Politicians for and against are struggling to come up with the right “bottom-down” sound-bytes.
Everyone refers to US President Joe Biden’s words around building the “bottom-up and middle-out”.
In that phrasing is the subtlety that the middle refuse to realise or accept that they’re actually at the bottom.
Kandara MP Alice Wahome. FILE PHOTO | NMG Is Kenya’s current “bottom-up” debate — which is not an economics debate — something worth worrying about? Academics cannot find it in the textbooks because it isn’t there, and never was.
Politicians for and against are struggling to come up with the right “bottom-down” sound-bytes.
Everyone refers to US President Joe Biden’s words around building the “bottom-up and middle-out”.
In that phrasing is the subtlety that the middle refuse to realise or accept that they’re actually at the bottom.
Realisations are important. As I’ve said before, Kenya is a three-trick economic pony. A high-stakes casino economy financed by big mono/oligopolistic and mostly multi/transnational business that recognises that the ease of doing business requires a cost of doing business with the top of our political elite.
A salaried middle-class bubble economy that has been decimated by Covid-19 into a hustle-seeking precariat. Including a civil service suddenly lacking in travel per diem and other transactional perks.
Then there’s the former kadogo, (meaning small) now burgeoning micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) economy in which most of us already live.
THE PEOPLE The beauty of Kenya as a transactions — not policy — State is that it is possible to miniaturise and merchandise anything.It is the basis on which, contrary to official opinion, the state of Kenya actually survives, even through difficult episodes such as this Covid-19 one. And cash always flows in this little, big economy.It is tempting to picture this categorisation in traditionally racist white-house negro-field negro terms.Yet, if we understood this picture, then we see the attraction of bottom-up thinking. The casino is barely tolerable, the bubble is mostly transient and kadogo is where life begins and ends.An imaginative reading of our rights-based, devolved-power Constitution might have got us here sooner.The detail of this bottom-up thinking, which is as political and social as it is economic, shall emerge over the coming months leading to the 2022 election. We could start with, “It’s the People, stupid!”And, rather than unpack bottom-up, here are three big thoughts on how we might have gotten here.First, we haven’t implemented enough of the Constitution. As […]
