In 2009, I wrote a fortnightly column for
this newspaper. It was a series of profiles of Kenyans who were living and
working abroad – the diaspora – and it was truly eye-opening. The series lasted
around nine months, and in that time it featured such luminaries as Ory
Okolloh, Kanini Mutooni Hinrichs, and Deo Onyango. The series had gotten quite
a devoted following over the months it was published, but it ended up being put
on ice. And part of the reason is symptomatic of one of the things that ails
Kenya and our quest to be global leaders.
I hinted at this a few weeks ago, when I
wrote of my intention to buy CNN (Rupert Murdoch pulled out of that deal, by
the way, which means that the television station is off the market, which in
turn means that the Nation Media Group gets to keep my services for the next
few years). The notion that Kenyans are uncommonly shy to declare themselves
the best in the world in corporate life is one that is proven daily, and they
led to the stopping of what was a promising franchise.
The diaspora columns stopped for a simple
reason. Almost every person I would be introduced to, regardless of their
accomplishments and stations in life, would demur from being featured, claiming
that they were ‘not ready yet’, or were not high enough in their careers to be
featured in a national column (international, if you consider how widely it was
read on the internet). My method of searching for people was through referrals,
looking interesting people up and from old friends who I knew were rising
quickly up the corporate ladder. And while many were good sports, the reticence
of many Kenyans was depressingly familiar.
As a people – and have no doubt, despite
our cosmetic differences, we are a people – we have an old British-style
reserve to celebrating wealth, success and making it in life. And it is not a
matter of juvenile showing off of baubles and trinkets. There actually is a
social function to celebration of success, and we had better figure out a way
of showing it.
It is almost impossible in Kenya to come up
with a comprehensive, believable rich list. Internationally, these lists, which
drive sales of the Sunday Times in the UK and, especially, of Forbes magazine,
are based on calculations of ownership of companies. These typically tend to be
owners of public companies, and wealthy owners of private companies are examined
through comparative analysis.
In Kenya, this is an impossible task. For
us, obviously, a large part of our rich list would be composed of people who
made their fortunes through such dubious means as to both make the list
ethically meaningless, and to also put tax authorities and criminal
investigators on their trail. But even when wealth was made in a largely clean
way, there are such dense webs of proxy ownership that one cannot make their
way out of them.
For those in corporate life, it is only
recently that heavy hitters were happy to be publicly known as such. Even when
people made it to the very top, the material rewards of such success were
something to be kept hidden – to only be hinted at. Even now, stories of income
made from share sales is frowned upon, as if these pull back the curtain on
affairs that would rather be kept hidden.
The net effect of this is that the people
whose achievements (often of suspicious provenance) we can look at and emulate
are politicians and no-talent celebrities. Ambitious young people cannot
clearly see the rewards to be had from being a good engineer, chief executive
or banker, and thus only look up to and mimic the antics of a dubious set of
people.
And it is not only about wealth and other
physical remuneration of their exertions. The exciting stories of ambitions
that lead to audacious takeover bids, and mergers and acquisitions that show
outsize egos, are nowhere to be found in the Kenyan corporate story, which lead
many to assume that corporate life in Kenya is dull, and that the action is
only to be found on the political stage, or in amateurish tiffs between
impecunious artistes.
If Kenyans stopped being so shy and reticent
– if we were proud to hold our achievements up to examination and emulation,
then maybe we would produce a generation that is keen on going into the
corporate world, and not just to ‘do deals’. If we could celebrate the empire
builders among us, and people who have built franchises and legacies, then
maybe the false promise of greed would be that much less appealing. If, instead
of faraway corporate heroes and heroines, and companies that have little
relevance to us, we could point to corporate stars closer home, then we would
see people rushing off to get their accounting and business qualifications. If
we celebrated our young businesspeople with as much vigour and gusto as we
celebrate our suspicious young politicians, then their distasteful bling would
not shine quite so bright. And then, maybe, my long-hibernating column would be
resurrected.
Also published in the Business Daily on 19 August 2014, at http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Opinion-and-Analysis/Let-Kenya-builders-step-forward/-/539548/2423074/-/mdmxtp/-/index.html
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