When politicians leave money on the table for us

One of the tragedies of our current political situation is that it is a major distraction from the urgent need to improve the material conditions of Kenyans. All indicators show that we have stagnated as a society.

For example, after substantial improvements since around 2000, the trend in life expectancy has essentially remained flat over the last decade.  As a result, life expectancy in a peer country like Tanzania is now almost 5 years longer than in Kenya (62 vs 66.8). Real incomes (that is, earnings controlling for inflation) are lower today than in 2005. In 1981, the average Kenyan lived almost ten years longer than the average Tanzanian.

There is simply no hiding from these facts, of which the most visible symptom is the ongoing nationwide youth rebellion. But there are others. The rise in mental illnesses and crimes of passion suggests a collapse of our communal bonds. Economic desperation is unmooring our people and communities from a sense of obligation to the rules of society. The same is true of our elites.

Few aspire to any higher goal than amassing power and wealth. This is no way to live. We cannot hope for a functional society if we are unable to give our people hope for a better material future. Mediocre economics begets mediocre politics (and vice versa).

Our entrenched low-ambition politics means we are likely to miss the ongoing pro-growth wave in the global discourse on economic development. The old aid-dependent model of thinking about economic development is dead. This has created an opportunity for new thinking about how low-income countries like ours should approach development. Furthermore, there are lots of organisations and individuals willing to partner with ambitious countries that dare to dream of a better future, just like it happened in the Asian tigers that we valorise.

Unfortunately for us, many such entreaties have found no takers within the current administration. Our officials have left money on the table, either because of incompetence or the short-sighted focus on shakedowns. We have lost important investment opportunities or the chance to upskill the personnel running our economic planning engine room.

Why do countries sometimes leave money on the table? Often, it happens because of ideology or institutional gridlock that inhibits collective decision-making. In our case, however, it is neither. We are leaving money on the table because our ruling elites are satisfied with the current state of affairs and do not see material want as a problem.

There is no serious ideological or institutional explanation. It is simply a problem of personal taste at the highest levels of government, where people are cognitively at ease with the idea of obscene personal enrichment while leading desperately poor people.

It is very hard to teach ambition. It is one thing to want to grow the economy, but lack the know-how to do it. It is quite another to be satisfied by the trappings of power and access to state resources.

The writer is a professor at Georgetown University