Half century later, Jua Kali still using Stone-Age technology

By MACHARIA KAMAU and WINSLEY MASESE

At a welding shop in Kariobangi’s Light Industries, John Onyango prepares to cut a metal to make a chisel, commonly used by masonries for stone dressing.

With the help of fire, he burns a metal piece until it turns red-hot probably faster. And as he hums, probably an Ohangla tune, Onyango takes a handkerchief to wipe away some sweat off his face.

He has been doing this for the last 15 years and he is not ready to adopt a new technology to see him graduate to mass production. He cites the huge costs involved as the hindrance.

As other countries move to adopt more advanced technologies to enhance their productivity, Kenyan artisans remain trapped in the Stone-Age applications, consequently hindering their growth and that of the economy. “We lack finances to enable us purchase new technology and probably enable us grow business through mass production,” Onyango said.

Worldwide, manufacturing has been the main engine of growth and catch up. Europe, the US and a number of the Asian giants such as Japan, China and South Korea, grew their economies through rapid industrialisation.

These countries have created large multinationals big enough than most countries. Take for example USA, which has General Motors, IBM and other hundreds of manufacturing companies, especially in technology, which have provided the fuel for growth for the economy. Japan has Toyota, South Korea has the world’s largest electronics firm Samsung while China is the undisputed leader in manufacturing.

Kenya’s dream to manufacture vehicles through the infamous Nyayo Pioneer Car was just that, a dream.  “The sector is suffering from competition from China. There are few innovations too. It is possible that the service sector, such as ICT, is growing faster and drowning the manufacturing,” says XN Iraki, a lecturer at the University of Nairobi’s School of Business. “We need manufacturing to drive the rest of the sectors. With oil and coal, the future is bright.”

“The newly industrialised countries like South Korea started small, through labour intensive textile industries then moved up the value chain. Instead of knitting, start making sewing machines. One of the greatest tragedies in the last 50 years is the death of textile industries from Kicomi to Rivatex (which has been revived by Moi University) and others. I’m surprised that no one talks about second hand clothes as job destroyers. If we all put on clothes made in Kenya, more jobs would be created than for the current mitumba sellers,” says Dr Iraki.

“We shall do even better if we can be innovators, coming up with better or new high quality products, which we can sell to the world like Italian shoes or Japanese cars and Swiss watches. Through patents, we can protect those innovations and ensure that we can get maximum returns. Yet, while IBM registers more than 5,000 patents a year, we hardly reach 200, for the whole nation. You can’t make money or create jobs by selling the same old products or services.”

Manufacturing in Kenya is mainly agro-based and characterised by relatively low value addition, employment and capacity utilisation and export volumes partly due to weak linkages to other sectors.

The intermediate and capital goods industries are also relatively underdeveloped, implying that Kenya’s manufacturing sector is highly import-dependent. Additionally, the sector is highly fragmented. Most manufacturing firms are family-owned and operated. In addition, the bulk of Kenya’s manufactured goods (95 per cent) are basic products such as food, beverages, building materials and basic chemicals. Only 5 per cent of manufactured items, such as pharmaceuticals, are in skill-intensive activities.

Analysts say the sector has been hit by low capital injection, use of obsolete technologies and high costs of doing business which is attributed to poor state of physical infrastructure, limited access to finance, limited research and development, poor institutional framework, and inadequate managerial, technical and entrepreneurial skills.

The Ministry of Industrialisation and Enterprise Development now says it has identified leather, textile, food processing, furniture sectors to grow their contribution to the economy. In the new blueprint, Kenya hopes to increase the portion of wealth generated by industries from the current 10 per cent to 20 per cent as well as boost exports from manufacturing to account for 30 per cent of country’s total exports.

“These sectors were selected since Kenya has competitive advantage in terms of availability of raw materials, ready market, availability of skills and low technology requirements and the potential to create jobs,” Industrialisation Cabinet Secretary Adan Mohamed said in a recent statement. Mohamed said the ministry has initiated plans to revamp the labour intensive textile sector. “The sector has potential to create close to 700,000 jobs in the next three years and we must take advantage of the global market through AGOA to aggressively grow the sector,” he said.