Kenya: Politics Aside, Let Ruto Govt Put the People's Interests First

30 September 2022
opinion

The recent weeks have been characterized by a bevy of activities in the country's political and public dispensation. President William Ruto was in the US lobbying for increased commercial collaboration between the US and Kenya. Giving credit to Kenyans, he leveraged the recent General Election and affirmed that Kenya is prepared for investment and strategic relationships with the American business sector after demonstrating democratic maturity in the elections and the attendant smooth transfer of power. This cannot be gainsaid given the acrimony and ferocious battles that characterized the campaign periods.

To a large extent, the president alluded to belief in our democratic institutions and the rule of law as cornerstones for a sound business environment for investment. Combine the president's sojourn in the US, Deputy President, Rigathi Gachagua's flagging of the subsidized fertilizers and the fact that the high demand for Kenya's fresh avocado fruits continues to rise in China and therein lies both challenges and opportunities. Simply put, the combination of all these speaks of a very interesting next few years and the need to turn all these into tangible benefits for the people.

But against the backdrop of all these, there is also a conundrum of sorts. While the president was speaking of unprecedented famine in Kenya that has seen crops fail for the last four years, his Deputy was issuing a policy statement that seems to be a harbinger of more devastating effects on an already warming globe.

Well, the powerful nations that contribute most to global warming made commitments of supporting adaptive and mitigative measures in most of the countries in the global south. This has not happened and in the Glasgow COP26 it was a big issue and in his visit in the US, our president called for the need for the rich countries to honour the 100 billion dollars a year they promised 13 years ago.

But looking at what the President said against the backdrop of his deputy's roadside declaration raises some pertinent questions which need to be situated within context. Well, if the shamba system is meant to address food insecurity, then at the policy level the government needs to be alive to global realities and the local steps to be taken in line with robust mitigative measures anchored on research. Kenya forest cover has been declining rapidly and the consequences cannot be far from what the president addressed himself to: famine, crop failure and expansive regions turning to deserts. The devastating and probably less discernable effects have led to food and water shortages, resource-based conflicts, emergence of deceases, increased poverty, hunger and deaths of both human and animals.

Therefore, allowing people to get back to forests and farm might be popular, but such decrees will reverse the gains Kenya has made for the last decade or so and the government must move with speed and come up with a framework that addresses the issues of food security and sustainable environmental conservation.

If our avocado fruits are in high demand in foreign markets, it means there is something we are doing right. However, it does seem that the belief that fertilizers are a solution to food shortages, and that the shamba system's return will solve the food crisis are symptomatic of the big gaps or rather the steps backwards we tend to take after a few forward. Granted, even if we drenched fertilizers in all the productive farms today, we would only solve so much of the food insecurity, unless there is a solid framework to expand our crop yields by expanding agricultural production to idle arable land and think beyond fertilizers and rain-dependent agriculture.

Suffice to note, the framework that the president talked about in reference to COP27 is anchored on adaptative and mitigative measures and maybe the pronouncements by the deputy president should spark robust and research-based conversations rather than be taken as a policy guideline. These conversations should be research and empirical data driven so much so that as we approach COP27, we do so with a laid framework built on the pros and cons of the shamba system.

Food security experts argue that what we need to put in place are strong measures that will expand our agricultural productions to productive agricultural land that is either idle because it is owned by the government or exists in harsh climatic conditions. These should be our focus rather than invading forests lands and if anything, the shamba system does not necessarily appear to be large-scale enough to address food security issues. Critics also argue that because of its past association with land grabbing and misuse of power, conversations around the shamba system should be about who cannot access the forest in the name of indigenous co-existing with the ecosystem. You see, rather than invade forest land, we can be innovative in turning most of our semi-arid land to agricultural productions melting pots and flood these lands with both water and fertilizers.

Global warming experts note that with a strong policy framework, we can start working on adaptive and mitigative framework that yield fruits, so much so that as we approach the COP27, we have a framework and a strong policy or even legislative underpinning that will anchor the possibilities of hastening the honouring of the 100 billion dollars pledge.

-Hesbon Hansen Owilla

The author is a PhD Candidate in Media Studies and Political communication.

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