What will make Kenya easily grow positively

I’m an optimist on possible positive developments of a nation. I’m very positive on Kenya despite the many challenges we are facing.

Being a good student of history and having studied a lot about the world and made a lot of discoveries of the past more so of political and economic nature, I’m a big optimist. Kenya will easily grow positively if only we are willing.

Just peeking at history, no nation has ever remained stuck in one dispensation especially of a negative one for just too long. The period of stagnancy is usually painful especially to the common person and in many cases, it results to a revolution.

 If you study keenly the history of USA for at least 300 years back or that of several European countries, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea and several others you uncover they have all undergone some painful moments or made some strategic blunders along the way especially of political nature that impacted heavily on their economies but had to change anyway.

Some of the problems or challenges African countries are going through have to give way to another dispensation. History has a way of giving a perfect guide to what possibilities are there in a given condition of a state.

I see Kenya way ahead in many areas vis-à-vis many third world countries. Nonetheless, we have plenty of adverse issues to deal with.

At the moment besides the many ills, almost everyone knows what destroy us, corruption and tribalism.We are facing a big population challenge of unemployed people or people surviving on the bare minimum.

This group is huge. Keep an eye on the developments in the job market which is it itself a key indicator of the health of the economy. Many are joining the labour market each year and our ability to generate sufficient decent jobs seems quite limited.

We have a challenge if we have more and more youthful people joining the job market and still more adults doing so after downsizing or bad circumstances that afflict some of the businesses and are unable to provide gainful employment opportunities. Yet still, we are to keenly be aware of any healthy economy and state the private sector is always the biggest employer.

Moreover, the private sector growth is key to developing a country. Without a robust private sector which is growing in its size both in numbers and returns on investments we have a big challenge.

There are several companies that have set shop in Kenya lately and more are coming but we have to do much more to make sure not many are exiting and we have large numbers joining.

 At any rate, any exit by an investor should be a big worry to us. Yet still, there is a lot of opportunities if we sort out the fundamentals that make doing business in our country difficult.

For instance, there are huge opportunities in manufacturing and tourism sectors which are huge employers but we have fundamental issues to sort. Not just these two sectors but across all of them, there is huge room for growth in this country.

Looking at the demographics keenly you can spot a huge opportunity but also a potentially big problem if we don't accelerate development. That is why crime has grown and we are ever under threats of terror as a poor people are dangerous to a nation. You have to contain poverty with all the might.

You can see what lack of proper governance and poverty has wrought to some neighbouring countries like Somalia. The country ended being a problem to the entire world as a breeding ground for terrorists.

In the current modern world, you can’t afford to ignore problems of unemployment and poverty. They easily bring down a nation and are always potential opportunities to cause harm not only internally but also externally to other nations as we have seen the mess of the spread of terrorism across the globe. But in a technology fast changing world in which Kenyans seems always early adapters we have an opportunity to tame the negative tide.

Reading from the main political parties articulated agenda they seem to grasp that there are challenges we need to tackle. So it is to keep vigilance and continuous advocacy and engagement to ensure that we drive the country to the path of accelerated development. Where there is a will there is a way.