Population Explosion Verses Poverty

General
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This is a bit long, I apologise in advanced. Could not decide to post a response to either @FieldMarshal CouchP or @girlciki93, See their links below.

Poverty contributes to reduced life prospects, impacts on education and employment possibilities, contributes directly to population explosion. To contain rapid population expansion we must address causes of poverty.

@ FieldMarshal CouchP gave an example, that dividing his father’s land between 11, affected the chances of becoming billionaire, a dependency on inheritance.
If the 11 sons and many others around the country, had setup a factory on half a plot, utilised the local resources i.e. The clay to establish a ceramic factory, from quartz sands, a Glass factory, or added value to the waste from the numerous tea/coffee factories to generate electricity and produce fertilisers; the 11 would have become wealthy. The size of the land they inherited would be inconsequential, no impact on their financial status.
A factory’s on-site maintenance workshops acts as, a springboard for small machinery production. Perhaps @GUKA and others would have progressed to tarmacked the roads leading into the factories and established light railway lines to transport the goods to the bigger towns & export, sponsored and financed nation-wide competition for a light aircraft design and construction to transport directors and goods etc

They (the 11) and others across the country could have created numerous Jobs; poverty contained and population growth curtailed very early on, Kenya population = under 30 million.

In the Western developed nations, Industrialists setup factories which led then to build the waterways and roads for transportation, followed by numerous other innovations, machine tools, steam power, trains, electricity, the clock, telephone etc. Let’s review and prioritise our infrastructure construction and investments, put a fraction of that money into technical, value addition and quality economic and administrative training. Restructure at least part of secondary education and introduce well managed skill based training into 5-10% of government schools, to provide well-grounded leaners for technical and vocational colleges.

Population growth contributes to poverty, only once the curve has been crossed - sustained Poverty over a lengthy period, leads to population explosion which then sustains and accelerates poverty creating, The Cycle.

The population in Kenya and the rest of Africa is not really the problem. The main problem is sustained poverty, poor quality education, absence of manufacturing Industry and the most significant unfair trade prices to the largest dual employee\ employers the farmers.

Planned and well-targeted Education and resources will see a correction of population growth.
The non-formal Technical Education, under the Big 4 is currently under the office of the Vice President, for continuity and balance; it is probably best overseen by an autonomous body, example - Kenya Institute for Vocational & Advanced Technical Education. Overseeing technical, other vocational, IT level, paramedical etc. training.

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http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/kenya-population/

@FieldMarshal CouchP - https://www.kenyatalk.com/index.php?threads/this-is-guka-quit-the-whining.83188/
@girlciki93- https://www.kenyatalk.com/index.php?threads/guka-is-wrong.83253/

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Also, Malfunctioning institutions create disorder that stunts progression and upward mobility. You can survive a huge population as long as you have order in everything that you do.

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I’ve seen something in that graph i had never noticed before; the post independence generation started the trend of smaller families. (I am thinking aloud i don’t mean to derail!)

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That trend is leading to 300M people by 2100.

I visited many tea factories and i did not see the waste you are talking about, could you please explain what you mean.

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First half of the discussion is based on assumptions which water down your argument.

Second, we should demystify the manufacturing myth.

People don’t start manufacturing out of the blue. They have to learn, iterate and then start. It is highly likely for an Indian whose father was a manufacturer to start a manufacturing business than it is for a Turkana who has known keeping livestock all his life.

Why? Because the Indian boy learnt about manufacturing from a small age, did it himself and now he can see market gaps and decide which manufacturing business to start.

By the way, how many successful manufacturing businesses are owned by Kenyans? Do you think it’s by luck? No. It’s because by the time Indians were investing heavily in manufacturing, our fathers didn’t even know about the goods being produced let alone think about owning such manufacturing businesses.

Again, we should be aware that the world is moving towards a trend of few workers and mechanization of most processes that can be done by humans. For example, for the last few years, tea plantations have been faced by persistent strikes. The strikes are caused by workers who down want to be downsized. However, the reality is that as you employ more workers in factories, they demand more wages and in linear economies like ours where it’s hard to make profits genuinely, the only way to make profits is through laying off.

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Most of the developed societies did not have children inducted into the family businesses while still young to be innovative; awareness and an enlightening process happens within the education system, these nations are far ahead of India. Apprenticeship was and is a big part of learning, colleges act as a base for hypotheses to be put into practise, through funded projects which mature into technological advancement.

Experimentation is how technological pioneers did it; they didn’t learn it from the family business.

The wheel has already been invented; we are not doing any iteration to what others did over 200 years ago (unless it is software dev. or prototyping new products).

We must understand the fundamental basics of how the wheel was build, look at our environment understand our issues, apply what is available, modify or extend to address local needs.

…and this is why I put it that we need - well managed skill based training into 5-10% of government schools, well-targeted skilling thought process at secondary education level during the formative years, solid appropriate and adequate learning.

It would be ideal if for some of the Governors use the resources to setup vocation training with equipped workshops than pay for gym classes.

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people a generally lazy,how many destitute decided that they ain’t about that life? umaskini nikujitakia,submission to poverty is the unpardonable sin against the body akin to happiness.what you do about it determines the end

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Whar about low natural intelligence leading to lower productivity? It’s the obvious conclusion that everyone is dancing around

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@S_Lilly Africa has been very sparsely populated for a long time and it’s only recently that our population has become as big as is. probably still behind India on a larger piece of land. Despite these differences in population, one constant is that African has been behind in economic productivity in both periods.

This idea of population finishing resources was discredited a long time ago. It assumes there is a limit to innovation to solve problems. You can see for yourself that Kenya with 40-50 million people is richer than it used to be with 20 million people. It’s all in productivity (which also tells of organization). It’s why Tokyo with 30 million people looks better than Nairobi with 6 million people.

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Lool are you joking? There is no “low natural intelligence.” Sometimes humans have different value/cultural systems that output different things. For instance there is the monochronic and polychronic perception of time. If you build a system off one, those who follow the other will lag. Or You can’t call tuaregs unhygienic because they don’t shower everyday as they prioritize water differently.

You should understand that multicultural African nation states have been around for only 50-60 years. The natural situation would have been Kikuyus in their own country, Luos in their own country and if there are conflicts they get solved to conclusion instead of the South Sudan situation or our ethnicity problem that get postponed to another time. It’s more or less the same problem in the middle East. We don’t have a good base to form countries that are truly together.

You seem to have a deterministic view of history. You probably believed in “the end of history.” It was wrong. The world is grey not black and white.

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Also this. The cycle of poverty
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I think you are being too myopic on this low intelligence issue, we have one of the highest literacy rates (89%) in Africa, Zimbabwe being the highest.

Even if we assume that that data is accurate it would still not explain why we keep making the same mistakes of voting for people who never bring any sustainable change. We never learn.

Productivity can also be similarly explained. We have an affinity for low risk ventures. In South Africa, the Boers who gave up their land to Africans for compensation have been complaining that there is low productivity. Some of them have even reinvested in the land to partner with the African after seeing their advice on how to run the farms fall on deaf ears.

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Literacy rates mean nothing. The question is on the quality of education and the style of learning. There’s a difference between knowing what a dustbin is and understanding the value of putting your litter there and not throw outside your car window.

Voting is a farce. No country had universal suffrage democracy and all that stuff about human rights at this stage of Development. Not Europe, not Japan, not South Korea, Not Australia. Democracy sets people against Government and it makes long term agenda difficult because you’re always looking at the next election cycle. And you can’t vote “for your interest” because the system is set up to lock out most people from running to win anyway. If I ran for president you sure won’t vote for me because I can’t finance a presidential bid.

Lol of course people with less education and less resources have an affinity for low risk investments. You don’t go from a subsistence economy to competing with Japan at advanced Manufacturing. You need to pile that up over time. But things have to come together for that. Like you can’t do Manufacturing if hakuna stima or it costs high enough to make business not viable. We are talking about TVET in Kenya in 2018, why are you expecting us to outdo Korea and China? Why you bringing up boer who have accumulated more knowledge/experience in commercial agriculture compared to newbie Africans?

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No, I’m talking about most black people, I work in the technical field, I’ve schooled with some of the smartest people in kenya, people who were top 10 in KSCE. But even they can’t take risks in manufacturing, they’d rather buy a Shamba or build a flat. Even with all this knowledge we have it should be easier than the Indians and Boers who immigrated here with a risk taking attitude. Nowadays it’s easier because the info is available.

We are not competing with Japan, it’s easier to setup a food processing plant than a steel/aluminum smelting plant and then build from there.

I think the main problem is there’s shortage of a critical mass of intelligent policy makers in all sectors of Kenyan/african society. And a cultural attitude of complacency and mediocrity.

You can’t keep giving the excuse that we are not ready. Nobody ever is, circumstances have to force you to be ready and we never seem to get it. The fact that you dismiss voting as a farce is one of the problems. Voting is a reality and we have to deal with it the best way we can.

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There is such a thing. Some people are smarter than others

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On the contrary though,there’s a repulsive word “Oroshi”… “death by overwork”,the physical or mental demands of excessive overtime and insufficient rest and less pay can lead to employees passing away from heart attacks and strokes or taking their own lives. the countries you’ve mentioned are what we term as “a working nation”,Africans as a people are generally lazy,we wait for providence,from lands,our parents even from our own kids,we don’t have that “go getter” attitude .

have a look at the lay of the land from ,say 2010 and now,a lot has been accumulated either unscrupulously or in a legit manner but besides that point ,population explosion means resource scarcity…picture culling in wildlife

in a parallel universe this is working like clockwork,i even voted for it:D:D:Dindifference is what parts the blacks per se,i know other ethnicities bear the same conundrum but that’s an issue for another day but i do oblige to your argument.points to be pondered later:D:D
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