Do You Think Economic Liberalization Alone Can Deliver In Kenya ?

Many Kenyans pin their hopes on economic liberalization to arrest and even reverse the drift, and to strengthen order, democracy and unity. However, there is no ground to believe that economic reform in itself, though welcome and over-due, will be able to resolve our crisis. On the one hand, our governance structure failed to ensure adequate human development. The failure of our delivery systems meant appallingly low levels of literacy and skills, poor health coverage and hopelessly inadequate rural infrastructure. As a result, the vast majority of Kenyans are not in a position to participate in the productive process of the nation meaningfully. Consequently, the fruits of economic reform, if unaccompanied by transformation of our governance structure and delivery systems, will be at best modest, transient and self-limiting.

As the latent, untapped productive and entrepreneu-rial potential of our middle and upper classes is now unfettered, there will be moderately high growth rates for some time. However, as the bulk of the population is excluded from this economic reform and growth process, high growth rates cannot be sustained and they will eventually taper off.If we take China as example,China could have successfully launch economic reform in 1978 on a superb base of human development, skills and rural infrastructure, built painstakingly between 1948 and 1978. Without such an enduring base, China would not have recorded spectacular growth rates now witnessed about 10% or more compounded annual growth rate for an unbroken 18 year period. Kenya certainly has the potential to match such growth, but only if we create a similar human development and rural infrastructural base.

In fact, economic reform with modest growth, unaccompanied by reform of governance structure, may exacerbate the dangers of authoritarianism. As the dominant groups seek stability, public order and opportunities for growth, they may be frustrated by a crumbling governance structure incapable of creating conditions for growth. The examples of China and South East Asia may be easily misinterpreted, and the middle and upper classes may come to the wrong conclusion that the full fruits of economic reform cannot be realized, unless there is an authoritarian regime, albeit benevolent, to provide order and stability. Little realizing that true democracy is in fact more conducive to competition and growth, these groups may throw the blame for poor results on the democratic process. Such authoritarianism is neither morally acceptable, nor will it achieve high growth, because the real problems are poor human development, low level of skills and inadequate rural infrastructure. In a plural society, authoritarianism will fail as comprehensively as our quasi-democratic state with poorly designed institutions, and without people's participation and role in governance. The only antidote to the ills of our democracy is more, better and truer democracy and not extinguishing the fires of freedom and self-governance.The danger of balkanisation being accentuated by wide regional disparities, which are inevitable in the absence of reform of governance structure.

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