President Ruto needs a coherent growth strategy

By Ken Opalo | 1mo ago

Most reasonable people would agree that President William Ruto has turned out to be a faded shade of Candidate William Ruto.

On the campaign trail, he sounded like he had a coherent plan to get the debt situation under control, improve service delivery, and pivot the economy in the direction of a jobs-based growth.

In particular, he was supposed to spur a renaissance in agriculture and manufacturing. This has not come to pass.

The only thing the president has focused on since taking office is avoiding default, mostly through highly erratic tax hikes.

Instead of a consolidated and results-oriented approach, the administration has wasted billions in dozens of county industrial parks that will amount to nothing.

The president’s agriculture policy is in shambles and lacks coherence (with senior ministry officials accused of distributing fake fertiliser).

Manufacturers continue to suffer under the weight of policy uncertainty and poor infrastructure.

All this is happening when the president does not appear interested in independent policy advice.

Both the leadership of the Chambers of Commerce and the Kenya Association of Manufacturers keep singing his praises, perhaps hoping that their individual firms of sector will get policy favours.

No one in the administration is ashamed of the fact that when he is not hawking the monetisation of Facebook like it is some great idea (everyone already does this), the president has been reduced to relaunching projects to appear like he is working.

The emperor has no clothes, but so far no one in his inner circle has the guts to tell him.

Let us be clear. The only way forward for the Kenyan economy is to create at least one million wage jobs each year. This is the figure the president and his economic team should obsess about.

For the sake of the economy and our ongoing political stability, absolutely nothing else matters.

No one cares what ethnic chiefs are represented in Cabinet, or the value of choppers, watches and suites bought with our stolen tax shillings.

Kenyans desperately need jobs and opportunities to live in dignity as well as radical improvements in service delivery.

Unfortunately, the president does not seem to get this. A few weeks back he promised the country a new economic recovery plan (at the time he said, “next week”).

That he cavalierly did not honour that promise speaks volumes.

-The writer is a professor at Georgetown University