Kenya’s curse: Fine plans and no action

Kenya's curse: Fine plans and no action

KENYA'S GRAND COALITION GOVERNMENT IS soon to unveil its strategy for sustainable economic growth and national development. The blueprint harmonises the visions of the various parties that make up the government.

Among the targets set in the proposed manifesto is the creation of at least 800,000 jobs a year, the connection to the national electricity grid of one million households over the next five years, and the development of policy and infrastructural elements that will enhance Kenya's position as the financial and commercial hub of the region.

It is all dizzying stuff, and would probably generate a lot of excitement – were it not all contained in countless other ministry and government Sessional Papers, plans and programmes, the latest being the Nairobi Metropolitan Plan and the Vision 2030.

The enduring bane of Kenya, in fact, has not been the lack of good development plans and strategies, but the lack of will, commitment and perseverance to see them through.

As the government was waxing lyrical about industrialisation by 2030, for example, the Nairobi City Council last week announced a five-month water-rationing programme to run up to October. This is largely because the NCC has over the years failed to implement the city's water blueprint.

Elsewhere, the Council's plans to decongest the CBD, making it a more efficient engine of growth, have come a cropper due to its failure to enforce existing traffic rules for public service vehicles.

Everywhere around the country, similarly ignominious examples illustrate Kenya's pathetic record in following through its well-crafted policies. Even as the country's policy makers crow about their commitment to road reconstruction, for example, billions of shillings' worth of unutilised allocations are returned to Treasury each year because of what is euphemistically called "lack of absorptive capacity" – a polite way of describing what is essentially bureaucratic inefficiency.

In the power sector, which is expected to support the projected one-million new connections, just about every generation project is behind schedule.

The point here is not to denigrate the efforts the government is making to resuscitate the economy. Rather, it is to remind it that economic growth and development is not about high-faluting plans filled with buzzwords and sound bites. It is about the small things – running water, sealing a pothole before it ruins a critical highway, or supporting an efficient urban transport system.
 

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Jean-Louis Kayitenkore
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