Yes, we need to re-imagine Kenya, but can Ruto lead the vision?

It was too easy to dismiss President William Ruto’s invitation to help him shape the country’s future through a proposed Vision 2060 blueprint as too little, too late, last week. While this initiative may not be the pathway to Singapore, the declaration does offer another opportunity for one more KenyaTuitakayo reflection.

The President’s 30 July national address sketched his vision for a long-range development framework for prosperity, open and accountable governance and constitutionalism built on national dialogue and consensus.

One week later, the presidential address has failed to generate any significant traction from civic, business, religious, political, or diplomatic leaders. Some described his announcement as being equivalent to an absentee parent planning another child before paying school fees for the one already at home.

Vision 2030 and the Vision 2030 Delivery Secretariat were significantly downgraded in favour of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors after the Kenya Kwanza administration assumed power in 2022. It is curious that Ruto has turned to a team of exclusively male, elderly and highly respectable members of the former Kibaki-Odinga administration for inspiration rather than the hustler economists who helped shape his rise. Perhaps another gift of the broad-based alliance?

The timing is more baffling. Kenya Kwanza has barely a year left of their political mandate. The President is currently governing with 50 per cent of the poll popularity he enjoyed in 2022. The space to host an inclusive national dialogue on Kenya’s future may have passed.

As communications experts guide us, without trust in the messenger, the message is lost. Americans might say this initiative is a day too late and a dollar or two short.

This said, re-imagining Kenya is still relevant. Kenyans directly face four interconnected challenges. We remain preoccupied with the high cost of living, unemployment, over-taxation and dwindling essential services. As ethnic mobilisers squabble among themselves and the current administration continues to borrow and recklessly spend, our creditors eat first, and most of the national pie.

According to Oxfam, one in two Kenyans live in extreme poverty, while the richest 125 enjoy more wealth than 43 million fellow citizens. It is these gross inequalities and persistent misgovernance that fuel rights violations, crime, low productivity, and social instability. Rather than address these development failures and the breakdown of public trust, the nation is increasingly being managed through coercion rather than coordinated reform.

Our planners may be tempted to return to a social welfare model. This would be a mistake. The public debt burden offers no opportunity for the state to use our taxes for meaningful distribution.

Instead of relying on post-tax redistribution models or exporting Kenyans to work abroad unprotected, we must now tackle domestic disparities in power, ownership, and opportunity, not just income, as legal scholar Maia Borchardt argues.

A market economy that excludes most people and a taxation-heavy state cannot deliver broad prosperity. Rather than distributing scraps after wealth is created, foreign creditors are paid, and tenderpreneurs and corrupt government allies have their way, a new vision would focus on widening access to assets, capital, skills, and market opportunities.

Rather than selling Safaricom shares to Vodacom, we could use our anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws to broaden public ownership by de-concentrating our telecommunications, energy, banking, and cement sectors. We could require worker and consumer representation on large corporate boards, expand credit guarantees for SMEs, reserve more procurement opportunities for youth, women, and local firms, and invest consistently in education, health, and the digital infrastructure.

We could also strengthen informal sector associations so they can negotiate better support and protection. Finally, any new framework for the future must internalise and draw clear strategies for the new deals-based world order, climate disruption, entrenched global inequalities and rising international authoritarianism.

Whether the President's Vision 2060 team can spark a meaningful national conversation remains to be seen. The need for a new vision is not in doubt. The real question is whether the Presidency can credibly convene and lead it while battling deep stakeholder scepticism that this may be another case of accelerating for crowd approval with the handbrake on.