Decades apart, Ruto's development tours echo Kanu-style platform for roadside declarations

President William Ruto addresses residents of Mathare during a development tour of the Constituency in Nairobi County. [PHOTO HIRAM OMONDI/PCS.]

Now that his foreign travel — after more than 60 overseas trips in his first 18 months of office — appears to have slowed down, it comes as little surprise that President William Ruto’s work schedule increasingly features local “development tours” across the country.  Nobody will willingly admit it, but the Gen Z protests of 2024, following cost of living protests in 2023, may partly explain this new fondness for domestic travel.

That is a story for another day, though it is useful to recall Africa’s history of ousting leaders while abroad.  Broad-based government, another outcome of last year’s protests, is a useful failsafe against such mischief.

Let’s get back to development tours using an unusual lens.  

Last week the President toured Mt Kenya region which accounts for 24 per cent of our economy, 23 per cent of our population, 26 per cent of registered voters in 2022 and 27 per cent of actual voters that year.  He traversed nine of the region’s ten counties, with cosmopolitan Nakuru, our second largest economy after Nairobi, the exception.

According to press reports, Lower Eastern (Ukambani) is upcoming on his list, where he will encounter five per cent of the economy, eight per cent of the population and seven per cent of the people who actually voted in 2022.

There was Western (six per cent of the economy, 11 per cent of the population, 10 per cent of registered and actual voters in 2022). 

North Eastern, including Isiolo (around three per cent of the economy, seven per cent of the population, four per cent of registered and actual voters.

Coast contributes nine per cent to the economy and had seven per cent of actual voters in the year under review.

Nairobi: 28, 8, 11 and 9 per cent of the economy, population, registered and actual voters.

President Ruto also had a brief sojourn in three of the North Rift’s eight counties, and to be fair, he covered Nyanza last year (as he did Mt Kenya) after the 2024 protests, but if we’re doing the math here, after Lower Eastern there’s still 26 per cent of the economy, 34 per cent of the population and 32 and 36 per cent of registered and actual voters in 2022.  That’s 18 counties across Nyanza and Rift Valley if we take out Nakuru and Laikipia as Mt Kenya and assume complete tours of the North and South Rift.

One presumes that these development tours are supposed to be useful advancements on our infamous past of Kanu’s roadside declarations.  But are they really?

Targeted projects in selected constituencies are launched, visited, inspected, opened or commissioned.  Crowds are assembled and assemble during working days to listen to promise-laden public addresses from car sunroofs.  Devolution of Cabinet meetings to local State lodges is a recent innovation.

Mostly, however, these development tours inject into quiet rural settings the boisterous presence of top government nabobs, party-political functionaries and wheeler-dealers crisscrossing our digs in choppers and motorcades while unashamedly belying the officialdom of fiscal austerity and climate awareness.

A functioning Parliament would have ordered Auditor-General inquiry into value for money from these jaunts by now.

Especially since we’ve heard Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi wailing about the Sh7 billion yearly cost of public participation that mostly concerns our annual Sh4 trillion spending budget fuelled by revenue (current taxes) and debt (future taxes) in today’s weatherbeaten Sh17 trillion economy!

Beyond their cost, including alleged “hiring of crowds”, what else do we make of these development tours? 

Here are four quick observations.  First, despite all claims to the contrary, these tours have a strong flavour of political campaigns.   By press coverage alone, we see, hear and read far more about addresses being made from car sunroofs than we do about the actual projects. Many, including the President, now euphemistically refer to this as public participation, despite what appear to be one-way monologues.

Over the past generation, Kenya has turned into a place that always seems to be in permanent campaign mode, and it is easy to see how these development tours serve a clever political purpose for this regime.  It should not be surprising if, even indirectly, voter data and numbers are at the back of our leaders’ minds.

The second set of observations is about projects. 

One, what role does the President play when we have an established public finance management system that includes budget preparation and budget execution processes?  This is a question about the role of institutions, and division of labour between offices.  

Two, wouldn’t it make more sense to focus on project completion, as one or two governors and MPs do? 

Three, is it only projects that deserve attention during these tours? When will we see equal pomp and fanfare about ordinary service delivery?  Doesn’t government do both service delivery and development?  Why are we only excited by projects, and not the actual services they are eventually supposed to deliver?

We are slowly building a picture here, and our third observation steps up from projects to government.  If we think about it, a proper development tour should feature the service delivery and development actions of the two levels of our devolved system of government. 

Simply, the work of national government at county level, and the work of county governments at county level.  This is how we begin to appreciate the contrast between 15 per cent of resources shared equitably at county level and 85 per cent of resources applied nationally that lead us to observe skewed development from one region to the next.  This only happens if the development tour integrates national and county plans and budgets at local level.

Which brings us to our final observation.  Where in these development tours do the actual local economies feature?  The data presented earlier offers an interesting snapshot on people and their local economies, yet the only answer that seems to be presented during these tours is, to repeat, national and not even integrated government projects.  Shouldn’t effort be made to roll out important matters of policy, on say, jobs, the local business and investment climate or local economic development initiatives in general?  Where is the place of private sector, or even the fourth sector (social enterprise), in these tours?

If we act as if the government is the economy, does this stop us envisaging local level economic growth? In concluding, it may be harsh but true that, as we currently view them, the President’s development tours are part political campaign, part perennial project launch and re-launch, part roadside declaration.  That’s before we ask why governors and legislators must first troop to State House to secure these tours!