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Kenyans are quite fond of saying that we have good policies but we fail at implementing them. I suspect this sentiment, along with “lack of political will”, comes from many years of political analysts attempting to make sense of the failures of our government. In fact, we are often told that many countries have come to copy our policies and they have gone on to prosper.
I have always found this sentiment rather confusing, especially given my experience – albeit limited – of examining public policies in Kenya as well as participating in the development of some of them. My experience has done anything but convince me that we are good at policy-making or that we even take it very seriously. I therefore often wonder whether the people who make these claims actually read many of our policy documents. I wonder whether people are often confusing well laid out and colourful policy documents with good policy. Confusing form with substance, as it were.
I am also unsure whether they consider that the policies they talk about are unimplementable, in which case they cannot have been good policies to begin with.
For an analysis of the real situation we find ourselves in, we can pick one of the many policy documents that have been developed by our government. For my purposes here – illustrating some of the challenges that bedevil our policy-making processes – I shall consider Kenya’s National population Policy for Sustainable Development that was published earlier this year by the National Council for Population and Development (NCPD).
The NCPD is a policy agency proper, anchored in the crucial need to link population matters to economic development. The agency was established in 1982, initially as a department in the Ministry of Home Affairs, to advise on matters pertaining to population and development. Its mandate was contained in Sessional paper No. 4 of 1984 on Population Policy Guidelines which was later revised and transformed into the Sessional Paper No. 1 of 2000 on National Population Policy for Sustainable Development (NPPSD). The agency was then converted into a Semi-Autonomous Government Agency (SAGA) under the National Treasury and Economic Planning in 2004 with the responsibility of promoting and coordinating population and development programmes in Kenya. As such, this agency that many Kenyans are not aware of is quite central to the development trajectory of our country. As far as having the right institutions in place, all good.
As noted earlier, the NCPD recently published their latest policy to guide the government’s efforts for the development of our population. The stated purpose of the policy is to direct focus to a sustainable human development paradigm with a focus on maximising human capital potential for sustainable development to harness the demographic dividend.
Leaving the big words aside, the whole point of this policy is to make sure that we take advantage of our demographic dividend, the economic growth potential that occurs when a country’s population age structure shifts, resulting in a larger working-age population relative to the non-working-age population. With the current high proportion of young people in our population, we have the potential to propel our development trajectory. Again, in terms of the stated objectives of the policy, all good.
Additionally, the policy presents a very well-detailed context analysis, highlighting the current situation in the country. The statistics, largely coming from government, are solid – as always. It highlights some sobering statistics: about 14.5 million Kenyans are food poor; the labour force participation rate among the working-age population stood at 74 per cent in 2019 (meaning 26 per cent of the people are completely excluded from the workforce) – which may have become worse by now; Fifty-five per cent of children in Kenya today will grow up to be, at best, half as productive as they could be. As depressing as these numbers are, we can conclude that as far as understanding the current situation is concerned, the policy document is spot-on.
Yet, as we all know, our problem as a society has never been in dreaming or stating aspirations, and nor has it been in understanding just how dire our situation is. The problem often lies in understanding and/or accepting the appropriate solutions to the problems we face and then actually getting down to the work of fixing them. This policy does not do much to dissuade a reader from affirming this conclusion.
Given the situation we are in, as outlined above, one would expect to see a thorough analysis of these challenges aimed at identifying the drivers of these challenges and assessing potential challenges before a document like this gets the lofty title of “Sessional Paper No. 1 of 2023”. Instead, what we see is a completely underwhelming list of policy solutions that are not deeply thought-out or even linked to the existing challenges they are supposed to address.
Consider, for instance, the challenge of unemployment which is noted as a key concern for the active age population (15 to 64 years). With no analysis or explanation, “preference for white-collar jobs” is listed as one of the policy concerns. In other words, we are being told here that a preference for white-collar jobs is a policy problem that requires interventions, but we are not offered any reason as to why this is a problem. The analysis is left to the reader’s imagination.
In any case, even if we were to agree that it is a problem, the policy document presents no direct response to it. One could be generous and again on their own initiative link this “problem” to the strong advocacy for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) that we see in the document. However, even then, we are not given any sense of how many employment opportunities exist in blue-collar work. Crucially, it baffles me that these issues are discussed without any reference to job creation strategies such as enhancing the manufacturing and agricultural sectors and especially with respect to the much hoped for green transition. It is almost as if there is an assumption that if people are trained in TVETs jobs will magically appear. Even if the argument is that these considerations are made in other documents, this would need to be articulated and the key insights from those documents offered to readers.
Another illustration relates to the recognition of HIV/AIDS as the leading cause of death among young people aged between 10 and 24 years. It is befuddling that statistical analysis is not provided to back up this claim, let alone to parse out the underlying drivers of this phenomenon. It is even more perplexing that, having found HIV/AIDS to be a leading cause of death, unsafe sex is not listed among the key risk factors of mortality among adolescents and young people. Surprisingly, heavy episodic drinking makes the cut. Again, one would expect this issue to be given consideration in the document. It is not. Instead, what is listed as a policy concern is the incredibly vague “inadequate targeted services for the health and well-being and concerns of the adolescent and young person”. The identified policy measure is the uninspiring “support initiatives aimed at reconfiguring health response systems to cater for the needs of adolescents and young persons”.
As I noted earlier, we are often told that the gaps emerge at the implementation phase either because of a lack of political will, lack of resources, or inadequate capacity within the state institutions charged with these mandates. While that could be true in some respects, we must also take due cognisance of the fact that the policy we are talking about in the first place may be fundamentally off the mark. This population policy for sustainable development is illustrative.
Of course, it is understandable that a policy document would not cover everything, and nor should it aspire to. Yet, on these crucial matters we would expect to see a proper prioritisation, deep analysis and meaningful policy responses. Instead, we see documents that are filled with government-speak and lack of precision that makes it hard to move forward in any meaningful way.
Doing policy work is hard. It requires solid analysis, inclusion of the voices of multiple stakeholders and confident leadership. It requires moving away from an approach of throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks and instead to make deliberate choices on where to invest efforts. If we end up missing our opportunity to harness the demographic dividend, it will simply be because we failed to prepare for it adequately.
