What vision is driving Kenya and by extension Africa's quest to achieve Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as propagated by the United Nations? Perhaps each of the eight goals has its own vision. For instance, a vision to end extreme poverty and hunger, empower women, offer free health care and universal primary education and attain environmental sustainability. What is a vision?
A vision is the ability to think about or plan the future with imagination and wisdom. One's imagination is fuelled by the understanding of "how the world works." If one believes that spirits enable a leaf to float, cause drought, or earthquakes; the person's imagination and vision will operate within this limited parameters. One's wisdom is also driven by sense of causation. To develop a clear vision for Africa, our thinkers ought to subject their vision to the basic measure of understanding "causation" and generally "how the world works."
In his book "A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles," Thomas Sowell points out two major types of vision: the constrained and unconstrained. The constrained vision is driven by the belief that human nature is inherently limited intellectually and morally and will always require interventions from society or external force to put it on "track." In the unconstrained vision, human nature is viewed to have potential far beyond what is presently manifested and only society and external forces can limit such potential.
Are MDGs driven by constrained or unconstrained vision? In Africa, the MDGs are strictly in the constrained vision category, that is, unless the United Nations and her partners intervene, extreme poverty, hunger, gender inequality, free healthcare, and environmental sustainability among other goals will not be attained. Our sense of causation has driven our policy makers to push for policies that will indeed see children in school, but fail to evaluate the content of education and the likely beneficiary in business terms to this goal. A possibility of achieving the MDGs at a superficial level exists, but no effort has been made by its proponents to promote indigenous African businesses. True, people are hungry because they do not have food, but are we keen to evaluate reasons for their inability to produce and market to others?
Western and Asiatic economies invest heavily in the unconstrained vision approach to the challenges that face them. They tap and unleash the unlimited human potential to address poverty, hunger, inequality, environment, illiteracy and poor health. The overall national or continental goal ought to promote that which addresses the quest by the human person to self actualize either through business, innovations, and service to others.
Setting MDGs might have assisted Kenya to focus on offering universal free primary education, free healthcare, and a quest to halve extreme poverty and hunger among other goals, but it still does not empower Kenyan producers to address the same concerns. You can conquer hunger by improving farm inputs, but just how easy is it for one to start and operate a fertilizer or animal feed business in Kenya? How far has the government policy makers gone in ensuring that a sound business climate is put in place to address the needs
of the goals addressed in MDGs?
I propose that Kenya and by extension African countries go for unconstrained vision: to promote business in addressing the needs of Africa. Our goal should be to promote business people in Africa and our dream should be turn each African challenge into a business opportunity.
This article first appeared in the Business Daily, a publication of the Nation Media Group