Our development woes originate from incoherent policies

And it is not going to be easy to find such a solution soon if there is no change our everyday practices. Whether Kenyans tighten their belts or hold prayer rallies for the economy, it is not going to be easy.

But the economy will not collapse. Not at all. Kenya has a such a resilient informal economy that it is hard to give in to this pressure.

Moreover, devolution has led to increased economic activities including in spaces that were dormant for decades. All counties have active market centres where there is visible growth of informal activities.

Indeed, informal economic activities continue to provide livelihoods to many. A majority of formal sector employees, at national and county level, engage in informal economic activities to bring additional income beyond what they get from their regular jobs.

However, there are some employees in the public sector who are involved in predatory behaviour which adds pressure to the economy. Public servants, for instance, have cultivated a per diem culture which has matured to a point where it cannot be eliminated without causing a crisis in service delivery.

Incomes from per diems, month to month, in some instances is far higher than basic salaries of public servants. Teas/coffees, mandazi, fuel for vehicles, airtime for cellphones, hand copies of newspapers and other items under hospitality budget lines have an incredible impact on costs of running the public sector.

Predatory culture of public servants is picking up fast in the private sector. But removing these items from the budget is impossible. Cartels supply these items and they cannot allow removal without a fight. It is one budget line that remained active even during the days of the Covid pandemic.

The private sector has picked this behaviour too – it is the same actors who bridge interests in private and public sector.  How goods and services are procured for private businesses now attract the same cartels that dominate the public sector.

All this implies that our challenges have deeper roots and require much more reflection than we have done thus far.

It also means the country has not reflected enough on what strategies to put in place to address the root cause of challenges we face. But the decay in integrity is just a tip of the iceberg. The development challenges we face have origins in failure to implement viable policies. This is an issue I now turn to.

Development challenges

A close review of data by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics show that we are net importers of goods including goods we can produce.

We import more than we export. And this is where the problem lies. Let us begin with the cost of living as an example. All public opinion surveys carried out from around 2009 show that over 60 per cent of Kenyans have been concerned about cost of living.

Many people have always said the country is ended in the wrong direction on account of high cost of living.

Optimism about the future direction of the country is always blurred by costs that ordinary households incur in daily living expenses. But some of these challenges would have been arrested had the country implemented viable policies in various sectors.

Interestingly, for the last 15 years, the country has continued to import huge amounts of wheat, rice, and maize. Kenya imports three times more wheat than rice. What is worse is that we also import wheat flour in huge amounts every year. These are products that our farmers produce but not in adequate quantities.

The point here then is that our policies to support agricultural production have not registered adequate success. We have not adequately supported farming of these crops to a point where the costs and volumes of imports would decline.

The costs of imports will certainly continue going up because of depreciating shilling. There is no immediate end to this. But if agricultural policies were effectively implemented to support production of wheat, rice, and maize – and sugar - these costs would certainly come down.

Past policies have not worked because of inconsistencies in implementation of policies as well as constraints posed by vested interests in the agricultural subsectors.

Notably subsidies do not serve the purpose they are intended. Fertiliser as an important input is always subsidized but the main beneficiaries are large and medium-scale farmers.

They have the means to transport their fertiliser from the source to their farms. Small scale farmers whose increased productivity would reduce imports rely on the market priced fertiliser near local business centres because the costs of accessing subsidised fertiliser are prohibitive.

Someone will may think that the small scale farmers are registered to access the fertilizer with ease but this is not the case.

Local cartels still make it hard for the ordinary small farmers to access the fertiliser. Sometimes the subsidised fertiliser finds its way in the hands of corrupt public officers who sell to local businesses.

A look at data on imports show that there are many other imported products that could be produced locally if we had supportive policies. But these would require supportive bureaucratic and political commitments to produce.

The import of these products is again dominated by vested interests. Those importing them are so powerful and entrenched in the economy that it will take real courage and determination to break them.

These products include animal and vegetable oils, edible products and preparations, some chemicals, insecticides and fungicides, furniture, and associated repair items, among others. Some of these are produced locally in small quantities without adequate supportive policies.

Indeed, our manufacturing sector has been on decline precisely because it is cheaper to import some of these than to produce them.

The cost of production is sometimes high because there is insufficient policy reflection on what it would take to reduce cost of production. Incentives are lacking in some key sectors to promote production.

Improving the economy and reducing the cost of living is not going to be easy on account of vested interests that dominate and constrain import market.

- Prof Kanyinga is based at the Institute for Development Studies (IDS),               University of Nairobi, [email protected], @karutikk