DEVOLUTION-A RECIPE FOR ECONOMIC RUIN

In all honesty I am in brace position,ready for the impact of the Kenyan economy hitting rock bottom and social unrest exacerbating the capital flight and reversal of the good fortunes of the last few years of foreign investor confidence.
I do feel that the excessive taxation by the central government and not far from now county government local taxes and cess it will be untenable to do business anywhere in Kenya unless the black market.Our nation is at a crossroads as to the path to choose for progress.A majority of people(me not included) decided that introducing devolution will magically solve our problems of inequality and inequity of resource distribution.But what are the pros and cons of devolved governance?and how do we reach a consensus of the most appropriate governance system?This is not really a simple question as we each have our own experiences that has shaped how we perceived the old system of central control.This  clouded peoples judgement and noone want to hear control from a single entity in Nairobi anymore

Ever since independence we distorted central leadership to be a source of self-engradisement of a few  privileged and influential who amassed as much land,property and wealth and formed the elite class.The pyramid then had its body of middle class in a rat race to aspire to achieve enough to live on the same level and never think of anyone else.The base was made up of the greater largesse of the population,the slaves.For their is no other term to call one who is subservient and under the yoke of poverty, destitution and despair.The best that they can hope for is to be on the good books of the middle class in order to feed off the crumbs that are left for them.In this system ,honor and respect depends on ones wealth status and so you can guess the honor and respect that the poor and the marginalized had.

The elite and middle class in the pyramid resided in Nairobi and other major towns and dictated how the majority of the people would live.The cronyism that started has not stopped but has instead increased over time.The little assets we had was given away or lies bare and unattended while there are poor people willing to till the land.The poor need not be just statistics like the livestock which one brags about..The inequality perpetrated by the elite and consolidated by the bourgeous  polarized this nation to the extent that the gap between the haves and have-nots widened.

The poor people in the periphery of power were promised redemption and salvation once a devolved system was set up.Therefore they overwhelmingly voted to have a system with a de-centralised structure which would be governed at their doorstep.Little did they know that they were just devolving greed,corruption,nepotism and misuse of public resources.ore so it becomes very difficult in the African culture to stop your tribesman who is doing anything wrong lest you be termed a traitor.So unbeknown to them,the previously marginalized village folk stand to be marginalized and made poorer by the devolved system.

In the meantime the tax paying,middle class has not increased and so any source of funding for development of the counties can only come from the countable middle-class who are already burdened with heavy taxation.The other options are very limited in the form of domestic and foreign borrowings.Inviting foreign investment in Kenya,to me is not the solution.The gains from such a move are illusory.The foreign owned companies will always repatriate the profits gained from local operations leaving the government with minimal collection in the form of tax from the ventures.The foreign companies and nationals get to come over and invest,pillage and plunder and disappear as soon as the resources are exhausted but we are only to get special arrangement to penetrate their markets.Any move to attract foreign investment should also target reciprocal arrangement ot allow Kenyan products and entrepreneurs penetrate those markets.The solution lies in giving locals financial muscle to compete in the export market.Nothing more,nothing less.

The nett economic effect of a county system of governance is one of uncertainty and ambiguity.No two counties will have similar policies and this will lead erosion of investor trust in doing business in a nation of 48 governments.There may be a few stand out counties where logic and good leadership may prevail and result in better returns for the locals of those counties,but those would be few and countable.In the end for the economic progress of Kenya as a nation and to increase our competitiveness internationally we cannot rely on this devolve system to spurse economic growth.

In conclusion I wish to state that devolution does not make an economic sense to the Kenyan state and we should click the undo button and revert to central governance but with amendments.