Numbers tell half the story; reality on ground completes the picture

President William Ruto began his State of the Nation Address on Thursday with the lines: “Two years ago in my first address, I sold you a vision. Today, I have a story to tell. It is a story you can see in the numbers”.

Indeed, the colourful, poetically delivered address was full of numbers: numbers that paint a picture of an impressive performance — from the reduction in inflation to the stable Kenyan shilling and the reduced cost of a two-kilogramme bag of maize flour; the increase in agricultural productivity and the rise in GDP. All the numbers looked good.

The fact-checkers at Nation and other media houses quickly went to work, and their verdicts made for interesting conversations on social media. A fact-check about the President’s assertion that there was no material difference between the major indicators of Kenya and the Asian Tigers at independence, which showed the stark difference in education, was quickly reduced to a game of semantics.

Fact-checking aside, perhaps it is the numbers that the President’s address did not provide that might give the full picture. For example, the President told the country that more than 300 new companies had been registered to do business in Kenya, buoyed by the positive outlook of the economy.

Working under horrid conditions

Might there also be the number of companies that either closed shop or reported nil returns in the same period? And would these be fewer or more than the new ones? When we report the jobs that have been created, shouldn’t these be juxtaposed with those that have been lost?

On the same day the President enumerated his achievements, the Daily Nation carried two long reads. The first, Confusion, pain as ‘Kazi Majuu’ lands youth in financial trouble, touched on an issue that has been playing out on social media for a while. Thousands of young people were recruited for jobs abroad as early as April, under this government initiative. They took loans from the Youth Fund of up to Sh200,000 each to process their passports, pay for insurance, and flights. 

For some, this has now turned into a nightmare. Not only are they still being kept waiting indefinitely, with no straight answer on when they might fly out of the country, but they are also faced with loans that have matured, and the banks are making deductions from their measly salaries.
Some also said that the jobs and salaries they were initially offered had changed from office work to menial labour with less pay.

This programme recently featured in the New York Times, with claims (that have since been denied) that senior government officials and their families were benefiting from this initiative. More disturbing was the account of the horrid conditions under which some of those young people are working.

The government has stated before that more than 400,000 young people have gone to various countries under this initiative. It might be a good idea to provide the list of these beneficiaries, and the countries where they travelled to on a public portal to silence the naysayers once and for all.

SHA challenges

Perhaps this tale of the young people’s frustrations was an inconvenient truth that would not have been allowed to come in the way of President Ruto’s great story. The President referred to the young people who have taken up jobs in faraway lands as part of the success story.

The second story, Promises vs Reality, notes that, while President Ruto’s administration has scored some successes in agriculture, the cost of living, economy, and infrastructure, the education and health sectors are still a big challenge. 

The story cites the challenges with the Social Health Authority, which has seen several private hospitals turning away patients, and the recent strike by university lecturers.

Going by its report, the Nation gave the President a ‘mixed bag’ score. But this is clearly far from how the President scored himself in his address.
So, is the State of the Nation Address about shaping a narrative or making an honest assessment of the state of affairs? This is the question that the two versions of the same story leave us with.

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