I was in a company where we used to steal like crazy and do the job free style bila kujali.
Then our thieving days came to an end. There came in a new Chief Operations Officer mwenye hakuwa anataka upuzi. Half of us lost our job na sisi wenye tulibaki tulikaliwa vibaya.
He sealed all the loop holes za wizi and arriving late would earn you a warning letter. Within a short while tulikuwa tumelainika and the company was doing good.
This got me thinking, Kenya ikipata leader mzuri that will streamline things. Do you think the country would improve?
Katiba. We were tricked to give ourselves a constitution that is full of huuuge loopholes, but which ensures that the powers of anyone individual are whittled down.
We can have a changed regime but will the leader be good for the people or good for the government…those two never go hand in hand at times.
Effectiveness and efficiency. Good governance means that processes and institutions produce results that meet the needs of society while making the best use of resources at their disposal sio kuiba loans tukiangalia
a government is worthy if it can achieve 90% on this list according to my thinking.
Participation -Inclusivity
Consensus oriented-robust debates
Accountability- wapunguze ugaidi
Transparency-hapa jo!
Responsive-waache kifo cha mende
Effective and efficient-no comment
Equitable and inclusive-no comment
Follows the rule of law-no comment
Strategic vision-we have baboons for leaders
This is actually what is needed. Good governance & strong & functional institutions so that any idiot doesn’t ruin the economy. It is what the Asian tigers also emphasised. There’s no shortcut. I know this is one of the biggest criticisms against Kibaki. As an economist he should have known that building a good foundation is more important than any short term economic gains. It’s taken 10 years for Uhuruto to take us back to square one.
Dictatorship with a vision is required to tame an African, and in any case, even today’s most democratic and progressive countries started with dictators.
This is a form of laziness. Africans are always waiting for someone to save them. Accept that you have to collectively work towards building strong institutions and demand for better governance. You can’t choose your dictator.
Once, facilitating a team building scavenger hunt for a firm with 200+ employees, this happened. During the hunt, company owner and CEO was in one of the groups, openly aggressively haggled, fought for and snatched hunt items from opposing team members.
It opened our eyes to the firm’s culture of uncouth behaviour, which they wanted to finish off.
So yes, a transformational leader will change things.
All this could have been achieved by jomo and Moi when they had absolute power similar to what Lee Kwan yu did. You have to wonder though whether these presidents saw the need to unite a country as tribally divided as Kenya instead of just taking the easier route of building their family wealth, you also have to wonder whether majority of Kenyans can even recognize what a good leader looks like and what the process of choosing one entails
I don’t think he was very different. I think it was just easier for him to transform his country than it was for the likes of moi/kenyatta. Singapore sio kama huku with dozens of different tribes always fighting for power, ukipiga hesabu vizuri unaona utajirishe familia tu ju your efforts to unite your country won’t last very long because of the deep entrenched tribalism that will reverse your efforts, ni mara ngapi umeskia Moi akisema mwafrika ni ngumu, you also hear stories of how Kenyatta treated his subordinates akiwasummon statehouse. I believe they could have done better if Kenya was as strategically placed as Singapore is both geographically and even society-wise
That’s still poor leadership. Kenya has 43 tribes which are less than Tanzania 120 yet they don’t go killing each other every election cycle? Tanzania due to Nyerere laid a better foundation than Kenyatta in unifying the many tribes. His mistake was to pick socialism over capitalism which screwed Tanzania over tenfold. A mistake for which he steeped down as president. Not that Tanzania is perfect but I don’t doubt that they would have bypassed us by now if they had their affairs in order. Fragile (Failed) States Index. Kenya vs Tanzania.
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And yet when uhuru implements the 8pm curfew which is gazetted in law everyone goes berserk. The problem is Kenyans uncivilized culture. Just observe kenyans on the road when left to their own devices - they will overlap, block each other until everything comes to a standstill. They can never follow the law unless someone is breathing down their neck with a kiboko, just like you were stealing from your employer without abandon or thought that when the company collapses, your job is also gone.
Wrong, Singapore is a very multi ethnic country,it has Chinese, Malaysians, Indians etc but has created an accomodating political system. Malaysia adopted a similar political system to most African countries and made Islam a state religion, in addition to promoting the dominance of ethnic Muslim Malay elites at the expense of other ethnic groups in addition to a monarchy. The political system perpetuated corruption etc , even though Malaysia’s economy is somewhere they still deal with government corruption and ethnic instability. Singapore broke away from Malaysia and in spite of having no major mineral resources while Malaysia had a lot of mineral resources, a country of immigrants it overtook Malaysia by far to become one of the largest and most prosperous economies in the world.
Lee Kwan Yu introduced a representative political system where every ethnic group was accommodated, dealt severely with corruption, encouraged a meritocratic society where the best got rewarded. Today, it has a very stable political system that has translated to social stability and economic growth
3 ethnic groups in tiny island country half the size of Nairobi with a rich merchant class in one of the busiest trading routes in the world where most of the population already speak a common language, yeah very similar to Kenya. Fact is Singapore’s national language is Malay, the Chinese and Indians are recent immigrants.