It is now clear; the October 2011 idiom Nairobi for being progressive is the American dollar "uko juu kama dola" - the salient truth being that the Kenyan shilling has been dropping, and will continue to drop at least until after the general election due later in 2012. It is also clear that the causes of the falling coin are various - a deadly mix of rising oil prices, falling demand for exports, forex speculation, central bank policies, the horn of Africa famine, bad food policies (and allegedly, fundraising for 2012 elections).
The truth is, everyone would like to point a finger at someone else. Now up go the interest rates, and by taking credit out of reach of businesses, we must adjourn the vision 2030 fast track - we will not achieve 10% growth any time soon.
In his acclaimed work on dissipative structures and self organization, the Nobel Laureate Ilya Progine noted how chaos is an intermediary step between the end of one order and the establishment of a new order. He noted that when some systems are about to transition from one order to another, they enter a chaotic state. Don't mind that he was talking about coloured gases, not human affairs. Sometimes the old has to die for the new to be born. As Steve Jobs noted in his keynote speech at Stanford, death is the best invention, for it paves way out for the old and the way in for the new.
In Kenya, the post election chaos came between the old constitution and the new constitution in its current form. The Asian crisis of 1997 established the conditions for China to became the major economic force of this and the next decade. The oil crises of 1973 and 1979 are what led Brazil and Sweden to invest heavily in ethanol and biogas respectfully. Every crisis is an opportunity, a scholarship; the challenge is to harness crisis as an opportunity to move forward.
In Kenya today, we are seized in a moment of crisis with the opportunity to take on some new directions, to change the foundation on which the economy is based and to define the new direction for economic growth for the next decades. So what should we do? What changes do we need to make?
I am a firm proponent of it starts with me. Every morning, I use electricity to heat my bathing water. I need to change to solar water heating. Every day, six million households light their homes using kerosene - and i do remember my kerosene days - yet the money they spend on kerosene over three months in enough to pay for solar lamps for which they will not need to spend money any more. As it were, solar panels have come down significantly over the past few months - given the rising utility bills, solar technology offers a compelling substitute to the grid and an opportunity to modernize the off-grid victims of manifest centrist neglect. These are just two examples of initiatives that if we take up, can knock out double digit percentages off the country's import bill.
We need to export. We need to change our export game all together - the basis for export is competitiveness. We need to develop local world beating solutions - and we cannot do this if our engineers are procurement managers. The secret to competitiveness is innovation and aggressive competition. This also implies that the Competition Act needs to be enforced vigorously - especially in energy and food production.
We need to deal with inequality. Although it is our reality everywhere, it seems to escape our sight each time. Every citizen has an equal right to use public facilities - including roads, broadcast facilities and natural resources. The recent hike in the minimum wage was met with much resistance - because wage is perceived as a measure of people's worth and the elite do not want to be comparable to the ordinary. That would be fine, if not for the fact that there ascension is at the expense of the poor. In this regard, this is the moment for the establishment of policies that would enable every Kenyan to have a realistic chance of obtaining the rights in section 43 of the constitution.
We need to break free from the firm grasp of the old economic order. We have to earn our place in the emerging economic order of our time. Kenya does not have a permanent entitlement to East African business, the other countries have every right to pursue partnerships that are most optimal for them.
Who knows where the shilling will go next? I know that my actions and yours are what it takes to bring the dollar lower
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