Kijana hapana ogopa matusi ya Guka. It is always made in jest.
Anyway, you have made some good points, but let me illustrate.
Kenya has about 100,000 -200,000 cancer cases each year (although no survey has been done, I am using the statistics for Britain and correcting for differences in pop. sizes). We also have 47 counties. What I am saying is that it is not practical or cost-effective to have 47 cancer centres around the country. In my estimation, the country can be served by seven cancer treatment centres - in Nyeri, Nakuru, Eldoret, Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu and Garissa, with satellite depts in places like Mandera, Turkana, Kitale etc. Otherwise, if you establish a centre per county, at Sh6 billion or so each, you will have some treating a patient per day!
As far as language is concerned, literacy must either be in English or Swa. I think every Std 8 kid can read and write to some degree in those two languages, which means they will for example be able to understand contraception messages on radio and TV.
Sure sure. But you will bear me witness that most of our average university graduates can barely speak coherently in English, leave alone string a proper simple sentence that observes the subject-verb-object sentence structure when writing.
You have reminded me of way back in the day when the National Council for Population & Development had constant running adverts all over radio about contraception and family planning, even sponsoring skits and radio theatre to pass along the same message, plus posters for display in public places. Siku hizi I hardly hea them yet we know the battle is far from won. Such would greatly help to demystify the whole contraception issue.
While still on this issue specifically, I think we should re-examine the role of religion in public affairs. We surely can’t have the gov’t trying to impress upon us the need to plan our families while on the other hand we have the clergy urging their followers to ignore the same messages, going so far as to publicly denounce and burn condoms!:mad:
One other strategy to have small families, besides FP that is, is to keep girls in school go as long as possible. This delays onset of child bearing.
And yes, we better start addressing sexuality with our young ones. Ile mambo tunaona siku hizi katika mahospitali, wacha tu.
It’s impossible to answer this question by considering geopolitical reality or world politics. But that is a different topic altogether.
I agree that it’s a mix of all the good thing already stated. Infact the Asian Tigers already did it and they are the best example we have:
Land reforms followed by empowering farmers/prioritizing agriculture. Once you have food security and efficiency in the sector you can move onto making things.
Here there is a dilemma. Do you opt for export promotion or import substitution? Anyway, to make things you must educate people (meaning relevant curriculum, meaning empowering girls, meaning decreasing birthrate, meaning merit based society, meaning urbanization and modernization, etc). After some time the large scale, low margins lower tier manufacturing is not going to be competitive for you anymore so you specialize and move higher up the value chain.
Take electronics as an example and other household stuff like fridge, etc.
We’ve seen Japan leave this business to the Asian Tigers who have left it to China who are in the process leaving it to the ASEAN, South Asia. Essentially the Asians who were left behind.
Now, few African countries even passed the first stage of land Reforms. Especially the former settler colonies, like us. A place like Egypt could have done something but they got their military entangled with the economy and now it’s irreversible. South Africa failed to industrialize despite cheap labour because you know…and now they are trapped. Can’t go forward. Those are literally the only ones who had a shot. Small countries like Tunisia, Rwanda, Botswana, etc cannot have competitive edge to be a big player in industrial sector and they are not small enough like Seychelles or Mauritius to be based on services sector.
The next best option for Africa is economic integration. That is why we as a continent are building rail, road, ports and airports to connect each other. Your neighbors have to be your biggest trading partners. How many countries in Africa can say this?
Issues of liberalizing economy, attracting FDI are things I chose not to get into.
In order for us to do an ‘Agrairian Revolution’ it would require us kicking out half the current rural population so that we can consolidate our farms as only mid and large scale farms can exploit the economies of scale that can be used to produce food cheaply.
That cannot be done without political cost in Kenya, so we can forget that.
As for Manufacturing, In Africa, we continue to hold the attitude that it is a sector for ‘foreigners’ or non African citizens.This is true for every country(including South Africa) except in the North. In Kenya, the Government owns some industries, which is a good thing as it should have created a pathway to changing that mindset, but instead the Government neglected them to the point that some need billions to compensate for decades of underinvestment (EAPCC ,KMC and the textile factories come into mind).
When I look at the Asian Tigers,I noticed that they solved the food issue by basically carting off most of the population to urban areas while when it came to manfacturing, they sent their best and brightest students to the West to learn how they do things and those students came back and established the family based industries like the Chaebols that dominate Korea today.
But with our pride in ‘African solutions to African problems’ attitude(which allowed the AU to watch the Janjaweed commit massacres in front of their very eyes), I cannot see that happening either.
We will remain poor then.
I concur, fully. That’s why I often get annoyed when I see some of our neighbors placing obstacles in the way of free movement of labor, goods and capital when we should instead be liberalizing. I mean, what can be more myopic than this?
i think it is fool hard to blame population growth for the slow growth being exhibited in most LDC and some Developing economies, i strongly feel that political and administrative upheavals have been our major boon, further i think most of these economies have suffered much due to opening up of the economies too soon while we had not sorted out issues of social safety nets for a majority of the population… the advent of globalization has also been a mixed bag for most LDC and Developing economies, biased trade agreements have served to kill most of our infant manufacturing industries, while encouraging damping, further easy access to so called cheap loans without clear accountability principles have served to increase the state of debt in those economies.
population growth we have in Africa will always eat up any development. Nobody has developed with this kind of growth.
Look at Kenya. If you have 5% growth being eaten away by 2.5% population increase rate, are you even developing at all? Then factor govt spending into the remaining. Are you developing at all?
One can appreciate that they are protecting their turf. You see, all Africans are at the same level and are offering the same products to the world market. So we are having problems helping each other. If all of you are selling maize seeds it’s difficult to have free markets. Maybe we can diversify then things will go in the right direction.
What needs to happen is Kenya sends the excess, low educated populace to Middle Eastern countries for work. It’s a win-win for two reasons… the country enjoys a boost in remittances and a lowered fertility rate as well.
1.Those Middle Eastern markets are also unstable since your salary basically depends on oil prices.Low oil prices means you go home or live for months without a salary.
2.The issue of radicalization as some workers are force converted to Islam or are Muslims who switch to Salafism and Jihadism.
3.It does not necessarily lower the fertility rate in the long run , it just delays it,like how the World War delayed fertility rates which shot up afterwards leading to a Baby Boom in the West.
4. Get caught up in Middle Eastern shennanigans like the Ethiopians butchered by ISIS, workers in Iraq being kidnapped, being accused of a crime, forced to sign a confession written in Arabic then beheaded for your crime like in Saudi Arabia.
population is always bound to grow, but point to note is that Government spending is crucial for development and growth of any economy but of more importance is the quality of the Expenditure… in any case a growing population is important somewhat in provision of human capital but as well as the increase in consumption as a result. what we need to critically address is the productivity. we need a robust production regime. in our Economic Survey report we have had under performance in sectors with high employment propensity, that is the Agriculture and manufacturing, the idea that cheap commodities from china have served to render our products noncompetitive in our shared markets. My take is simple the idea that we have an open economy is good but we have net created the necessary social safety nets to safe guard jobs, our industries and our markets in order to enjoy the wholesome benefits of the global markets.
Kenya is not safeguarding against cheap imports any time soon. Considering we signed EPA and China is doing what the British did here eons ago.
And you’re right. The govt has failed in prioritizing agriculture and manufacturing. Ethiopia will definitely outdo us in the latter sector. We have a good FMCG light industry but it can’t push the country forward
I don’t think the issue is a large population, but unplanned parenthood. The population is the single largest contributor of economic growth IMHO. More kids not only mean more mouths to feed but also more future hands to work. I support planned parenthood, whether you are planning to have one or 20 kids, you should have plans on how you are going to provide for the kid so that (s)he becomes a useful member of society able to improve his or her economic welfare and that of the country.
At the Macro level, we need the political will and courage to implement the good policies we have crafted. A combination of mental resources (arising from a bunch of skilled people) and physical resources (land, minerals, etc) will ensure fast sustainable growth. Otherwise tutaendelea kwa hii vicious poverty and ignorance cycle.
watu wazaane izo vitu unataka kumanufacture utauzia nani kama watu ni wachache.indonesia is a small island nation in comparison to kenya by land mass but population is 190 million and a high HDI compared to us. that presents a huge market for a startup to grow and aspire to venture outside lets not see population boom as a downside of economic prosperity infact am opined to think it triggers innovative and creative minds.My empirical examples being the kikuyu and kisii, the population explosion pressure in their native lands pushed them to think out of the box today they one one the most impressive entrepreneurs you find in Kenya .infact i tend to find them in almost all sectors
Hands is figurative for Computer Scientists, Engineers, Skilled Labourers etc, not necessarily run off the mill mtu wa mkono. We will always need labour…at least for the long foreseeable future.