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).

We can also take it to the bank that none of our prospective leaders, particularly at presidential level, has much to say about monetary policy. Here is a test. What is your candidate’s position on a Central Bank Digital Currency; or the use of Huduma Namba as the “centrebolt’ of a national payments strategy within a stretch vision of “cradle to grave” registration as a Kenyan taxpayer? Hell, what is your candidate’s position on increasingly popular cryptocurrency at one end, and local “digital” (virtual/barter) currencies already operating within select communities at the other?   

Too modern? Okay; what is your candidate’s view on CBK’s actions or otherwise on the shilling’s external value? Or a super-profitable banking oligopoly that is reliant on government’s fiscal indiscipline? Or sector stability around bank regulation, supervision, competition and consolidation? Or targeted lending to specific sectors like agriculture or industry and constituencies such as youth, women or SMEs? Or the delicate balance between foreign direct investment and foreign portfolio investment?

Hey, what does your candidate think about direct diaspora investment, the fast emerging new kid on the block?

As we enter the final six months to the election, the original tyranny of numbers as people is still top of mind. Yet the tyranny of ideas offers an opportunity to test our fast-morphing political coalitions. At the time of writing, it seems we are down to the Kenya Kwanza Alliance on one side and the Azimio One Kenya Alliance on the other. Originally hardcore policy positions as individual parties will be watered down to the lowest common denominator among the coalition of characters that lead these new alliances. 

If these alliances morph into coalition political parties, as envisaged by the amended Political Parties Act, it will be interesting to understand unified ideological stances and campaign platforms offered by either side, particularly since everybody says they will build on Jubilee’s good work without speaking to equally evident challenges.  Here is an example.

We are “off track” as our 2030 metric is 5 per cent of the population which is above the “3 per cent and below” threshold for “no extreme poverty”. [Courtesy]

Every item of beautiful infrastructure recently built is assumed to deliver an economic return (such as growth effects of better access to markets and services or greater efficiency at lower cost) that translates into financial payback (for debt service and operations and maintenance). If the return is not evident now, what is the priority - debt service or routine maintenance?   

Call these the Jubilee legacy questions that every 2022 formation, or candidate, is avoiding; instead offering brash ideas as sweeteners without finding lasting solutions to age-old problems. To add to this problem, here are two unusual frames of thinking we might use to foster a new tyranny of ideas that interrupts our conversation, loosely titled “Emerging Third Way Theories of Economic Kenya in 2022”.

The first of these is visual.  As suggested in the first part of this three-part column, Kenya is not one big black box named after Pandora, it is a vibrant, diverse and colourful space of work, life, love and play.

In these modern days of our lives, there is a way to color-code Kenya’s economy; to see it in Technicolor. What would this look like from the perspective of a political platform that is translatable to the people? 

Well, we want to hear about a green economy agenda that responds to climate change through smart innovation in agriculture, low-cost manufacturing, renewable energy and clean water and sanitation. Within which is a blue economy agenda on how we sustainably use our marine and water resources.

For our youth-facing future, there is the orange economy of creativity, even as we create a silver economy agenda for older members of society, and a purple economy one that addresses community and society.  Consider the yellow economy of economic justice, and the white one of health and social protection.

A visual agenda deals with issues too. What is the plan to build on the progress prior administrations, especially Jubilee, have made in fighting the black economy of illegal market activity including counterfeits?  Or the more positive one to migrate our grey economy of informality (if not illegality) into the formal sector?  Or more radically, formally recognize and support the informal rather than force them to formalize?  And if we are really going green and blue, what does that mean for our brown economy of environmental harm, or our resource-hungry red economy in a world thinking more circular (recycling)?

Our second theory is spatial, and, as highlighted previously, is about the 143.5 million-acre plot called Kenya that technically belongs to our 12 million households.  In the old days we split Kenya into eight provinces, 47 local authorities and almost 300 districts, before locations, sub-locations and villages. We also had/ have a split of Kenya by water catchment area across six Regional Development Authorities.  The Constitution deleted these arrangements with a 47 county devolution framework, and 1,450 wards as electoral location equivalent.  We also increased the number of constituencies from 210 to 290.

Since 2010, new arrangements have emerged. From the national government, we have administrative command positions at regional, county and sub-county (MP equivalent) levels.  Within counties, we have parallel sub-county (national sub-county and elected MP equivalent) and ward (MCA equivalent) administrators.  Above counties – as RDA equivalents – we have seven regional economic blocs. 

This is the anti-economic Kenyan jigsaw puzzle of patronage politics and institutional inflation that allows top-level leaders to make vague promises outside of spatial context and circumstances, while offering space for lower-level leaders to offer specific local goodies outside of broader objectives.

Here is a dramatic picture to excite this spatial agenda. It uses a fairly simple yet informative modelling tool known as the World Poverty Clock to track (in “real-time”) national, regional and global progress towards the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 1 on the elimination of extreme poverty.  It innovates by expressing poverty reduction as a rate per day, hour, minute or second as the case may be.

What would this look like from the perspective of a political platform that is translatable to the people? [Elvis Ogina, Standard]

Here is Kenya’s overall picture in August 2021. Up to 7.6 million (or 15.2 per cent) out of a 50.8 million population living in extreme poverty (less than $1.9 per day) projected to drop to 3 million out of a 62.3 million population at the end of 2030. Given that this is based on our current ‘state of play” (policies, trends...), this sounds positive, right? 

The truth is we are “off track” as our 2030 metric is 5 per cent of the population which is above the “3 per cent and below” threshold for “no extreme poverty”. By the workings, our poverty “escape rate” was 1,152 persons per day against a target of 2,160.

Fortunately, the clock offers us a spatial perspective on poverty reduction, so we know what it looks like across counties and economic blocs. In 10 county Central Region, only Embu will not meet SDG1, Nyeri has already met this target, and the other eight are on track.

At the other extreme in five county north-eastern Frontier Counties Development Council, poverty is rising in Wajir and Mandera, and the others are off track, as are both in the Narok-Kajiado Economic Bloc.

In Lake Regional Economic Bloc, the largest bloc with 12 counties, seven (Bungoma, Homa Bay, Kisii, Migori, Nyamira, Siaya and Vihiga) are on track for SDG1, as are Mombasa and Taita Taveta in the six county Jumuiya ya Kaunti za Pwani, Baringo and Elgeyo Marakwet in eight county Northern Region Bloc and Machakos in three county South East Kenya Bloc. Twenty-three of our 47 counties are off-target on SDG1. Oh, Nairobi is modelled as free of extreme poverty (<3 per cent)! The larger point is that a generic national poverty reduction agenda is useless if it lacks a spatial context.

From casual observations, it appears that the Kenya Kwanza Alliance is speaking to these issues in their ongoing local-level forums around the country. Kenya needs this “outcome inequality from unequal opportunity” debate at a spatial level that goes beyond the simplicity of “one man-one vote-one shilling”.

So, if we can break down Kenya’s tyranny of numbers, should we also consciously explore a new tyranny of ideas from a visual and spatial perspective? 

Simply, in the “either/or”, black or white duality we use to define Kenya, is there a third way; to the extent that there are always three sides to every coin? Tafakari!

Kabaara is a Management and Institutional Reforms consultant.