Theory of KK's 2023-2027 as its Marking Scheme

Then DP and Kenya Kwanza presidential candidate, now President, William Ruto, during the launch of the KK manifesto at Moi International Sports Centre. [File, Standard]

As the 2026 Football World Cup (FWC) proceeds through the current last-16 knockout stages, it is worth reflecting on my different prediction made at the time of last year’s Tanzania election, that, if theirs was the quarter-final of regional electoral violence, Uganda’s in 2026 would be the semi-final and Kenya’s in 2027 the final.  It turns out that Uganda’s was far less violent.  With “goonism” clearly established as today’s “go-to” political tool, will Kenya still be the final violence?  Will goons be used to intimidate and harass the people to suppress the vote with violence?

Ironically, our 2027 election takes place a month after the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) football tournament we are jointly hosting with Tanzania and Uganda.  So, it’s not just June 25 and July 7 (Saba Saba) as potential flashpoints; we might be in a bad national mood if Harambee Stars underperforms.  It’s worth noting here that Kenya will host the AFCON final.

More telling is that Monday morning’s talk shows across all of our TV stations were about “goonism”.  Today’s question across the country is “Has government surrendered to goons, or is it the goon”?  Since we know from history that our “incumbency elections” are violent, this is a fair question.

As Kenyans today commemorate Saba Saba Day on its 36th anniversary, 2027 doesn’t look good.

The utopian dream, of course, is that we will go into 2027 seeking new leaders, or reaffirming the current ones, based on issues rather than identities; of ideas instead of individuals.  The height of this dream, as I always say, is that we will vote for “what” then “whom”, both after “why”. In other words, the vision, the plan and then the person best placed to deliver the two.

For the incumbent administration, this is a double-edged sword – on one side, the ability to claim a track record; on the other, serious difficulty in explaining shortcomings, like missed promises. With an election fast approaching, it is interesting how the bottom-up agenda and mega-projects now hold hands as we get “New Singapore” messaging about reaching first world in a generation.

The problem for the challengers, especially with the idea of a united opposition, seems to be one of chicken and egg; by focusing on the “whom” until the last minute, they will struggle to sell their coherent “why” (vision) and “what” (strategy/plan) in a way that gets voters to buy into their “whom”.  Which is why it is much easier to keep it at “wantam” as an identity fix right now.

Let’s recast our lens on today’s Kenya Kwanza, broad-based administration, but do it in a completely unusual way.  I want to do this to develop my rough theory of their current term. 

In the past, I have depicted their battle of wits between two “PAs” - Policy Adventure and Primitive Accumulation – as one view of their term of office.  Policy adventure?  You can see their list of bold, experimental, and largely top-down initiatives - Hustler Fund, SHA (universal health care), affordable housing and all manner of financing innovations in a tight fiscal space.  This is where we see a massive buzz of activity, but we’re not sure about the ends.  Primitive accumulation?  You sense it's everything from status quo corruption to shadowy and intentional state capture. 

Simply, policy adventure as the disruptive force, primitive accumulation as the controlling anchor.  Hence, the tension where the former shakes things up, but the latter keeps things stuck.

But this two-dimensional view doesn’t fully explain this electoral term; it focuses largely on human intent, or more specifically, politicians’ choices.  So, I have now changed my mind and expanded this depiction into a 2 by 2 matrix with four quadrants.  Policy adventure, as already described, is in the top left quadrant, while primitive accumulation is in the top right.  Below them is what we might call the hard reality, whether it's systemic or structural.  To be clear, these are also “PAs”.

The first hard reality (bottom left quadrant) is Political Accountability.  The 2023 “sufuria” protests, but mostly the 2024 Gen Z protests (and subsequent 2025 and 2026 commemorations) have brought political accountability right to the top of the 2027 question, even though this administration either doesn’t seem to get it or doesn’t want to get it.  It isn’t just about protest victims, but protest causes.  In the context of the quadrant, when you make big promises (top left) with blatant stealing (top right), the public eventually explodes.  This is the disruptive reality.

The second hard reality (bottom right quadrant) is Planning Atrophy.  I have said it many times before, but this administration (as well as the previous Jubilee one) essentially abandoned planning; everything today seems to jump straight from law (and occasionally, policy) to budgets.

Think of this as the deep structural anchor dragging everything down, and it isn’t a state secret.  Ironically, when the top left (policy adventure) demands speed, this bottom right cannot deliver because it isn’t even in the loop.  You only need to observe the disconnect between programs and performance indicators in national planning documents and those in national budget documents, and that’s before we get to the data stories in official speeches traceable to neither.

To be fair on planning atrophy, we heard in the 2026 Budget Statement that an Economic Planning Policy and Economic Planning Bill are in the works, although one suspects their content will be narrow and bureaucratically focused.  This is a pet subject to which I will return in the future.

I am not saying that this matrix frames the 2027 agenda; there is plenty of time to interrogate Kenya Kwanza’s achievements against manifesto promises, as against, say, the Fourth Medium-Term Plan of Kenya Vision 2030, or specific budget commitments, or even roadside and sunroof announcements.  Instead, the matrix frames this administration’s term of office in four dimensions – the political intent of disruptive policy adventure anchored by primitive accumulation versus the hard reality of disruptive political accountability anchored by planning atrophy.

Visualised cleverly, the diagonal links between the top-left of policy adventure and the bottom-right of planning atrophy on one hand, and the top-right of primitive accumulation and the bottom-left of political accountability.  Or the vertical tensions between shaking things up (policy adventure, political accountability) and keeping things stuck (primitive accumulation, planning atrophy).  It’s not the 2027 agenda, but might it be our 2023-2027 theory, then marking scheme?