Contours of policy debates ahead of 2027 look promising

The contours of policy debates ahead of the 2027 General Election appear to be set. The camp supporting President William Ruto’s re-election are likely to tout his development record.

We shall hear about increased productivity and earnings in the tea, coffee, dairy, and meat sectors; the infrastructure projects under construction or completed; attempts to improve efficiency of health insurance through SHA; and a smattering of reforms in education, the biggest being the hiring of tens of thousands of teachers.

The President’s economic team will also want Kenyans to know how they avoided default, and then pivoted to innovative methods of financial engineering to increase the country’s fiscal space. All these claims will be met with vigorous rebuttals from the opposition. Avoiding default has come with the high price tag of higher taxation.

This while grand corruption still permeates large parts of the public administration. The education sector is in a shambles, with the CBE programme being a flop (and leaving a lot of people wondering why the government doubled down on the reforms despite expert advise).

SHA is not perfect; plus the challenge with health is that effective delivery relies on the counties doing a good job. Failure in the counties on this front will naturally also be projected on the incumbent administration at the national level (it is a mystery why national governments tolerate high levels of theft and corruption in county governments).

And while the gains in agriculture are real, the fact of the matter is that they have been unevenly distributed. The vast majority of our young people are not farmers; and most expect non-agricultural jobs. And because of the nature of the sectors targeted by the government, such gains have not necessarily translated into appreciable lowering of food’s contribution to the cost-of-living crisis.

Leaders of the opposition have also revealed they will not necessarily want to go into the weeds of debating specific development figures. Very smartly, they do not want to be seen to be arguing against roads, markets, electricity access, affordable housing, and the like. Their claim will be that anyone can do that; and that President Ruto’s biggest failure is his administration’s violation of the preamble of the Constitution.

Their argument will be that Kenyans wanted a different type of government – one that listened to the people; one that did not tolerate grand corruption; one that executed on development projects that met the people where they worked and lived; and above all, one that respected Kenyans’ human rights and did not unleash the murderous power of the State on its citizens.

This will be a potent argument. It is easy to dismiss the opposition as having no agenda. However, that would be a mistake. Kenyans want development, but in dignity and freedom. You cannot win people over with just (shoddily done) infrastructure projects (that will in the end create very few jobs anyway). You cannot then hope to throw money at them during campaigns (see Ol Kalou). You must also inspire people to believe that you are making Kenya a better and more ordered society.

Overall, I believe the parameters of debate as they are emerging are promising. 2027 should be a campaign season that deepens voters’ economic consciousness and improves the quality of public discourse about economic policy.

The writer is a professor at Georgetown University