President William Ruto likes to dangle a shiny promise before crowds: Kenya, he says, can become “the Singapore of Africa.” It’s a seductive comparison: two former British colonies, roughly similar starting lines in the 1960s, and one of them now sitting near the summit of global prosperity. Singapore gets independent in 1959, and Kenya in 1963. The two were poor colonies.
But the Singapore story is not a motivational poster. It is a case study in choices; hard, often unpopular choices made early and enforced relentlessly. It is when you place Singapore’s founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew beside Kenya’s founding President, Jomo Kenyatta, that you realise that the gap that opens up is not about geography, race, religion, or “culture.” It’s about what leadership decides to tolerate, what it chooses to punish, and who the law is allowed to touch. But is Ruto willing to break Jomo’s rhythm or just taking us for a ride?
Lee Kuan Yew won office on an anti-corruption message and enforced a strict, zero-tolerance approach. His government strengthened the Prevention of Corruption Act, empowered the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB), and publicly backed tough penalties for offenders.
Kenya, by contrast, has long been seen as a land of untouchables and that remains true today. At independence, Kenyatta accepted political gifts and arrived at the stadium on his first day as prime minister in 1963 in a white Lincoln Continental reportedly donated by Nairobi’s American business community.
As prime minister and later president, he became both a recipient of gifts and a magnet for requests and favours; the immense wealth associated with the Kenyatta family—still evident decades after his death—took root in this period. He cultivated the good life and, by many accounts, treated debts casually. By December 1963, he had reportedly ordered a luxury customised Mercedes for his personal use without budgetary provision and without any clear intention to pay, leaving DT Dobie, the local agent, pleading for recompense.
He and his Cabinet minister Paul Ngei also acquired a reputation for requisitioning goods and directing that the bills be sent to the State or ignoring them entirely. Ngei also took a Mercedes Benz from DT Dobie and refused to pay for it. Many years later, it was still at his Garden Estate compound. Kenyatta’s other minister Dr Julius Kiano was openly nicknamed “Mr 10 per cent.”
Former Cabinet Minister Mr Paul Ngei.
Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group
In the mid-1960s, the acting British High Commissioner, J L Pumphrey, sent a confidential warning to London on corruption in Kenya. “It is obvious,” he wrote, “that at the lower levels of the administration, particularly in the provinces, there are possibilities of getting what you want, or of getting it more quickly, by greasing the appropriate palm.”
That diagnosis matters because it captures something early and structural: when petty bribery becomes a practical shortcut, the State quietly teaches citizens that rules are negotiable.
Companies looking to invest in Kenya were often expected to hand over shares to senior government officials—a practice so open that it became almost a cost of entry. Few stories capture that era better than the Taveta gemstone saga, where two American investors, John Saul and Elliot Miller, were said to have lost control of a ruby mine to interests linked to the Kenyatta family. Saul was later deported on allegations of ivory “poaching,” but the episode has long been cited by critics as less about wildlife crime than about clearing the way for a takeover of what was billed as one of the world’s finest ruby deposits. Lee Kuan Yew, writing about Singapore, described an opposite philosophy. In his memoirs, he presents the fight against corruption as a first-order priority of statecraft—something to be confronted immediately, publicly, and relentlessly. The goal was not simply to denounce graft, but to make it risky and difficult to sustain. His government strengthened laws so offenders could be charged and convicted, and it consistently backed a dedicated investigative agency — the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) — to pursue cases without fear or favour.
Jomo Kenyatta is sworn in as Kenya’s Prime Minister on June 1, 1963 in Nairobi. Kenyatta wanted Jaramogi Oginga Odinga as his number two.
Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group
The contrast is not that Singapore had better people and Kenya had worse ones. It is that Singapore’s leadership moved early to raise the cost of corruption and make enforcement credible, while Kenya’s early signals — critics argue — suggested tolerance at the top and “workarounds” below. Over time, bribery became normalised.
Why did Singapore despise corruption? This is what Lee said: “We were sickened by the greed, corruption and decadence of many Asian leaders. We had a deep sense of mission to establish a clean and effective government. When we took the oath of office in June 1959, we all wore white shirts and white slacks to symbolise purity and honesty in our personal behaviour and our public life.”
“Why does this island survive?” the Singapore PM once asked. “Why does it attract banks, computer software, financial services, information services, manufacturing, in preference to so many countries better endowed with natural resources, manpower, and markets?” His answer was blunt: Singapore’s advantage was an administration that was fundamentally corruption-free.
Lee also linked the growth to a clean government, meritocracy and professional incentives. When asked how an “accidental group of men” who took office in 1959 could remain “stainless” after decades in power, his answer was simple: “Every member knows that there is no easy money on the take… I’m one of the best paid and probably one of the poorest of the Third World prime ministers… There are ways and ways of doing things.”
That is why Kenya’s dream to replicate Singapore’s growth can only make sense if the core lesson is taken seriously. Singapore did not defeat corruption because its citizens are genetically more disciplined.
It did so because the State made corruption frightening: costly, punishable, and difficult to hide. Kenya did not become more corrupt because Kenyans are inherently less virtuous. It became more corrupt because corruption became functional—useful for building coalitions, speeding decisions, rewarding loyalty, and quietly punishing those who refused to “cooperate.”
The difference between a clean State and a corrupt one is not the absence of human greed; it is the presence of consequences. Singapore built consequences into the architecture of governance. Lee’s administration strengthened laws, empowered investigators, and treated enforcement as non-negotiable. Kenyatta, by contrast, often treated enforcement as negotiable—an option, a tactic, sometimes a spectacle. When punishment becomes selective, the State teaches a fatal lesson: the law exists, but only for some people. That lesson destroys trust faster than any economic downturn.
Kenya’s post-independence story is littered with scandals that, under a stricter system, might have become turning points. In 1965, an acute maize shortage and the allegations surrounding Paul Ngei exposed a brutal truth that the minister was corruptly giving maize to a store owned by his wife, Emma. The official response followed a familiar script—commissions of inquiry, reshuffles, stern warnings—but the outcome sent the real signal. Ngei was suspended, not imprisoned, and the scandal faded without the kind of punishment that deters the next one.
Singapore’s political class learned early the opposite lesson. That corruption was an embarrassing vice. When Teh Cheang Wan, the Minister for National Development, came under CPIB investigation in November 1986 over alleged bribes totalling S$1 million linked to two developers, he took his own life on December 14, 1986 before charges could be filed.
And when the system did not catch someone immediately, it did not simply forget. Phey Yew Kok, a prominent trade unionist and MP, was accused in May 1979 of criminal breach of trust involving S$101,000, fled while on bail, and remained a fugitive for decades. After surrendering in June 2015, he was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment in January 2016.
That is how an anti-corruption rhythm becomes a national habit: not by announcements, but by consequences—predictable, painful, and inescapable. This is the “Singapore” conversation Ruto’s rallies often glide past. Singapore did not become Singapore by building roads alone, or by branding itself cleverly, or by borrowing slogans about efficiency. It became Singapore by making corruption socially toxic and legally dangerous.
In Kenya, and over time, our corruption has stopped being a private sin and became a public system. It seeped into everyday life. Are we still going to Singapore in the new year, or just trumpeting the slogan?
John Kamau is a PhD candidate in History, University of Toronto. Email: [email protected] ; X: @johnkamau1
