment in which people are able to develop themselves. Doing and providing things for people is the best way to disempower them. This approach neither leads to peace nor yields meaningful development.

The Kenya Kwanza government has its blueprint of development, I believe, away from the hot air manifesto. Consequently, the performance contracts the administration has signed must have been pegged on some measurable outcomes. That is the good side of how the government wants to ensure citizens enjoy its service delivery.

However, the overall approach in the past year is evidently one of doing things for people and providing services to people in return for loyalty to the government. Rallies and meetings are all about the government doing this and that. The government is pushing to be felt in control of anything development.

Development studies and practice makes it very clear that no government, institution or organisation succeeds by pretending to be the one doing things for people. In fact, the whole point of public participation as a requirement in government budgeting, project design and implementation is to ensure people own their government.

Across the country, many markets and bus stages are not used by the intended beneficiaries. Why? People are never consulted. Enthusiastic leaders waste funds on programmes and projects that do not benefit society. The housing tax in the Finance Act was unsuccessfully resisted by the intended beneficiaries. In due time, it remains to be seen how the programme pans out and with what success. Experience shows that even good development intentions need to be examined before implementation.

Although governments are averse to unsolicited advice, some honest opinion for whoever cares to listen might be useful. First, the messianic approach being planted in the government is not developmentally sensitive. The government does not have to shoulder the burden of deciding what is good for the people except in extreme cases.

The government has a duty to create an enabling environment in which the people will, through structures and processes of decision making, decide for themselves the kind of projects and programmes they want. Imposing development projects on people creates an impression of white elephant projects in the making.

Second, when leaders donate projects as generous rewards, it takes away the people's power to use their God-given creativity to develop. There is a real danger of many African governments behaving like the Bretton Woods that we criticise for setting conditions for funding. As a result, people become disempowered because they can depend on the government generosity to provide. Credit to him, Mwai Kibaki, tried hard to end the serikali saidia dependency culture on government for everything.

Third, in spite of many peace initiatives to unite people, resource-based conflicts in ministries, parastatals and with the national government are many as often reported in media. The mega corruption cases we see point to ontological fears that people have. To solve that, they opt to acquire as much as possible since they are not sure of what tomorrow portends for them.

The government should purpose its development as a peace initiative. The development needed is not one that has strings attached. The much-discredited Building Bridges Initiative attempted to centre development on people but was thrown out. Thankfully, we are back to it in form of Bipartisan talks.

Fourth, I have no idea what has become of governors. We hardly hear of progressive governors initiating compelling development programmes that set standards higher. In the past, governors were the fulcrum around which development was anchored. Rarely do we hear of governors who are forward-looking through groundbreaking programmes. To empower people, achieve peace, let development be detached from politics of dependency.

Dr Mokua is the executive director of Loyola Centre for Media and Communication