Our economy is in turbulence, but the future looks bright

Kidi Mwaga, convenor of the Inter Parties Youth Forum.

The fundamentals of the economy may be weak, but the state of the nation remains hopeful even upbeat. The anxiety that may be piling up in households due to runaway taxes presents us with a window of opportunity to engage in national self-introspection. Do we want to organise our politics around ethnic identities or is it time to discard such relics and lay a firm foundation for a truly modern state to emerge?

The difficult economic situation we find ourselves in is in part due to the political choices that we have made in the past. We elected individuals whose primary objective was to fashion the State towards private profiteering and everything else came second. This then conflated our national priorities. As we have roads owned by private individuals, no major investment was undertaken to give a hand up to the majority of poor Kenyans. We hoped, maybe naively, that if we took care of the high and the mighty if we padded their pockets, then they would take care of the rest of Kenyans through personal charity.