Ruto's Sh5 trillion promise: Path to economic freedom or political stunt?

President William Ruto and Deputy President Prof Kindiki Kithure arrive for a Cabinet Meeting at State House, Nairobi on 29/4/2025. [PCS]

Has “bottom-up” now become “top-down”?  That seems to be the unsaid question lurking beneath President William Ruto’s ten-year, Sh5 trillion “mega-infrastructure” idea being drip-fed to Kenyans in each successive speech.  The latest morsels were provided in his Jamhuri Day address in which he referenced the idea as our “Sh5 trillion national economic freedom project”. 

Let’s hope it will not take 18 months to firm up this idea into actual policy/strategy. That’s how long this administration took to translate their manifesto - “The Plan” – into the “Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda” (BETA) and MTP IV (the Fourth Medium-Term Plan under Kenya Vision 2030).  Hey, in their meeting yesterday (Monday), did Cabinet discuss a formal Sh5 trillion road map/policy document before they approved the National Infrastructure Fund (NIF)? 

“Bottom-up” to “Top-down” is not an innocent query. It is fair to say that the “Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda” (BETA) is still a work in progress. As argued in this column before, BETA is an ambitious structural socio-economic reform effort which, successfully implemented, could deliver output, or service delivery, improvements, in three to five years and, outcome, or welfare, gains in seven.  Sustained long-term national impact?  Up to 15 years.  Remember, for every celebratory statement in official speeches about progress across the five BETA pillars – agriculture, MSMEs, housing, health care and digital/creative, as well as education – you invariably encounter challenges facing everyday Kenyans based on their lived experiences. 

It can therefore be argued that Ruto should better focus on fully delivering BETA before rushing into new things.  Yet, the tone of his Jamhuri Day address spoke as if BETA is already done, or is in cruise control.  Of course, the more cynical view might be that this “first world” talk is as great a diversion from current difficulties as it is a ploy to shape and control the 2027 campaign agenda. 

Let’s not forget that the BETA scorecard for Kenya Kwanza’s first two years, according to the official 2024/25 MTP IV Annual Progress Report (APR) from Treasury and Planning, was mostly off-target (which is not to say that there was no progress; but that delivery fell short of promise (targets). Technically, BETA/MTP IV performance is measured on 305 outcome and 1,522 output indicators, with targets for each year from 2023/24 to 2027/28; so it goes beyond nice speeches. 

That APR, by the way, is prepared by the Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Directorate located in the State Department of Economic Planning at Treasury. It is worth repeating the idea that M&E offers a great opportunity not simply for evaluation, but for learning and knowledge generation.  As we embark on this “10-year economic freedom” enterprise (whose start date remains unclear), what have we learnt from our past development planning and implementation efforts, from the five-year national development plans of yore to Kenya Vision 2030 which terminates five years from now, but for which an interim evaluation is possible even today?

To draw reference from Ruto’s Jamhuri address, why is our independence promise incomplete? Why has “stagnation returned in cycles” and “negativity been normalized”?  Why have too many “made peace with mediocrity”?  Will a Sh5 trillion infrastructure investment binge help us to “step up, from the bottom-up, charging forward full steam to economic freedom…?”  Is Sh5 trillion the difference between our “third world” of today, and “first world” of tomorrow, both of which we still haven’t defined for ourselves?  Answers on the back of a ballot paper, please. 

Then there’s the detail of this shape-shifting first world/economic road map/project.  First, it was going to cost Sh4 trillion.  Then it went up to Sh5 trillion.  First it was about a National Infrastructure Fund for agri-business irrigation infrastructure, energy and transport logistics.  Then the State of the Nation address added a fourth priority – education/research.  Now it’s been rejigged into three “unshakable national priorities” and three “critical enablers” to “secure the foundation of our national character”.  It could all change again by the New Year address. 

So let’s continue the unpacking.  Priority one is a ten-year road map for road, rail, ports, airports and pipeline transport, including 2,500 kilometres of highway for dualling, and 28,000 kilometres for tarmacking, extending the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) to Kisumu and Malaba (total 369 kilometres) and the oil pipeline from Eldoret to Uganda, and modernizing Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and other airports as well as our Mombasa and Lamu seaports, which will also be commercialized (leased, concessioned or part-privatised?).  One hopes these proposals are captured in our long-overdue 50 year Integrated National Transport Master Plan (INTMP), and the respective roads, rail, ports, maritime, airports and pipeline sub-sector master plans. 

INTMP should have been done 10-15 years ago, alongside the National Spatial Plan. For the record, BETA envisages a total of 6,000 kilometres in new roads between 2023/24 and 2027/28.  It also anticipates that the now forgotten 2,052 kilometre LAPPSET SGR will be far advanced. 

Priority two is irrigation infrastructure to support agri-business and drive agro-industrialization.  The main story here is 50 mega-dams, 200 mini-dams and 1,000 micro-dams, which together with other initiatives, will contribute to an additional 2.5 million acres of irrigated land.  This presumably includes the 45 mega-dams for which feasibility had been completed by the Jubilee regime.  For the record, BETA envisages 100 mega-dams (with 55 new feasibility studies) but only identifies 8 of them (multi-purpose dams).  It also anticipates over 400 small dams and 5,000 water pans, as well as 22 irrigation mega-projects (400,000 acres) in addition to Galana-Kulalu (350,000 acres) and Turkana (855,000 acres).  All within a promised Irrigation Master Plan. 

Priority three is energy, specifically, electric power.  We are still unable as a country to produce an Integrated National Energy Plan (including other energy sources from petroleum to charcoal), but we have the 2024-2043 Least Cost (Electric) Power Development Plan (LCPDP) as reference. 

Our economic freedom project is looking for 10,000 megawatts in new power generation capacity in ten years, taking total capacity to 13,300 megawatts presumably by 2035.  Though we hear nothing on this, one expects equally important investment in transmission and distribution infrastructure (generation is where the big bucks are made).  But what does the LCPDP say? 

Well, its reference (current trend) scenario predicts capacity need at around 5,000 megawatts by 2035 (8,152 megawatts by 2043).  Its conservative, lower-case (sub-optimal) scenario has respective predictions of 3,900 and 4,996 megawatts.  Its aggressive, upper-case (vision) scenario predicts capacity need at around 6,500 megawatts in 2035 and 13,495 megawatts by 2043.  Is the LCPDP now discarded? Just for the record, BETA/MTP IV envisages power generation capacity investment at a total of between 800 and 1,000 megawatts between 2023/24 and 2027/28. 

For all three national priorities, it is fair to say that we are left with more questions than answers. 

Granted, this is a fairly basic unpacking of the economic freedom project’s three priorities.  The critical enablers also deserve a similar treatment, which will be done in a future article, as will emerging issues around the NIF and Sovereign Wealth Fund, especially with the growing fear that this administration is eager to side-step our constitutional and statutory public finance management framework.  Yes, full details of this project are still not in the public domain.  Once they are, then we might make more sense of this predominantly “top-down” idea of freedom.