Footnotes of History

The local economy is in shambles. Once you ignore the illusion created by the Chamber of Commerce, the Central Bank and the Brand Kenya campaign, it will be rapidly apparent that this economy that is apparently growing and lifting hundreds of thousands out of poverty is an illusion. Every year, our primary schools, secondary schools, technical colleges and polytechnics and universities spew out tens of thousands of young men and women onto the market, expecting them to sink or swim in the ocean of job-seeking. Mwai Kibaki promised five-hundred thousand jobs to the youth of Kenya when he first made it to State House. It is not too soon to say that on that count alone, he has been an abject failure. Raila Odinga and his ilk have made similar promises in the past; their records in government have been a litany of failure after failure.

The place of Kenya in the regional economy is in grave danger. Uganda has struck oil and foreigners are flocking to Tanzania with cheque-books at the ready. South Sudan, once it resolves its disagreements with the North, will start extracting and exporting oil to the hungry engines of China and the West. Once Somalia is stabilised and the political gridlock that has fomented civil war for the past two decades is dealt with, the hyenas in the West will not only flock to the beaches of Mogadishu but they will make sure that is Western companies that will reap from the opportunities to be found. Once Ethiopia completes its mega-dams on the River Omo, not only will Kenya buy electricity from her at a price that she dictates, Lake Turkana will shrivel and die, taking with it the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Kenyans, pushing them more firmly into an abyss of poverty the likes they have never experienced. To add salt to injury, the proposed wind-power projects on the shores of the Lake will be permanently crippled.

It is this that should worry Kenyans as they consider presidential candidates at the next general elections. Moses Wetangula, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, has expressed an interest in the presidency. He has demonstrated that he knows nothing of the importance of foreign policy on shoring up the economic fortunes of the nation. His decisions, and those of his predecessor Raphael Tuju, another presidential candidate, betray the fact that they see the flash of political union and partnership as the epitome of foreign policy. They forgot that foreign policy is wedded to only one overriding objective: the economic fortunes of the nation. A nation enters into political arrangements with another for the sole purpose of advancing its interests in the global market. We know nothing of the economic plans of the other candidates other than 'they will create jobs, they will employ the youth'.

It is not enough to speak of the potential of the country. It is not enough that these men and women do not seem to understand that the fortunes of this country are not tied to the growth of the local economy alone but to the growth of the regional one and the dominance of Kenyans and Kenyan companies in that economy. What we need to do is review their records over the past two decades and judge them for what they have done or failed to do. In their public lives they have utterly failed to see the role Kenya plays in the regional, continental and global economies, selling the country to the Chinese at the expense of the West and refusing to advance the interests of the country. If they are incapable of understanding this fundamental truth, they do not deserve nor merit the votes of hard-working Kenyans. They deserve to be forgotten, dumped in the ash-heap of history. They deserve to remain footnotes for all eternity.