South East Asia’s Tiger economies have long triggered questions about why and how Kenya was left behind in the post-colonial maendeleo race. Instructively, it is the Tigers’ own ‘left-behind’ stories that may be illuminating - and none more so than the rivalry between Malaysia and Singapore. It is a cautionary tale with many familiar themes: tribalism and corruption, dictatorship and democracy. By DAVID NDII.
A bridge over the Likoni Channel? Unlikely (there’s a mafia in the ferry business). A railway line between Garissa and Isiolo? Unthinkable (we haven’t figured out how to eat from it). But we’re $6 billion in debt to an unnecessary American expressway and an overpriced Chinese railway, the logic of the first sabotaging the other. 120 years since the building of the Kenya-Uganda railway, RASNA WARAH counts the cost of missed opportunities and handshakes in Nairobi that build bridges to nowhere.
The tectonic diplomatic, economic and political shifts that have been embarked upon in Ethiopia will reverberate throughout the region as one of its giants embarks on an opening up of its society that is without precedent. This is not a time to be sceptical about Ethiopia argues L. MUTHONI WANYEKI
The aberrations around delegation, particularly as concerns public justice seem to perpetuate the criminal administration of public resources. In a seeming charade that blurs lines between the roles of the political and the justice systems, the caretaker is programmed to take the fall and make heroes of the real suspects. But although nobody is buying it, nobody is paying for it either, because nobody is making them pay argues L. MUTHONI WANYEKI.
Uhuru’s contentious second term may have opened with the announcement of his ‘Big Four Agenda’ last November; in reality, his final term has only really taken off with the mysterious March 9 ‘handshake’ with Raila Odinga. Both initiatives are personal attempts to craft a legacy - and they are being sabotaged by his administration’s severe addiction to graft, as the latest convulsion of scandals so tellingly demonstrate. How will Kenya’s fifth president be remembered? By JOHN GITHONGO.
On March 6, Finance CS Henry Rotich writes a letter to the IMF appealing for an extension on a US$ 1.5 billion Stand-by Credit Facility, effectively putting Kenya back into an IMF austerity programme. On March 7, the IMF makes its ‘end-of-mission’ statement, detailing the terms of a bail-out package. On March 9, Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga seal a new political deal on the steps of Harambee House. Were these events a coincidence, or as has happened so often in Kenya’s history, orchestrated by the Western patrons of the Kenya State? By JOHN GITHONGO.
At independence, all of post-colonial Africa promulgated democratic constitutions. In no time, all but one state had reverted to authoritarian rule. Why? In the market of public choice, it is the self-interest of the players, not their benevolence, that creates the rules. Thus the logic of the ethnic chief, the tribal baron - and the hostage voter electing them while lamenting their existence. So, wither democracy? DAVID NDII, on the calculus of power-sharing.
From the theoretical underpinnings of the National Youth Service’s as an institution aimed at enhancing national cohesion and security it has travelled a path including technical training, access to the national defence forces and more recently – has provided vital inroads for the elite to enrich itself. The stigma that now attends to the NYS is compounded every passing year meaning it has never come remotely close to fulfilling the mandate for which it was created and rebranded. It has now become, for a venal elite a powerful tool of plunder while feeding off the desperation and aspirations of Kenyan...
Kenya’s history has, since KADU merged with KANU in 1964, been about elite pacts. Controlled behind the scenes by old and new imperial masters, these politics effectively came to an end on March 9, 2018 when Raila Odinga bequeathed Kenya with the last betrayal. Has a new leftist politics been birthed? By WILLY MUTUNGA.
In an act of gratuitous self-hatred, the American rapper’s comments on slavery open the wounds of a painful debate. In the Age of Trump, racism is now normalised, enabled even by its victims: Well-heeled Kenyans scrambling for a Ksh 1 million seat to watch a very British royal wedding on a TV screen in Nairobi; a liberal white woman looking for a black lover to erase her guilt. RASNA WARAH surveys the psyche of a very global scourge.
In Kampala, as elsewhere on the continent, the status parade celebrating the tiniest successes costs a fortune. What if those resources were turned to more profitable pursuits? MARY SERUMAGA, musing on Millennials, the informal sector and a Twitter exchange, has an epiphany in a matatu.
Returning to play her part in changing Kenya after years abroad, MIRIAM ABRAHAM encountered cynicism and greed from her age mates among the professional elite. Yet it paled in comparison to her experience in an independent public body. Back in her adopted home, she reflects on the March 9 handshake, a deal sealed for the survival of a treacherous elite.
