Michael Mundia Kamau
P.O. Box 58972
00200 City Square
Nairobi
Kenya
11th September 2005
KIBAKONOMICS
Two Nation Media Group headlines in two consecutive
days raise very serious questions about the overall
state of this country, and the direction it is taking.
On Thursday, 8th September 2005, Kenya’s “Daily
Nation” reported that Kenya was a poorer nation today,
than it was three years, according to a compounded
United Nations report and index. Part of the “Daily
Nation” report of 8th September 2005, went: “Kenya is
ranked 154 out of 177 countries included in the United
Nations Development Programme report. Kenya is 10
places behind Uganda, which is position 144. Tanzania
is number 164. Yet in 2002, Kenya was ranked in
position 134 while Uganda was trailing at 150.”
The following day, Friday, 9th September 2005, the
“Daily Nation” reported that the Central Bank of Kenya
had made a monumental loss of US $ 53.3 million, in
it’s just concluded financial year. Part of the “Daily
Nation” report of 9th September 2005, goes: “In the
2001/02 financial year, the bank reported a US $ 77.3
million profit reportedly after a strong performance
in currency and gold transactions. The profits had
doubled from the previous year’s US $ 32 million.
However by January 2003, the CBK foreign exchange
reserves had increased by some US $ 62.6 million to
hit the US $ 1.11 billion.”
What is deeply amazing and deeply troubling from the
two above revelations, is that former President Daniel
arap Moi, handed over a nation and economy that was on
a sound path of recovery, much the same way that
former US President Bill Clinton inherited a sound and
improving economy from the senior George Bush. The
difference of-course is that Bill Clinton built on
these gains, unlike Kenya’s NARC regime, which has
erased them. In one stroke, two headlines erase Daniel
arap Moi’s grossly unfair portrayal as a buffoon and
despot who stifled economic advancement in Kenya for
24 years, and casts serious doubts on President Mwai
Kibaki as a redeemer and an economist per excellance.
The Kenyan Minister for Justice is on record as having
said that the war on corruption was being lost.
Immediate former British High Commissioner to Kenya,
Sir Edward Clay, is on record as having forwarded 20
cases of corruption to the Kenyan Government for
investigation, all of which according to Sir Clay,
made the monumental US $ 93.3 million Anglo-Leasing
scandal of 2004, look pale. Yet no action is
forthcoming from the Government of President Mwai
Kibaki on all the aforementioned troubling indicators
of economic decline, as the entire Kenyan leadership,
including President Kibaki himself, gives it’s entire
priority, time and energy, to the Constitutional
Review Referendum of November 21st 2005.
Little could be of higher priority to the Kenyan
nation right now, than it’s ailing and troubling
economy. Much of the social decay and decadence in
Kenya right now, has a direct and indirect correlation
to the ailing economy. The economy has stagnated
resulting in widespread loss of jobs and high
unemployment. Business margins are extremely tight,
and only a small crop of businesses are breaking even
under very difficult conditions. All urban areas in
Kenya are choking terribly from massive rural-urban
migration, following stagnation and despair in Kenya’s
rural areas.
President Kibaki is campaigning aggressively for a
“Yes” vote at the November 21st 2005 referendum, yet
he cannot find it in himself to say a word about
Kenya’s troubling economic stagnation. The figures
quoted in the Kenyan mainstream today are fabulous,
monumental, and amazing : “ ‘US $ 40 million set aside
for project’, ‘US $ 9.24 million to alleviate
poverty’, ‘US $ 120 million for construction of
roads’”, yet the United Nations Development Programme
gives Kenya’s plight as being worse of today, then it
was three years ago.
Based on the two above reports, Kenya would have
registered fabulous economic growth by now had former
President Daniel arap Moi continued to rule this
country after 2002. There is truly little else that
could be more amazing or more ironic in the face of
Kenya’s history over the immediate past 13 years.
Daniel arap Moi may not have formal schooling in
economics, but he is certainly an enlightened leader.
The problem all these years was not him, but us.
Following the protocol fiasco at the Nairobi signing
of the Sudan Peace Accord in January 2005, former
State House Comptroller, Franklin Bett, went public
and stated that such incidences rarely occurred during
the Moi presidency, because Moi did not interfere in
and with the functions of State, letting them be
handled by the relevant officers. Moi gave his
officers a free hand and was very professional in his
approach to governance and administration, according
to Bett. No other State functionary can be said to
operate in closer proximity to the President of Kenya
than the State House Comptroller, and Franklin Bett’s
words therefore bear heavy significance. Out of this,
one sees how Kenya’s foreign exchange reserves hit the
US $ 1 Billion mark, on the eve of Moi’s departure.
The NARC administration may be made up of individuals
with high formal schooling, but it clearly lacks in
enlightened leadership and direction. The same
actually, is true of the entire Kenyan nation. Typical
of our idleness and typical of our posturing for the
next thing to happen, the whole nation is now on the
topic of Bananas and Oranges, symbols of the totally
unnecessary November 21st 2005 Constitutional
Referendum. Where were all of us before Bananas and
Oranges suddenly became an issue? Isn’t there anything
else to do in this country? It is deeply depressing to
see fully grown men and women who claim to have
witnessed the birth of independent Kenya on 12th
December 1963, discuss energetically and animatedly
about Bananas and Oranges.
This country has not grown mentally and here lies the
problem. We may have fabulously expensive and
fabulously sophisticated cell phones, but we are
little more than overgrown babies going nowhere. Never
before have Kenyans been more educated, more widely
traveled and more exposed, yet we have not grown up.
Immaturity is becoming more and more pronounced by the
day. We lost a great opportunity to build a great
nation after 1963, and continue to do so, despite all
the strides that we have purportedly made. A good
example is the fact that this writing is in English,
and not the Kiswahili of Julius Nyerere’s standard. We
have choices, and we need to start using them.
Michael Mundia Kamau