I remember reading “Kenya vs Singapore - A tale of two nations” and I couldn’t stop asking myself where the rain started beating us.
To quote "[B]In 1963, when Kenya got independence, and Singapore merged with Malaysia, Kenya’s GDP was $926.6 million while Singapore’s was $917.2 million.
In 1978, when the founding president of Kenya died, Kenya’s GDP had grown to $5.3 billion, but had been surpassed by Singapore whose GDP then had grown to $8.06 billion.
By 1990, when Kuan Yew stepped down from PM’s office (and Kenya on the verge of multiparty democracy), Singapore’s GDP was $38.9 billion compared to Kenya’s $8.57 billion.
Recent figures are more embarrassing. By 2013, as Mr Kenyatta was taking over the reins of Kenya’s leadership, he was managing an economy of only $55.24 billion while his counterpart Mr Hsien was managing a whopping $297.9 billion economy.[/B]" It would be foolhardy to expect following the exact path that Singapore did to become among the richest nations in per capita income worldwide. I believe that there are some steps Kenya can take to transform into a first world nation and break out of the normal economic growth trajectory. Simply, if some measures are taken, we can become a first world nation faster. Below are some steps that are instrumental in making Kenya an economic powerhouse:
Democracy is overrated. Singapore did not prosper to a first world nation due to democracy. We need a benevolent dictatorship at this stage of the growth cycle. Democracies only work well in already developed nations. Rwanda is already a benevolent dictatorship and has began doing well for itself.
The best way to increase the disposable income for most young Kenyans is to leverage skills that can be sold abroad. The internet is a galaxy that can be exploited by the young minds of this country. Freelancing is at its infancy and in a few years, developed nations will be outsourcing labor from where it is cheapest. The government should ensure that every student has a technical skill that can be exported, alongside the main skill the student wishes to learn. Skills such as programming, accounting, graphic design and most technology courses can be leveraged on. By the time everyone graduates, they will be guaranteed of employment in the international freelancing market.
such as when more than 75 per cent of kenya pop is dependent on subsistence agriculture it is the inverse in malaysia where only 16 to twenty p c is in agriculture with 80 per cent dependent on higher yielding manufacturing, shipping, tourism and so on.
Education. Our education system is shit.
90% of our science graduates can very easily state all the scientific laws that govern certain Operations but can’t apply them in real life. Unless we fix that we ain’t going anywhere economically.
Exactly. Because they have nowhere to apply them. That is why, if we cant export goods, we better utilize the internet to export services and get paid in dollars. International markets pay better than local customers any day.
another thing is our population @couchwaru is right on this, if we can’t control the population growth, then we r fuckd.
the country the size of Kenya should have a population of 15million max.
agriculture - industrialization - service industries. That’s the path most countries take to achieve economic superiority. What you are suggesting is that we skip industrialization and head straight to service industries which will benefit very few of our 40M plus countrymen.
this portal i not meant to be marketed abroad but rather help create awareness here in kenya (more so among youth), that they can find work online an get paid by leveraging on whatever skill set they posses. it also act as a platform through which youth are trained on how to become competent freelancers by booking for the said training free of charge.
Majority of Kenyans are actually below 30 years. Things have changed and if we follow the agriculture -industrialization -services route, we will take longer. We need to shorten the process by leveraging on the internet and technical skills.
China took approximately 3 decades of serious manufacturing to pull millions of their citizens out of extreme poverty.
Unless we leverage on the technical skills, you talking about, to build a serious manufacturing base then we might as well kiss the dream of achieving 1st world status goodbye
What makes the GDP grow? That is the question that we should be asking. I like the point on Education because it reiterates my point. Singapore has a strong manufacturing industry. They produce electronics and electronic parts for mobile phones, Tv’s among other things. The reason why Kenya is so poor in terms of GDP is that we only produce agricultural produce. To make matters worse most of that produce has not even gone through value addition. That is why I like the approach the government is taking on introducing EPZ’s and industrial parks. We need to move forward into manufacturing, value addition within the process and increasing the exports, quality exports.
We need to have locally trained labor and that is in touch with the increasing number of technical colleges. Those colleges should have a quality curriculum supported by quality staff. It will be at least a quarter century before we can achieve all of these things.