Anti-government protesters light a bonfire to block the Nyeri-Nairobi highway in Karatina town, Nyeri County, on July 16, 2024.
Africa’s commentariat say Kenya’s youth-led protests against high taxes, corruption, and waste seem to inspire similar actions in other parts of the continent, as their Gen Z peers in several countries including Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Malawi, and Uganda announce protests against their governments.
In Ghana, a Gen Z protest ended on a whimper. They didn’t show up in numbers worth even a photograph. They were on the streets just over a week ago, protesting a bill that would give judicial officers and MPs a hefty rise.
At base, African youth are asking for their share of the national cake and opportunities. Some of the measures announced by President William Ruto, like across-the-board belt-tightening and slimming down the state bureaucracy, will make a short-term difference in the government’s bank account, but dry-eyed pragmatists don’t think they will solve the thing the youth most need – decent jobs. There’s not going to be Kenyan Walmart which employs 2.2 million people tomorrow, or in five years.
Talented employees
It also doesn’t solve the problem of having a cadre of talented employees who can effectively run a state. Politicians’ mediocre relatives and village mates can be swept out and replaced with the best and brightest Kenya has to offer. But the reality is that the official government wage is nothing to write home about, which is one of the reasons there is corruption – theft is how many, average public servants pay themselves a fair wage. However, it is also how some of them, particularly the big ones, enrich themselves.
Otherwise, as famously happened in the Communist Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, you end up with a situation “where the government pretends to pay workers, and the workers pretend to work”. The result is the same as the wreckage that is wrought by corruption.
A wonderful African proverb goes that “he who feeds the child must be allowed to lick his fingers”. There is something in there that our forefathers got wrong. It’s women, not the men, who fed children in Africa when the proverb was crafted, so they are trying – as their successive male heirs have done – to steal the glory from women.
The fellows who feed the child must be allowed to lick their fingers. Right now, the youth are protesting against the sacrilege of the proverb – the politicians and bureaucrats are feeding themselves, and allowing the children to lick their fingers only once in five years when an election is coming up.
I have always held that some incentive practices from private businesses could help here. The civil service should be tasked to deliver on government programmes and projects on time, and budget. However, those who deliver ahead of schedule, or deliver on time efficiently under budget, would share 90 per cent of the savings. A ministry that brings in its projects on time and saves Sh10 billion, would “eat” Sh9 billion, shared openly and squarely among staff. The Ministry of Health delivers on immunisation, reduces maternal and child mortality, and cuts waiting times in hospital lines by 50 per cent while saving Sh15 billion? Hell, yeah, let them share it.
Not only could there be a sea change in efficiency and outcomes, which would lift the economy big time, but the stigma of corruption would be lifted from civil servants.
There are a couple of other bold, and possibly crazy ideas that would need to accompany this. My favourite is from a friend who works for one of the world’s biggest technology companies.
Every year, they work for no more than six months and get paid a load of money. However, every year they work from a different European city. The company leases half of a big high-rise office building – and sometimes all of it – and brings in over 2,000 engineers, software and hardware developers, and administrative, staff from all over the world.
They slog away furiously for six months, and two days after the work season ends, the building is empty, and all the people who worked there have scattered back to the corners of the world they came from.
The same should be done for the government. There are about one million public servants, including those in the civil service, teachers, parastatal workers, and other state agencies.
Like the technology company above, after keeping in place key leadership and staff in some critical areas, 80 to 90 per cent of them could work for six months, get their fat bonuses, and take leave for six months. That would allow for about 800,000 people to step in and do their thing for six months too, and ship out. This would apply even in the security services, except the military, the intelligence services, and the top echelons of the Police and Prisons Service.
It would take two or so years to get it working smoothly, but after that, there would be no looking back. Kenya would have a different problem; workers would be hard to find, especially considering that the boom will spark a private sector growth that will also snap them up. There would be no one left to protest.
The author is a journalist, writer, and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”. Twitter@cobbo3
