The marking scheme has changed: Today's reality is not that of 2022

Hustler hawking chicken baskets in Kakamega town on May 19,2024. [Benjamin Sakwa, Standard]

It is a sign of our progress as a nation that we can openly critique or support the government.  This has always been our missing participatory governance link, the “between elections” part of our role as citizens that must go hand in hand with the “during elections” role we play as voters. 

We are also doing it better, given the past week’s reflections on the first two years of President William Ruto’s Kenya Kwanza administration.  Leaders must live or die by results, not rhetoric. 

Let’s reflect in three ways, starting with official material based on Kenya Kwanza’s 2022 manifesto and its five Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda (Beta) pillars. 

On agricultural transformation, fertiliser provision is their big win with more than 500 per cent more fertiliser given at 60 per cent less cost to almost six million registered farmers. 

Higher maize production and lower maize imports are immediate results, as are lower prices.  Of course, good weather also played a role, and Kenyans have not forgotten the unresolved fertiliser scandal. 

Progress is also recorded in priority agricultural value chains (maize is not a priority value chain). 

Higher prices for tea and dairy farmers, higher production in dairy and rice, increased acreage under edible oils (sunflower) and expanded leather processing capacity.  

What we seem to miss is specifics on new jobs created or impacts for food deficit, now surplus producers, and farmers if any. 

On micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), the Hustler Fund’s establishment and rollout is their big win, although there is no mention of super-high default rates recently covered in the press. 

Away from the fund, progress is claimed in getting 21 County Industrial Development Centres (across five of nine priority value chains — leather, textile, building and construction, dairy, edible oils) and 19 County Aggregation Industrial Parks up to speed.  We will come back to projects.  

What’s also missing on MSMEs is how Kenya Kwanza is addressing regressive taxation, bureaucracy and regulatory compliance costs relating to licencing in both paperwork and time. 

Affordable housing and universal health care are the two Beta pillars attracting public controversy and litigation for three reasons. 

The first is personal.  Both will be funded by heavier individual (and institutional) tax burdens.  The second is logical; no one has offered the vision of tomorrow versus today that then creates a “why change?” justification plus public buy-in.  Which then explains the third in our low-trust society – who are the real winners and losers here? 

The achievements for affordable housing explain these difficulties.  The claimed 103,000 houses currently under construction (plus 31,429 in negotiation) are already 75 per cent behind the two-year target (400,000). 

Beyond low-key growth in mortgage refinancing (1,005 versus a two-year target of 388,000), other achievements speak to tax and related other incentives for developers and training for 200 jua kali artisans. 

What we may be missing is what happened to the settler fund for rural housing. 

When we flip the coin, achievements in universal health care do not explain current difficulties as the creation of three new funds under four new laws endlessly hovering in and out of court are highlighted as a big win. 

Ongoing investment in primary health care at the grassroots is a positive given the massive increases achieved in hiring community health care promoters, facilitating their kit provisions, and setting up primary care networks. 

The main beef Kenyans have with the final pillar on digital and creativity is the unfulfilled promise “to reduce the cost of calls and data to allow wananchi (especially youth) to use online platforms for entertainment, information and business”. 

Still on the digital economy, claimed achievements by Kenya Kwanza include doubling our fibre optic cable network (8,900 to 18,767 km), setting up 1,490 WiFi hotspots and 274 digital hubs, and expanding youth digital training for employment from 73,948 to 515,505 and youth digital jobs created from 30,000 to 152,711. 

On this pillar, the massive increase in digitalised government services or e-Citizen (from 350 to 20,855) and resultant monthly revenue growth from Sh1.45 billion to Sh10.9 billion must be balanced against real improvements in service delivery as well as e-Citizen’s own system integrity. 

What an institution reports reflects what it prioritises.  So if we take the government’s own report so far as the first way to reflect based on where it focuses its work, what are the other two? 

The second one takes us to the “so what?” question on the minds of Kenyans.  Simply, what is the outcome and impact on our lives of all of these achievements? 

At bottom, these Beta pillars are “vehicles” but they are not the destination.  Because, to repeat, the Kenya Kwanza destination was also very clearly defined to us through six destinations, or objectives — reduced cost of living, zero hunger, more jobs, expanded tax base, stronger foreign reserves and inclusive growth.  

For example, the 2023 jobs promise read 996,000 (187,000 formal, 807,000 informal) when actual was 848,000 (127,000 formal, 721,000 informal).  Why were we off target?  Where were these actual jobs? What does this mean for Kenya Kwanza’s 1.1 million jobs promise for 2024? 

The point is we will not get to a meeting of minds between Kenya Kwanza and the people if the conversation does not get to “so what” questions, Beta pillar reporting notwithstanding.   

A related point is the government is not the economy, and it’s a better economy that Kenyans seek. 

Which brings us to the third way to reflect.  Today’s reality is not that of 2022.  After the multiple promises to ordinary Kenyans in the manifesto, many if not most suddenly found themselves confronted by an aggressive tax and levies regime and calls for sacrifice while leaders lived large.

It is easy to see how this created a trust deficit between Kenya Kwanza and the people. 

And, following the deadly Finance Bill protests, how this heightened citizen calls for transparency and accountability by the leadership.  If government projects are now being debunked, not celebrated, the ground has probably shifted to a point where their manifesto no longer matters as it first did. 

Two years into office, the new lesson for President Ruto and his team is the marking scheme has changed.  In this “business unusual” space, the focus is the destination of our journey, not their vehicle to take us there.  Because, here and everywhere, the government is not the economy.