Offer inspired leadership otherwise the economy will begin to stagnate

The latest information on the performance of the Kenyan economy shows that rapid economic growth is now uncertain. Key sectors of the economy, such as tourism and construction, seem to have taken a nose dive while manufacturing and agriculture are only minimally raising their heads upwards. While the consumption of electrical power is increasing, the cost to the producer negatively affects the productivity it is meant to engender. One would have thought that with oil prices consistently going down in the world market, even energy from the Independent Power Producers would by now have come down. Yet this has hardly been the case. Energy is so critical to economic growth that one wonders why Kenyan planners have not seen the urgency needed in reducing costs of energy.

Be that as it may. The current government doesn’t seem to know where its economic Midas touch is to be found. Interestingly enough it is not to be found in the major infrastructural projects in which it has over committed itself—important though these are, and padded with kickbacks as they have been—but in the ordinary souls of Kenyans. If the government was really concerned with reaching the souls of ordinary Kenyans, its policies would be different. And its behaviour would not be like what we are observing today. Let me explain.

Take a simple example. Why do soccer coaches of football teams engage in feverish pep talks with their teams at half time? Almost always you will see every coach bringing all the players into a closely knit circle and seeking to talk to almost each one of them at the same time very intimately. The secret lies in the fact that, at that moment in time, he is assuring all the players that each one of them matters, that each one must hear from him and do as he says so that winning becomes a gone conclusion. His aim is to energise the players so that they go to the second half with a rejuvenated “feel-good” of an indomitable force.

But the feel good factor must be accompanied by performance and results. If a team, after the pep talk by the coach, goes to the second half and begins to concede one goal after the other, the feel-good factor will begin to wane progressively.

That is why the coach will continue walking up and down on the touchline talking to his team members, advising each one of them through various signs and almost kicking the ball with them as they play the game. A good coach never gives up: he is there all the time with and for his team. He is the source of the “oomph”: that intangible force that makes things happen among his players no matter how tough the match is.

Economies are no different. Economic actors are like players in the football match. Although each economic actor is like every ambitious player who needs to score a goal or emerge as the best player of the year from whatever position, none will achieve his ambition without the concerted actions of all members of the team. The president and the government are like coaches: they both must provide the economic players with the “oomph” so as to feel good about what each actor is doing; so as to play as a team no matter how tough economic times are.

Soon after independence in Kenya, the nationalist leaders provided Kenyans with a tremendous “oomph”. No wonder the economy grew so rapidly and almost so effortlessly. The economic war cry “Uhuru na Kazi” drove almost every Kenyan into doing something useful as leaders visited different parts of the country celebrating the new found freedom and calling on all to join in the task of nation building.

New and good things were happening to the common man on a daily basis: a housing estate opening for lower class workers with very minimum conditions to get possession of one; the million-acre scheme for the landless financed by the government; a Kenya Tea Development Authority (KTDA) that was an example to the rest of the world on how to manage productive and profitable small holder agriculture; a settlement scheme for sugarcane farmers that put new money into the pockets of farmers in the Nyanza sugar belt.

But the feel-good factor disappeared soon after the coaches began to forget about their team and started playing a game among themselves that quickly relegated the team to an inferior division down the league table. No wonder the team started performing poorly with players beginning to feel they might have belonged to the wrong team. Over time the team disintegrated and too many coaches emerged coaching teams which belonged to no league at all. Forced to play in a team where draconian rules guided the game, they performed poorly inspired by no “oomph”; the outcome was zero performance. That was what the Kenyan economy was like during the last days of the Kanu regime.

In 2003 the NARC government provided the Kenyan team with a fresh “oomph”. The new sense of purpose inspired almost every household into action. It awakened individuals in division four of the economic league to believe they could get on top of the league table overnight. Citizens started to arrest policemen who took bribes on the spot! When doors opened for free primary schooling, 67 year olds became first graders. Class rooms were jammed with students but teachers did not complain. People from all corners of the Republic thronged to Bomas of Kenya to debate the new Constitution, the “Magna Carta” of the Second Republic.

All went well until leaders in government started to play their own game, focusing on themselves instead of the team they were coaching. NARC soon became an albatross around the neck of these leaders; an encumbrance they had to offload so as to fully exploit “our time to eat.”

Just like after independence, the feel-good factor had given the economy under NARC a tremendous boost, and the momentum kept it going for more than ten years. But the Jubilee regime has come with no “oomph”: one does not seem to feel a Kenyan thing is happening. Somehow the centre is not holding: things are falling apart. Team work is hard to come by. The national league is almost gone.

The captain is in foul mood almost all the time. The technical bench, composed of the likes of Moses Kuria, Denis Itumbi, Duale, the “Tyranny of Numbers” Professor and Anne Waiguru excel in alienating players rather than pushing the Kenyan team up the league table. No meaningful game can be played when the coach and the technical bench are not only in disarray but are giving divisive instructions to the players. Kenya cannot win the economic game. Try as we can, by this time next year we shall be truly a going concern heading towards receivership.

But who is going to advise the captain? I mean serious, dispassionate, well researched and well-meaning advice. Not the so-called advice of self-indulgent sycophants. Not the mouthing of phrases which sound “wise” because they are interspaced with quotations from some unknown “economists” whose names are almost mythical. I mean the kind of advice from a body like the National Economic and Social Council (NESC) which helped us craft Vision 2030. By the way, dear Lord, why did the Jubilee regime disband the NESC?