Of Senate impasse and the poverty of thought

At Timboroa centre on the Eldoret-Nakuru highway lies two disused market blocks on both sides of the road. Motorists stop and hurriedly buy from the many fresh vegetable hawkers roaming around – they come cheaply.

Occasionally, traffic police use the markets as a holding ground for motorists caught speeding. It is where Ndung’u has sold me tasty roast maize for a while. “Leo unabeba fresh?” he asks before disappearing into the thickets and emerging with cabbages, carrots and potatoes plus of course fresh maize. It is strange that I usually buy without looking at what I am paying for. We settle on a price and off I go.

In Baringo, hundreds, even thousands of goats, are being prepared for the annual goat auction at Kimalel in December. Because of Covid-19, this year might be a no-show. In Murang’a, there is still unfinished business on the avocado export craze. In a fit of rage over the third generation formula, the governor, Mwangi wa Iria recently threatened to charge for water used in the city.

He could give ideas to Alex Tolgos of Elgeyo Marakwet. The water supply to Eldoret (in Uasin Gishu) is from Chebara Dam in his county. By any measure, devolution is the jewel of the 2010 Constitution. Yet despite the promise it offers, it faces many pitfalls.

Top of the list is corruption, wastage and cronyism. It also faces grave danger from those suffering the hangovers of the times past when a few policy wonks in faraway Nairobi held the yam and the knife.

But the most potent danger is from the lack of thought and the Senate isn’t helping matters much. Though there is a legal justification for the one-man-one-vote mantra, there is no moral justification for it. In fact, it borders on the ‘it is our turn to eat’ ideology that often leads to State capture. Should those from sparsely populated regions “go ye and fill up the earth” then be welcomed into the eating club?

Inequality perverts politics. The influence of the rich on the policymakers is a reason, economists say, of the instability in most of the world.

Yet as Harvard professors Clayton Christensen, Efosa Ojomo and Daren Dillon argue in my favourite book, The Prosperity Paradox, the problem is that no one has thought or created innovations that can lift nations out of poverty. All that most of our leaders are engaged in has been trying to “fix the visible signs of poverty”. A few or none of them are preoccupied with schemes that will create lasting prosperity. What difference would a chips shop make in Timboroa or at Marula?

Until recently, one would not find ready meat at Koriema or Muserechi where Justin’s Stage Butchery serves delicious goat meat daily. No county has gone out of its way to attract the best labour and capital with good amenities and public utility infrastructure.

The frenzy after 2013 when every one of them got onto planes to benchmark abroad was exposed as another of those follies of electing ne’er-do-wells and expecting miracles. After so many trips abroad and thousand-pages of county integrated development plans, there is little to show other than that mouthful acronym. By design, county governments are beggars. Each year, all of them stand in line with an outstretched arm and a bowl.

The default was that each would bake their own cake and eat it.

It is this almost parasitic relationship with the central government that is breeding the demagoguery we see out here in the countryside where governors enjoy demigod status trailed all over the place by chase cars with blaring sirens and a battalion of bodyguards.

Isn’t it poverty of thought that rather than think of ways to generate more wealth from their fiefdoms, the best some of them will gift their counties is a palatial home of the governor?

It is tempting to side with those calling for a win-win formula, but short of that what else is being offered to Mandera or Lamu besides the nuisance value from blooding Jubilee Party’s nose?

A discussion that revolves around receiving and less on how to generate wealth for sustainability dooms the population to want and poverty. The senators agitating for equity deserve plaudits. They should also go further and demand that the funds go into self-sustaining ventures.

Moreover, devolution and federalism is a success in USA, Germany and China because each region positioned itself as a centre of investment: A tax relief here, less crime and cheap rent there, gender-friendly labour laws there, good roads and reliable supply of water and electricity has made some of them investment magnets.

It would take less effort to market some of our regions. Security, labour and rent are some of the costs putting off investors from Nairobi. Away from the city, rent in Eldoret is cheap, crime is less prevalent and labour is cheaply available.

Mr Kipkemboi is an Associate Editor at The Standard.  
@AndrewKipkemboi