Danger looms as Kenya fiddles indecisively

Our leaders — in the government, NGOs or business ownership and management — ought to take a thoughtful audit of what Kenya needs of and from them.

It’s too late for most African countries to build states like Germany or Singapore. That arises from increasing complexity of information flows, acceleration of identity politics and rise of potent commercial, criminal and ideological networks worldwide.

The Fragile States Index categorises most African countries as fragile. States not already bureaucratically, politically and militarily stable will have to survive repeated waves of existential challenges.

Wars with or between non-state actors will simmer for decades, driven by movements shaped by ethnic and religious ideologies with a deep contempt for cosmopolitan and liberal ideals.

Grievances will be issued from every quarter, shaped by political entrepreneurs into militant calls and disguised as democratic expression.

INEQUALITY

Once political power is attained, it will direct public resources to special interests. Many winners of legitimate elections will be owned by criminal cartels.

Corruption creates an ecosystem that benefits a clique at the expense of the majority, provoking public rage along class, ethnic or religious lines.

The number one intervention for the change we need is to reward the behaviour we want to see, and live by.

We must suffocate the gatekeeper and rent-seeker system. This virus, a barrier to competition and enemy of entrepreneurship, is worse than the procurement fraud we call corruption. It rigs the economy against producers in favour of middlemen.

The system denies youth hope. Nothing kills creativity and integrity more.

The resulting hopelessness — coupled with unachievable Instagram-driven aspirations — is turning our young people to crime, victims of transactional sex, addiction and militancy.

MERITOCRACY

The only way to vanquish the mentality is a fanatical commitment to meritocracy.

Fairness should not be negotiated in the political space but manifest in every Kenyan.

It’s time to drastically limit the power of the government in the economy and cut public budgets. Let the private sector lead economic growth.

Make the farmer and small business owner the government’s most important clients.

Build a security system that can quantitatively and qualitatively cope with failing neighbouring states and their aggressions.

Brutally raise the cost of fighting Kenya using trade barriers, making territorial claims against us and sponsoring terrorists or exploiting the disaffected among us to sow seeds of discord.

FOREIGN POLICY

Build a foreign policy that embraces strategic alliances with regional and global powers that need Kenya as a platform for their self-defence. Trade that for national security and market access in an increasingly protectionist global economy.

Finally, make politics boring. Our voter turnout of upwards of 85 per cent of eligible voters is a terrible sign.

Let’s shrink the role of competitive politics in daily life and use power-sharing formulas at national and county levels for the executive to be led by elected representatives of at least two-thirds of the vote.

It’s not too late to turn the ship towards a safer shore.

Mr Mbaria comments on socio-economic issues. [email protected]