I think I owe Henry Rotich a cup of tea and
a mandazi. Back in October, when this column was still young, I expressed the
fear that we may have held off on our sovereign bond placement for far too
long, meaning that we wouldn’t get a good price for the bond, or realise the
amounts we wanted. Or, to put proper context on my mea culpa, I said ‘This may
mean, then, that we get the worst of all worlds. We would still be at the mercy
of the international markets when we’re finally ready, but we would be entering
these at a far less friendly time. The Fed’s new taper start date seems to be
December, still way before our scheduled date, and we may be looking at
double-digit percentages as the only way to satisfy the beast’. The events of
the past three weeks have proved me wrong. We placed the bond better than
successfully – four times the orders, at a very favourable price.
So it is no surprise that President
Kenyatta was displaying quiet satisfaction last Wednesday at State House, when
he led the Treasury honchos in confirming the results of the bond auction. The
bond was an unqualified success – at least by most standards – and the
government has every right to crow about that element of its accomplishments.
The problem, though, is that Kenya is not a
one-dimensional country. The success of policymaking can only be fully
celebrated when it leads to largely positive outcomes, and so cherry-picking
celebratory moments will only be illusory.
And Kenya does have challenges. Whereas
many of them are either intractable or only remedied by long-term solutions,
many are self-imposed, or compounded by inaction or dangerously inexpert
policymaking. Our feet are quickly looking like colanders, given how many times
we have inadvertently, or deliberately, shot ourselves in them.
Take a look at a few. Tourism has come
close to collapse, supposedly because of the compounded effect of insecurity.
Our problem, though, is that we have not thought through what it means to
attract tourists in the twenty first century. The insecurity and travel
advisories have given our policymakers the perfect cover for their lack of
imagination. Our product, even now, is about getting groups of middle-aged
white people from JKIA, into safari vans, and thence to the Maasai Mara (or
Tsavo or Amboseli), to the coast (and don’t forget your sunscreen) and back to
JKIA. All the while being serenaded by tired-looking ‘Maasai’ warriors. Look at
old photographs of Kenyan tourism. Except for the number plates and the
hairstyles, little has changed.
Insecurity, as well, is also an area where
lack of imagination, or undue complacency, has led to less than optimal
outcomes. Set aside the depredations of terrorism (and the complex mix of failed
intelligence, politics and military strategy). At the simple level of keeping
citizens safe, we’re stuck to the same ineffective strategies that we’ve had
for generations. Dressing up our police in heavy cotton and polyester uniforms,
shod in heavy leather boots, and equipping them with long, unwieldy rifles.
Have you ever seen a policeman (or woman) at the end of a long day patrolling
the city? Yet nothing stops us from equipping our police with bicycles, and
kitting them out in polo shirts and baseball caps. It doesn’t detract from the respect
they need to command, but gives them far more flexibility and ease of movement.
Simple technologies like pepper spray for subduing petty criminals, and
shoulder-mounted walkie-talkies that free up hands and belts, would work
wonders. At the other end of the scale, heavy weaponry and the right vehicles
and tactics would help in urban siege situations. It’s not all about
Westgate-type scenarios, either. Remember whenever police have to take down a
gang leader holed up in a residential area? It’s still men clad in light
jackets, with only AK-47 and G3 rifles, or pistols, for company. And we haven’t
even touched on police pay, training and housing. Or the urgent and desperate
need to weed out increasing numbers of criminals in the police force itself.
Far too many crimes nowadays are inside jobs by those tasked with protecting
the citizenry.
And it is not just at national government,
either. Nairobians have proven themselves a very patient set of citizens. It is
not easy to run a county, especially one that hosts a capital city, but it
cannot, surely, be that difficult to turn on streetlights, can it? Or pick up
rubbish and keep roads in a decent state of repair. It doesn’t take a magician
to deploy a set of traffic lights, and be patient enough to let them do their
work, does it? I promise you that a full-on, proper rant about the management
of the city of Nairobi is coming soon on this column, but for now, the
mismanagement, or just sheer lack of interest, is showing up in how the city
looks and performs.
This column doesn’t have enough space for
all else that is wrong with public policymaking (lack of follow-up and
enforcement, keeping the wrong people in their jobs for too long, confused and
contradictory communications), but an outline of some of the forgotten ones was
due.
For now, though, Mr. Rotich has earned his
tea and mandazi. There’s a perfect place very near Nation Centre, Bwana CS.
Karibu.
This was also published in the Business Daily on 1 July 2014, at http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Opinion-and-Analysis/Why-Rotich-deserves-a-cup-of-tea/-/539548/2367198/-/item/0/-/rlj8x7/-/index.html
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