IS KIBAKI TOSHA?

The Kibaki regime must be credited with two important economic achievements. One is the
cultivation of a culture of self-reliance, which has seen Treasury deliberately omit foreign budget
support expectations from revenue projections and appropriations. With 93 percent of Government
expenditure now financed by domestic revenue, Kenya is a lot less vulnerable to the fickle and
often ruthless international financial strings. The second is the attempt at hemming both ends of
the revenue tunnel-tax collection and revenue allocation. The rate of tax compliance has certainly
not hit the optimal, and the tax bracket still has acres of space to exploit. But this regime has fairly
tightened the revenue collection screws.
On the opposite end, more public resources are finding their way into schools, health
centres, roads and farmers’ pockets. And while official corruption continues to swagger around
and about town, a higher percentage of the tax shilling appears to be ending up in the right places.
These positive measures partly explain the emerging signs of economic recovery, exemplified by
the reported GDP growth rate of 6.1 percent in the last fiscal year.

The tragedy, however, is that these measures do not amount to anything markedly stirring.
You see the Nyayo mess was so pervasive that even mere inertia by any successor would have
registered positive returns. Any keen observer of the Kibaki regime will notice that his
administration has largely concentrated on fixing that Nyayo mess. Indeed, it has taken little more
than resuscitating the construction, agricultural and tourism sectors to record that seemingly
impressive growth rate in four years.

This country, however, needs lots more than a “Mr. Fix-it” mentality to create and not
recycle jobs; to modernize and not perpetually dream about industrial take off. What the country
needs are revolutionary ideas and bold measures brewed outside the traditional pot of the timid,
tired and tested. Kibaki may have been a smart Treasury chief in the 1970s. But these are different
times, with new challenges demanding fresh thinking. Former US President Abraham Lincoln
would have serenely advised that as our challenges are new, so must we think anew.

Pumping billions of shillings in education, infrastructure and agriculture is good. But where
is the bulk of this money going? To salaries, gravelling of a roads network designed forty years
ago, slaughtering pigs at Uplands and growing coffee-the same stuff we were doing in the 1970s
when we ran shoulder to shoulder with the likes of South Korea.

Expand basic education, yes, but invest equally heavily in scientific research and
technological innovation at the top tier of the education spectrum. Patch up all rural access roads
countrywide; sure, but also shake up the country’s entire infrastructure design to create roads, rail
and telecommunication network that can service a modern economy.

Relieve farmers of burdensome old debts and expand the acreage of coffee, cut flowers and
pyrethrum. Wake up to the reality that the agrarian revolution already happened centuries ago and
what Kenya needs is massive commercialization of the agricultural sector and innovative value

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addition to reduce export of primary produce. That is what will enable our farmers to take
advantage of economies of scale, while making our produce more valuable and competitive.

Revive all collapsed little ginneries if you so fancy, but remember that to realize Vision
2030 Kenya needs modern enterprises churning out competitive world-class products. Let us not
mistake a mirage for magic. A country does not leap from wretched status to lofty pedestal by
merely fixing the mess of yesterday and repeating some tricks that worked 30 years ago, when
basic words of today like Internet and outsourcing did not even exist in the English vocabulary.
They do so by thinking and acting big, often outside the traditional box.

As Daniel Hudson Burnham would implore, make no little plans, they have no magic to
stir men’s blood and probably they themselves will not be realized. Make big plans, aim high in
hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die, but long
after we are gone be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistence.

(Adapted from an article that appeared on page 3 of The Sunday Standard of 17th June, 2007.
Written by Ababu Namwamba)

1. What controversy does this argument address? Whether …. Or …

2. What is the writer’s claim?
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4. What alternative views does the writer address?
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