Kenya is again aflame over a billion-dollar project that the government is negotiating with an Indian conglomerate called the Adani Group.
The upshot of it is that Adani has developed an investment proposal to rehabilitate and upgrade Kenya’s premier airport, Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. The company wants to take over and run it for 30 years.
President Ruto’s two-year presidency has been marked by upheaval. A lot of this turmoil was inevitable, as the new government system came in on a platform of uprooting 60 years of a failed status quo. This was always going to be resisted, and the transition was inevitably tumultuous.
But much of this chaos is self-inflicted! It comes from a mixture of hubris, obstinately refusing to listen, and complete failure to focus!
The government pushed through a very unpopular affordable housing tax in 2023, which left its credibility in tatters. Emboldened, it followed this up with the deeply unpopular Finance Bill 2024. The government refused to back down even as protests rose to fever pitch, triggering a near insurrection that was only contained by a major crackdown.
Now Ruto is back again with Adani, following the very same script. And the trajectory of the Adani protest is following the very same script. Is the President not learning anything? Surely his advisers are better than this. How can the government throw itself back into the raging fire it has just been rescued from?
Mr President, Adani does not have to be the hill on which you make the last stand. And even if the government pushes the Adani deal through, the damage to voter’s trust in government will be irredeemable. The President will pay dearly at the ballot box in 2027. So, the question he must ask himself is – does he really want a second term in 2027?
JKIA is not an emergency – economic recovery is. Right now, the issues that the government should be spending all this energy being expended fighting for the Adani deal on is jobs, pending bills, low interest rates to spur business and consumer credit, investments, etc. Stop wasting copious amounts of critical time of top government officials, as well as scorching political capital, on a deal everybody is convinced is rotten.
Put all these side shows aside and focus. Indeed, all this noise has completely smothered all the initiatives the government is putting together for economic revitalisation and jobs.
The deal between Kenya and Germany for 250,000 skilled and semi-skilled Kenyans to work in the world’s third largest economy is a great initiative that has been buried in the noise. This is how government achievements are known by nobody.
Further, all this noise is killing the morale and confidence of government employees. Just when everything begins to settle down, another shocker comes through, destabilising the entire government machinery. They cannot work in such a noisy environment, and with the executive so distracted fighting self-inflicted fires.
Mr President, your government needs to settle down and start working for the people of Kenya. Pull the plug on Adani, and manage the process by restarting it through competitive bidding. Adani can then be managed through that process.
Focus on the transformational projects already signed up but none has taken off because the Government is so distracted. Imagine the buzz in the economy if such multibillion-shilling projects like the Nairobi-Mombasa superhighway, the Railway City, the Bill and Melinda Gates Africa headquarters, and the Coca Cola plant refurbishment had taken off by now. And these are just a small number of the projects and initiatives the President has signed in the last two years.
Settle down and work, please.
