It will be a different world in 2030 with unique challenges

Twelve years ago, Kenya unveiled its long-term development blue-print in which the country hoped to become a middle-income country, providing its citizens with a high standard of living. 

One of the speakers during the official launch of Vision 2030 was former Prime Minister Raila Odinga, a man who, as pundits would put it, has straddled Kenya’s political landscape like a colossus.

Raila took the stage moments after a young lady had eloquently spoken about her aspirations for Kenya. She was young, probably in her late 20s or early 30s. Vision 2030

She came off like the kind that would certainly live to see 2030, and come up with a verdict on whether the dream of turning Kenya into a newly industrialising “middle-income country providing a high quality life to all its citizens” had been realised.

The then Prime Minister jokingly requested her to pass a message to Kenyans in 2030, letting them know that there once lived people like him, Raila.

Raila, 74, could easily live through the next decade. What is not clear is whether his political ideas will outlive the next elections and the next after that of 2022.

Will voters in 2027, including many who will not have experienced the presidency of Moi, Kenya’s second head of state, care so much about such things as the freedom of assembly and freedom of speech which have been at the heart of Raila’s popularity?

Ideologies

Most likely, a lot of what the former Premier and many of the current crop of political leaders did or stand for, will be ancient history to most of the 2030 population.

In 2027, it will be the turn for the Facebook generation to go to the polls. Kenyans who are younger than Facebook and Twitter, and who will have lived with these social media or new ones, will go to the polls.

How will they vote- if they will vote at all? Will they vote along tribal or ideological lines? And if they vote along ideological lines, which ideologies will they be?

Some historians warn against trying to determine the future trajectory using the present realities. Most people will try to fashion the future of Kenya based on MPesa, a ubiquitous mobile transfer service, but who really foresaw the advent of MPesa in the first place?

There could be a revolutionary innovation or a cataclysmic natural calamity which could alter the course of history, they warn.

But the temptation to have a peek into the future is irresistible. And what better way to do it than by looking back from where a society comes from and extrapolating that into the future? At Sunday Standard, we have decided to look at Kenya in 2030.

Some things are almost certain to happen. Kenya’s population is almost certain to grow, analysts have projected that by 2030 there will be 60 million Kenyans. But will the economy keep expanding?

Shall Kenyans in 2030 be voting to, for example, legalise marijuana or prostitution? Will they be raising a ruckus on Twitter for interruption of internet services as they do about electricity? Will access to quality internet be a right just as healthcare, education and clean drinking water?

Will Kenya have attained universal access to electricity, and consigned power black-outs to the Kodak dust-bin? Projections show that by 2030, everyone will access electricity in Kenya.

Intelligent medical adviser

Mobile telephony - the operation and use of mobile phones - has transformed Kenya in a big way. What more changes will this technology make on political, economic and social spheres?

Today, three in four Kenyans own a mobile phone. Nearly 90 per cent have internet in their mobile handsets.

Thus, they shop, save, borrow, invest, and pay bills using their mobile phones. They work, play, read, watch from their smartphones. But what more shall they do with their mobile phones in 2030?

Will Kenyans also be using the phone to diagnose themselves? Of course, there are apps such as Babylon, an artificially intelligent medical advisor with which people have self-diagnose. Will such apps be common in Kenya of 2030?

With artificial intelligence (AI)- computer systems are able to perform tasks requiring human intelligence. This could include anchoring news (China) or underwriting insurance policies (Japan).

Will Kenyans also vote using their mobile phones?

Well, if a proposal by a taskforce on Blockchain technology led by former ICT Permanent Secretary Bitange Ndemo, as adopted, and with political consensus reached, Kenyans in 2030 could vote online on their mobile phones.

The taskforce noted that the incessant electoral violence that Kenyans have suffered in the last 20 years whenever one party alleges stolen votes “could be a problem of the past if we embraced Blockchain and AI.”

Blockchain is a technology in which digital information (the “block”) are stored in a public database (the “chain”).

Blocks store information about transactions like the date, time, participant in the transaction and even more critical, they store information that distinguishes one block from another through a complex encryption process where each transaction is assigned a unique code. As a result, the possibility of double-voting or double-spending virtually impossible.

“We have recommended a gradual implementation starting with election of Members of County Assembly in order to build the much-needed confidence before it is used nationally for presidential vote tallying,” read the report, taking the cue from Sierra Leone which had done their tallying of Presidential election results using the technology that also powers bitcoins.

After the digitisation of the land registry, blockchain could also find a role at the Lands Ministry. ICT Cabinet Secretary Joe Mucheru said last year that the government was working on a blockchain database aimed at weeding out fake title deeds from the land registry.

Known as the single source of truth (SSOT), the database will be the primary reference for all land transactions.

“At the moment, there are people who come up with fake title deeds and all manner of things. We need to create a single source of truth, which we are already working on as government,” he said. Perhaps in 2030, there will be no paper title deeds.

Technology is a double-edged sword. These technologies- Blockchain, AI, Data analytics, Robotics, 3-D printing, Internet of Things (IoT)- will dramatically alter the labour market as the country moves into the fourth industrial revolution.

Jobs that could easily be automatable will be taken up by machines in the next 10 years, according to a 2017 report by management consultant McKinsey which looked at the future of work in over 50 countries, including Kenya.

Creatives such as designers, artists, entertainers, authors will be safe. Those managing people and jobs in unpredictable environments—occupations such as gardeners, plumbers, or providers of child and eldercare—will also generally see less automation by 2030, according to McKinsey.

However, activities most susceptible to automation such as operating machinery and preparing fast food will most likely be done by machines.

“Collecting and processing data are two other categories of activities that increasingly can be done better and faster with machines,” noted the report by McKinsey which cited mortgage origination, paralegal work, accounting, and back-office transaction processing as some of the jobs that will be automated.

As an article in CNBC put it, in the next decade skills will be in high demand, not academic papers. After all, almost everyone will have the papers. Competence is what will separate the wheat from the chaff. It will be interesting to see how the current crop of pupils undertaking the Competency-based Curriculum (CBC) will perform given that by then they will be in college.

By 2030, two in five Kenyans will be living and working in town, from the current levels of 30 per cent, according to a 2016 report on urbanisation in Kenya by the World Bank. By then, Nairobi metropolitan is likely to see a population explosion with the number of city residents jumping to six million from current 4.4 million.

Walking to their farms

A good number of the urban dwellers in 2030 will be driving to their offices, rather than walking to their farms. So far, Kenya is largely a walking nation, with a 2016 report by the World Bank showed that 83 per cent of all trips in Nairobi include walking as the primary or secondary mode of travel.

If they are not walking, a lot of Nairobians are on a matatu, from which they still have to complete the last leg of the trip on foot. “Compared with other African primary cities, Nairobi has the largest share of walking trips,” reads part of the report by the World Bank, which notes that only 17 per cent of all trips are made without walking.

However, since 2009, new registered motor vehicles in a year have increased from 70,000 annually to 100,000 in 2018, according to official data. 

Registration of new motor-cycles and tuk-tuk reached a peak of 222,000 in 2017 from 92,000 ten years ago, so much that today most last-miles of a trip are completed using boda-boda. How will it be in 2030? More ride-hailing taxis? More boda-boda? Bus Rapid Transit? Will there be trams as the one France plans to build from Nairobi Railway station to the airport?

Will Kenyans be rich and lazy, as a result of all the convenience that comes with urbanisation?

Perhaps the most busiest offices will be those of nutritionists and gym instructors.

Using their phones they will order food, pay bills, and hail a cab from the comfort of their workstations.

In a fast economy, they might eat fast-food: junk food that is high in calories from sugar and fat, and little dietary fiber, protein, vitamins, minerals, or other important forms of nutritional value.

Because they are not walking as much as they used to, thus helping them break down the extra calories, they will battle lifestyle diseases.

New decade, new diseases. Malaria might not be the leading cause of morbidity. Perhaps the vaccine, currently being tried in some eight counties, will have been implemented. 

But they will be tormented by lifestyle diseases as Aids distressed Africans in the 1990s and early the start of the millennium before anti-retrovirus (ARVs), a drug used to prevent Aids-causing virus from replicating, became accessible and affordable. Cancer, diabetes and heart diseases have already started being a menace.

Drastically reduce

How will they shop? Currently, most of them shop from open air markets, general stores and kiosks. Only four per cent of Kenyans, according to a study by Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, purchase things from supermarkets. Will shopping habits change? Will the many malls that were developed in the last decade finally make sense?

How about in the region, will Kenyans still be living in East Africa’s strategic hub or will the title move to countries such as Tanzania which have been angling for that position?

Will Kenya’s economy overtake that of Ethiopia or will Ethiopia stretch its lead?

As of 2018, 23 per cent of women aged between 20 and 24 were either married or some union, known in local parlance as ‘come-we-stay.’ With everyone going to school, will those cases drastically reduce?

With increased urbanisation, with people moving into towns, shall we continue taking care of our elderlies or shall we live that to the state? Already, homes for senior citizens have been cropping up as more of them find themselves abandoned by a younger generation that is increasingly finding it hard to keep up with taking care of their children as well their parents.

But the state has gone beyond that, it has also since launched a cash transfer programme for the elderly as Kenya’s welfare state takes shape.