President William Ruto when he received instruments of power from immediate former President Uhuru Kenyatta at Kasarani Stadium during his inauguration as the 5th President of Kenya on September 13, 2022. [Stafford Ondego, Standard]
Every administration gets a honeymoon period of the "first 100 days." President William Ruto will be lucky if he gets that.
Beginning Thursday, Kenyans have had to deal with higher fuel prices after the removal of the petrol subsidy. Cold budgetary logics pointed to this as the only way out of our current fiscal quagmire.
It will certainly get worse before it gets better. To pay for all his campaign promises without breaking the Treasury, Ruto will have to save money by reducing government spending. More subsidies will have to go.
From a public opinion standpoint, the sooner those painful sacrifices are made the better. And they will need to be followed up with quick results, too. Kenyans will not patiently bear the burden of higher fuel prices if they do not see a concomitant "reward" in reduced food prices due to a rationalisation of fertiliser prices.
Beyond the 100 days of stabilisation, Kenyans expect the Ruto administration to focus on transformational change. To this end the presidency might benefit from a core engine room of policymakers around which to build the administration's developmental agenda.
The engine room will serve twin roles of coordinating steady-state policy development and implementation, as well championing the administration's transformative agenda in agriculture and industrialisation sectors.
Without a coordinating policy engine room that internalises the big picture, Ruto will most certainly follow the same path to generalised policy malfunction as former President Uhuru Kenyatta. Ruto should mine Jubilee's infamous deals-driven failures for important lessons.
Policy, not deals, should inform government action. Examples of successful policy engine rooms include Japan's legendary Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) and Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MTIE).
Both MITI and MTIE were rigidly results-oriented and helped coordinate government industrial policy with the goal of focusing minds on rapid economic development.
If Ruto wants to get far in lifting the economy to greater heights, he better start by investing in a strong policymaking foundation.
The writer is an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University
