To prosper, cities must do away with archaic, rigid processes

Kenya's top five cities have, this month, experienced a mixed bag of leadership fortunes following the August 8 General Election.

For the next five years, Nairobi, Kisumu and Nakuru will have a completely new face of leadership while Mombasa and Eldoret stuck with the status quo.

Nairobi welcomes the 'action man' Mike Mbuvi Sonko as governor while Kisumu has political scientist and economist Anyang' Nyong'o. The lukewarm Lee Kinyanjui will be in charge of Nakuru.

Ali Hassan Joho will continue his "sultanish" style to run Mombasa while Jackson Mandago could well retain his colourless flair in Eldoret, the city of champions.

Why the city is important

These big cities contribute more than two-third of the incomes in their respective counties with Nairobi having an even bigger stake by contributing 60 per cent of the National Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

By virtue of the critical role these cities play in the overall health of the national economy, and considering that none of them has any tangible transformative results worth writing about in the last five years, I hold the view that we cannot move forward by doing the same thing all over again.

Kenyan cities are in dire need of leadership that seeks to overturn the red tape that has stalled any meaningful development in the first era of devolution. A walk through any of these cities does not reveal any iota of a better life since 2013.

The new leaderships, in my view, must be ready to discard bureaucracy, and adopt more modern, digital and 'revolutionary" routes to service delivery. Bureaucracy is no longer compatible with the growing demands of the 21st century cities.

Nairobi perhaps presents the best example of a city that desperately needs a radical shift to its style of operation. We no longer need the blue chip ideas on transforming this city. We only need a bold political figurehead to fix some of the ailing systems.

We have a century old sewer and a road network system that serve five times more population than when they were built. Our garbage sites only hold twenty per cent of all the waste we produce.

Water received in the city for consumption is far much less than we need for basic use. A rigid bureaucracy is largely to blame for making Nairobi dysfunctional.

These problems do not require a lot of paperwork to decipher their solutions. In fact, the city resident, accustomed to the short cut syndrome, would care so much about the end result rather than the process.

For example, they wouldn't bother which company won the tender to collect garbage. Instead, their focus would be how clean the city is. Governor Mike Sonko has a lot on his shoulders. It is during his tenure that Nairobi will either slid deeper into service delivery quagmire or rise out of the mess we found ourselves in in the name of technocratic leadership by former Governor Evans Kidero.

What was so tough about keeping public service vehicles out of the city centre and let them operate from the designated out of town termini? What became of the mass transit project that would have brought big capacity buses?

Mr Sonko has no choice but to deliver results. To perform, he will need to take about three areas of biting challenges and perfect the desired change. He must not care so much about loss of political support from parties with vested interests.

Sooner rather than later

The sooner he begins the better for the healing that must surely arise from the ruthless implementation of such drastic change. The ordinary Nairobian has been deeply hurt by the lie that was the leadership by a technocrat.

It is high time that the new city leadership became inclusive and transformative for it to achieve the desired developmental milestones. At least we have learnt from our mistakes at the onset of devolution and this is a time to make amends. All we want is smooth flow of traffic, water in our taps and a clean environment to live and work in.

 

Mr Kimaru is a Kenyan political scientist working for the UN in The Gambia; [email protected]