Kenya Events

15 April 2013

President Uhuru Kenyatta in Kenya

Last week the newly elected President assumed office in Nairobi. It took me back to the wonderful two-and-half years my family and I spent in that enchanting country in 1984-86. In those days Daniel arap Moi was the country’s President and Mwai Kibaki was then Vice President. I have written about those days, in my first book Inside Diplomacy (2000). I was fortunate to make several visits to Kenya in 2009-11, and learnt more about the country and region. Of course Nairobi will also figure prominently in my memoir, which is half-written; I hope to complete that book by the end of this year.

Kenya has longbeen the star of East Africa, the most advanced economy and a land with huge potential. And it did not, for long, quite fulfill that potential. Some thoughts:

1.     For the great part the country gave room to its entrepreneurs, and furnished reasonable infrastructure; Africans and ‘Asians’ led the growth of industry and business, notwithstanding occasional bouts of ethnic frenzy, the most recent in 2007-08. But the system has not been able to tackle massive unemployment.

2.     Unlike Tanzania, Kenya and the other neighbors did not overcome tribal fissures. It seems a paradox that while Founder-President Julius Nyerere managed to create a Tanzanian national identity in which tribal issues were overcome, the same Nyerere failed to get that country’s economy to move to high gear, unlike Kenya. Is there a moral here that we need to understand?

3.     The East African Community is now finally moving forward, having expanded to include Burundi and Rwanda, with South Sudan waiting in the wings. Uganda is also on the move. Kenya has a special role to play in the EAC.

4.     Tourism is the great money-spinner for all these countries, and here too Kenya is now doing well. This is the reason the smooth election process in 2013, and stability, is so important, for this country and for the entire region.

5.     Across this region, the ‘Asians’ have been a positive force, and in the eyes of most Africans, the internal political segmentation of these ‘mohindi’ does not matter. As Indians and Pakistanis we can learn from this. I wonder if you know of ‘The Indus Entrepreneurs’ [https://www.tie.org ], a remarkable collection of South Asian diaspora, who focus on venture capital and entrepreneurship, again on a basis that is deliberately blind to political division. Should we in South Asia not learn from these diaspora situations?

President Kenyatta faces charges at the ICC, flowing from the flawed election process of 2007 and its aftermath. But for me that is a sideshow. His real challenge is at home, and if he succeeds in providing good governance, that should take care of his principal tasks.

Rwanda and Uganda have also done well, though I have no first-hand knowledge of either country.