Can Ruto's mega projects woo restive Gen Zs to win a second term in office?

 Presidents William Ruto and Yoweri Museveni at the official launch of Kisumu-Malaba SGR at Kibos, Kisumu County. [PCS]

With the Tuko Kadi wave sweeping across the country like a spell, President Ruto has new reason to worry in his bid for a second term at State House. Initially, there were fears that the Gen Zs may not be a significant constituency in the 2027 elections when the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) attempts to register new voters last year flopped.

If the excitement we are witnessing on social media over the ongoing voter registration excise are true, then it may imply that the ghosts of the 2024 revolutionary wave have been awoken. As things stand, even a parliamentary denial of the IEBC's request for funding for the exercise will not stop them. After all, the youth are telling the Commission that you do not need millions of taxpayers money to register us. There are better and cost-effective methods to pass the same message to targeted voters.

However, the vintage William Somoei Ruto seems to have caught the mood of the day and now wants to turn it into his favour. His opposition critiques haven’t been left behind as they seek to share on the spoils too.

The question that remains for debate is: will the political elites succeed in forestalling the wave or turn it in their favour?

From an analytical point of view, it will be naïve for anyone to assume the ‘Tuko Kadi’ movement is a purely organic initiative from the youth. While it may have acquired a life of its own on social media, it definitely has originated from somewhere either within the political circles or civil society civic engagements.

Similar to the 2024 Gen-Z revolt, the movement is definitely outgrowing whoever initiated it. With the ongoing trend, it is possible that the target 6.3 million voters may be surpassed, except by IEBC systems failures. It his hoped that the Commission will not become a stumbling block to the desires of the new voters.

Further, it would also be naïve for the opposition brigade to assume that the new registrations are only an anti-Ruto movement. If the trends from 2024 are anything to go by, the wave could as well be aimed at draining the entire political swamp. Any seating politician must tread carefully before casting their lot with the movement.

For this column however, what is going on among the voting demographics is something deeper than the political elites want to admit. For instance, how is it that either of the political groupings can easily mobilize thousands of people to political rallies consecutively on working days when it is not a campaign period? Why is it either side can easily hire goons to disrupt events of opponents for a pittance?

This trend point to systemic structural defect in the country’s labour market. In last week’s article, this column discussed official evidence from a report on poverty and distributional impacts of fiscal policy that indicates that despite high labour participation rate, the available jobs are highly informal and low in productivity. That explains why politicians can easily buy armed militias for a day with as low as sh.500. For majority of informal workers, this amount is way above their average daily wage rates.

Walking back to the 2022 campaign season, it is also easy to trace why the Hustler narrative, translated into the Bottom-up Transformation Agenda (BETA) resonated very well with the voting masses. At the time, President Ruto projected an image of “I am one of you”, except for God’s grace and luck.

Three years down the line, all indicators point that the BETA narrative has failed to generate the desired outcomes where it matters most. Hailed as a game changer, the Hustler Fund has rescinded into a shadow on job creation. The Nyota programme fire seems to have died even before its embers could flicker in household incomes.

With no space left to design new initiatives that can have large scale impact at household level, President Ruto’s only remaining card seems to be the big infrastructure projects that he has commissioned in the past few months. This week, the Kenya Railways Managing Director indicated that the extension of the Standard Gauge Railway Line is projected to generate about 65,000 jobs. The Rironi -Mau Summit road project is estimated to create about 15,000 direct jobs.

The Talanta Stadium project is estimated to have created 3,300 jobs daily while the Bomas of Kenya complex 2,200 - 3,000 jobs daily. Projections on the Affordable Housing Programme indicate that 320,000 jobs had been created by July 2025 (with other data sources reporting 428,000 jobs).

To the government supporters and regime apologetics, this is surely a feat not achieved by any other administration since independence. For them, the road to Singapore is luminous.

At the community level and on social media, there are believable pointers that folks do not feel President Ruto on tangible outcomes. The analytical question is why is this the case?

On a casual AI search on the number of jobs created by the SGR project phase one and two, the returns are that while government reports projected that 46,000 direct jobs were created, multiple independent studies showed that verifiable direct jobs were between 20,000 to 30,000. This alludes to potential data exaggerations by the government to cover-up for legitimate economic viability and value for money concerns.

Thus, when critiques of these mega projects raise questions on cost vs benefits analysis and bankable returns, they are not speaking from a point of ignorance. Furthermore, annual employment statistics by the official government statistician do not demonstrate any abnormal growth or shifts in the country’s labour market. The trend remains stable with 17:83 proportions between formal and informal jobs for the past three decades.

It is however, evidence on the dangers of high concentration of low productivity in a country’s labour market that should worry President Ruto and his camp. Low productivity in the labour market leads to stagnation in wages and poverty. This is because low productivity limits the ability of firms to pay higher wages, causing stagnation and trapping workers in low-income scenarios.

Other consequences are that while the country may even report employment growth, this may happen without consequent improvements in productivity. It may also lead to rise in inequalities within the economy.

This would explain the noticeable availability of many would be workers in political rallies during working days simply because a small pay has been daggled for appearance.

It is the same reason the political elites are able to sustain campaigns for five years, for as long as they can plunder public coffers to access handouts for their rallies.

The opportunity cost for majority of the professional attendees to political rallies is almost zero. In fact, many consider it as their full time job.

That’s why it is not uncommon to find school buses exporting crowds to rallies across the country.

As a concluding thought, while the political elite may exploit the low and semi-skilled populace for long, they must be cautious with the growing constituency of skilled, digital savvy generation that is unemployed due to the government’s own policy failures.

It is this generation that awoke the President from his aura of invincibility two years ago. Sufficiently radicalised and sustained into 2027, this young generation may turn the ‘Tuko Kadi’ slag into a political force never witnessed in any electoral cycle before. This is a force that even the political elites who thrive on stolen elections cannot stop!