From tyranny of numbers to more ideas: The third way thinking

A section of Mathare Area 3C, Nairobi. January 15, 2022. [Elvis Ogina, Standard]

While the original tyranny of numbers, as the previous two columns have highlighted, is largely about people, there is an equally important tyranny that speaks to our new electoral conversation; a “third way” tyranny of ideas. Let’s feed these into our widening economic conversation.

To begin, we assume that the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) knows what it wants for our money as a medium of exchange, store of value and unit of account from which are derived utilities such as transfer of such stored value, basis for credit (debt), distributor of national income and the endless pursuit of happiness. We call this monetary policy, which makes CBK a key actor and party in our four basic economic prices; internal value of the shilling (inflation rate), external value of the shilling (exchange rate), cost of money (interest rate) and, lastly, price of labour (wage rates).