Kenya's ambassadors and high commissioners risk losing their jobs if they don't perform. Insisting that they must be creative, change the way they work and aggressively market the country abroad, Kenya's President Mwai Kibaki has warned the envoys against spending many years abroad with nothing to show back home for their work.
This comes in the wake of an ambitious five-year road map for social and economic development that is geared at making Kenya globally competitive and prosperous. Having experienced a 6.1% growth in the economy and a reduction in poverty levels from 52.3% in 1997 to 45.8% in 2006, the country is bracing for a 10% economic growth rate.
Leaders across Africa are shunning the flawed leadership style of idling while other people get the job done, embraced by the immediate crop of leaders who inherited power from the colonialists, to the detriment of African nations.
For the last 400 years, developed country populations have insisted on measurements as a means of validating their arguments, assessing progress and steering clear of whims and prejudice in place of reason and logic. It is in this light that the President's demand for a culture of measurements should be embraced by all African nations and African business people if they have to monitor productivity, assess their shortcomings and invest in profitable ventures. Measurement will clear the prevalent dispute that the benefits of economic growth are not trickling down to the ordinary citizen.
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