Welcome to the season of vision peddling in Kenya! With elections around the corner, all the political leaders I meet seem to have suddenly dreamt up some wonderful vision for this country. At this rate, the country might as well dispense the whole idea of vision 2030 and simply assign those seeking political office to deliver manna from heaven.

Both sides of the political divide share one vision in common: that of fighting poverty. What is a vision? A leading African American Economist, Thomas Sowell says; ‘Visions are like maps that guide us through a tangle of bewildering complexities.’ He adds, ‘A vision is our sense of how the world works. For example, primitive man’s sense of why leaves move may have been that some spirit moves them, and his sense of why tides rise or volcanoes erupt may have been along similar lines.’ What vision does your local member of parliament, or your favorite political party espouse?

The electorate ought to analyze the type of visions articulated by aspiring candidates. So far, incumbent parliamentarians’ vision seems to be focused more on Constituency Development Fund (CDF) deliverables! At political party level, freebies are paraded for all to see, ranging from ‘free’ primary education, to ‘free’ high school education. Depending on mwananchi’s (citizen’s) sense of how the world works, this political deliverables are either ‘free’ or some scientist ought to point out to them that no such thing as ‘free’ exists in reality.

Another popular vision is that of ‘our turn to eat the national cake’! If you share a similar understanding of the primitive man’s premise of what makes leaves float, then it is very possible that you believe that the biggest problem in Kenya and by extension Africa is tribalism! Not-at-all; it is the ‘national cake’. As long us we continue to allow the government to hold the biggest cake on this land, all energies will be used to access it, and the most potent strategy at the moment is that of tribe and clan. How is this cake baked? When foreign aid rolls in, all lucrative contracts are generated in readiness to be dished out to ‘correct’ tribesmen. When we assign the government the duty of doing business other than acting as a regulator, and supervisor, we promote the expansion of the cake in the public domain (‘Mali ya Umma’) as opposed to private domain. 

Does Tanzania offer any lessons? When Mwalimu Julius Nyerere set out with a vision to facilitate equal distribution of wealth in Tanzania, it did not take him long to discover that one cannot distribute what he doesn’t have! One must produce and generate wealth and then perhaps engage in the luxury of distributing it. Depending on a political aspirant’s understanding of how the wealth is generated, one might as well set out with a clear vision of distributing wealth and resources to all 36 million Kenyans! A quick look at Kenya in the last 50 years points at the futility of citizens investing in political visions that are purely driven by a misplaced understanding on how to fight poverty.

What would be the most appropriate vision for leadership in this country? Oops you missed that one. First as voters, we must assign ourselves the responsibility of seeking to understand how the world works! Do we have such things as free services from government? No, the government taxes us before accumulating enough to offer whatever it refers to as free. Kenya’s case is even worse because the government approaches donors to assist in implementing its ‘free projects’. The false belief that other people will always act in the best interest for others is what leads to misplaced visions for Kenya and by extension Africa.

Second, if you wait to have a share of the national cake, your vision is likely to promote tribalism! What we ought to be working on at the moment is how to shrink the national cake and divert the energies of brilliant Kenyan minds to acts of productivity and self ‘baking’ of cakes. We can shrink the national cake by urging the government to desist from punching more holes in our pockets and derailing our continental positioning by running to donors in order to offer ‘freebies’. Instead, we must put in place policies that will promote economic freedom of our populations in order for them to engage in businesses and productivity. A prosperous population will be able to pay for education.  Third, next time you meet a wealthy person, ask him/her what products he/she offered on the market! If the wealth is as a result of the individual having come from the right-clan in control of the ‘national cake industry’ and has produced nothing for the market, then you are looking at another stupid vision for the country.

Lastly, if you remember the ‘Nyayo’ philosophy of stepping in a leader’s foot prints, then decide for yourself whether a good visionary leader is one who wants to be followed or one who needs a team of leaders in the board room! Kenya and Africa will enjoy prosperity by simply diversifying the constituency of leadership thereby managing to counter external onslaughts that have for a long time taken advantage of ‘one-man’ type of leadership. It is our responsibility as voters to figure out what makes volcanoes to erupt!