Debt & Despair

Nattydread

Nattydread

Elder Lister
In 2015, DW News did a documentary where they followed the lives of ordinary citizens doing business on Kangemi bridge for a year. It was a painful documentary to watch and I did a post on it then.
My friend Victor Milito Omosh has alerted me to another documentary done by DW News in 2020 where they revisited the same people featured in the story.
I have watched the story with incredible pain. All those people who were featured then were worse off in 2020 than in 2015.
One of the saddest part is on a guy who graduated in 2015 with a degree in journalism. When he was interviewed then, he had a lot of hopes of getting a job and leaving the tough slum life in Kangemi.
When DW News traced him in 2020, he was still jobless and had moved to his rural home in Western Kenya to engage in small scale farming. He was the first to graduate in a family of 11 kids. His family had invested so much in his education even selling a cow to finance his studies.
It is unbearable to see such a young life wasting this way. To see such a huge investment count for nothing is heart wrenching. To witness so much hope and many aspirations crushed that brutally is beyond painful.
When DW News revisited the bridge in 2020, more micro-enterprises had since set up shop in the crowded space. To make matters worse the bridge was about to be demolished to make way for the James Gichuru Rd-Rironi highway under construction.
In June 2015, the country's debt stood at KShs 2.8 Trillion. By June 2020, the debt had risen to a whopping KShs 6.7 Trillion. Yet during this period, the lives of most Kenyans had gotten worse.
This demonstrates the foolishness of those who keep yapping about Jubilee's infrastructure. What is the value of the infrastructure if it does not improve the lives of the people? Why have we borrowed so much yet there is little impact if any on our lives?

 
Very myopic opinion and a typical African way of looking at things.
Investing in infrastructure is not meant to benefit you, it is an investment in the Next generation.
In Kenya, we are playing catch up because 24 years of Moi rule invested NOTHING in our present generation.
We basically had a missed generation in infrastructural investment.
The way things are looking, we are about to suffer another generation of non investment in the future and even more looting cum elections.
Please engage your brains before voting my dear Kenyans.
 
M'Landoh said:
Very myopic opinion and a typical African way of looking at things.
Investing in infrastructure is not meant to benefit you, it is an investment in the Next generation.
In Kenya, we are playing catch up because 24 years of Moi rule invested NOTHING in our present generation.
We basically had a missed generation in infrastructural investment.
The way things are looking, we are about to suffer another generation of non investment in the future and even more looting cum elections.
Please engage your brains before voting my dear Kenyans.
Click to expand...

You totally missed the gist of this article. It's not about infrastructure. It is about debt and mismanagement, and the people whose lives are supposed to have been improved by debt created under the guise of investing in 8nfrastructure.
 
Nattydread said:
You totally missed the gist of this article. It's not about infrastructure. It is about debt and mismanagement, and the people whose lives are supposedly improved by debt created under the guise of investing in 8nfrastructure.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, Wafula couldn't get a job even after getting a journalism degree. That implies that more graduates are chasing too few jobs. It's common knowledge that joblessness is a big problem in Kenya. Our economy is too small to provide sufficient jobs for our growing population. We need to grow the economy rapidly if we are to provide an adequate number of new jobs.

Rapid economic growth is fueled by sound investment in infrastructure, human resources, technology among other factors. If we fail to invest in infrastructure now, we lose an opportunity to lift a big percentage of our population out of abject poverty. But due to the small size of our economy, we cannot finance our projects out of pocket. We can only borrow. So we get into debt.

There is an argument that providing Wafula with a wheelbarrow and more capital would fix our economic problems. Are you from this school of thought? Is debt always bad? Under what circumstances can we borrow?
 
bigDog said:
Unfortunately, Wafula couldn't get a job even after getting a journalism degree. That implies that more graduates are chasing too few jobs. It's common knowledge that joblessness is a big problem in Kenya. Our economy is too small to provide sufficient jobs for our growing population. We need to grow the economy rapidly if we are to provide an adequate number of new jobs.

Rapid economic growth is fueled by sound investment in infrastructure, human resources, technology among other factors. If we fail to invest in infrastructure now, we lose an opportunity to lift a big percentage of our population out of abject poverty. But due to the small size of our economy, we cannot finance our projects out of pocket. We can only borrow. So we get into debt.

There is an argument that providing Wafula with a wheelbarrow and more capital would fix our economic problems. Are you from this school of thought? Is debt always bad? Under what circumstances can we borrow?
Click to expand...
Do you mind explaining how investing in roads specifically fuels rapid economic growth?
 
bigDog said:
There is an argument that providing Wafula with a wheelbarrow and more capital would fix our economic problems. Are you from this school of thought? Is debt always bad? Under what circumstances can we borrow
Click to expand...
You might find this thread informative

An assessment of the current election promises on the economy.

Bottom-Up Economic Model (UDA): Impact on the Economy A blueprint targeting to promote the informal sector to spur economic growth and job creation, UDA promises to change the current economic model from Capital Intensive to a Labor intensive model that promotes job creation, The bottom-up...
kenyanlist.net kenyanlist.net
 
Denis Young said:
Do you mind explaining how investing in roads specifically fuels rapid economic growth?
Click to expand...

Roads are the arteries through which the economy pulses. By linking producers to markets, workers to jobs, students to school, and the sick to hospitals, roads are vital to any development agenda.

Source:
blogs.worldbank.org

How roads support development

Rural road. Photo: Curt Carnemark / World Bank Roads are the arteries through which the economy pulses. By linking producers to markets, workers to jobs, students to school, and the sick to hospitals, roads are vital to any development agenda. Since 2002, the World Bank has constructed or...
blogs.worldbank.org blogs.worldbank.org
.
 
The.Black.Templar said:
You might find this thread informative

An assessment of the current election promises on the economy.

Bottom-Up Economic Model (UDA): Impact on the Economy A blueprint targeting to promote the informal sector to spur economic growth and job creation, UDA promises to change the current economic model from Capital Intensive to a Labor intensive model that promotes job creation, The bottom-up...
kenyanlist.net kenyanlist.net
Click to expand...

I'm not getting into that UDA rabbit hole. If you want to refute or add to what I said above, post your argument here.
 
bigDog said:
Roads are the arteries through which the economy pulses. By linking producers to markets, workers to jobs, students to school, and the sick to hospitals, roads are vital to any development agenda.

Source:
blogs.worldbank.org

How roads support development

Rural road. Photo: Curt Carnemark / World Bank Roads are the arteries through which the economy pulses. By linking producers to markets, workers to jobs, students to school, and the sick to hospitals, roads are vital to any development agenda. Since 2002, the World Bank has constructed or...
blogs.worldbank.org blogs.worldbank.org
.
Click to expand...
What jobs? What producers?

Let me give you an example straight from the horse's mouth. Last month my dad bought two bags fewer of fertilizer because of the current prices. He is currently contemplating selling some of his milkers so that he is left with a manageable 3. Why? The price of feed is through the roof na pesa ya maziwa ni ile ile tu.

Now people are preparing to plant and I can already guarantee there will be a massive deficit. It will be worse if the rains fail. Just wait and see food prices shoot up in the next few months.

But at least we will have smooth roads to deliver our quickly diminishing produce to the market.
 
Denis Young said:
What jobs? What producers?

Let me give you an example straight from the horse's mouth. Last month my dad bought two bags fewer of fertilizer because of the current prices. He is currently contemplating selling some of his milkers so that he is left with a manageable 3. Why? The price of feed is through the roof na pesa ya maziwa ni ile ile tu.

Now people are preparing to plant and I can already guarantee there will be a massive deficit. It will be worse if the rains fail. Just wait and see food prices shoot up in the next few months.

But at least we will have smooth roads to deliver our quickly diminishing produce to the market.
Click to expand...

I concede that agricultural input costs have gone through the roof. Taxing agricultural inputs is wrong because it makes Kenyan agricultural produce less competitive in the East African market. The law should also be changed so that we can import genetically modified animal feeds. That notwithstanding, I would rather have a road that takes my little produce to the market rather than have a lot of produce without a road to take it to the market.

Kumbuka ile maziwa ya Nyandarua. I hear dogs were running away from their homes just to avoid getting fed that stuff.
 
The.Black.Templar said:
I thought you were among the smart ones who like engaging in useful analysis, maybe I was wrong
Click to expand...
What do you want us to discuss from that thread that's not mentioned here? Go read and post it here.

I'm just another old lazy senyata taking a sip of good old muratina while scratching my balding head wondering what happened....

Stop underestimating yourself. Now go do your homework. Cenji!
 
bigDog said:
I concede that agricultural input costs have gone through the roof. Taxing agricultural inputs is wrong because it makes Kenyan agricultural produce less competitive in the East African market. The law should also be changed so that we can import genetically modified animal feeds. That notwithstanding, I would rather have a road that takes my little produce to the market rather than have a lot of produce without a road to take it to the market.

Kumbuka ile maziwa ya Nyandarua. I hear dogs were running away from their homes just to avoid getting fed that stuff.
Click to expand...
Good. At least you recognize the taxation regime is a massive issue.

Are you also aware that the more we keep destroying agriculture the more we have to import and thus weakening the shilling further, which in turn will make inputs that much more expensive?

You just saw the government wants to borrow 800+ billion next financial year and they have pushed the debt ceiling to 13 trillion to enable that. Does that make you confident that the taxation on farm inputs will end? In any case, an Azimio government will undoubtedly increase taxes in order to manage debt.
 
bigDog said:
I concede that agricultural input costs have gone through the roof. Taxing agricultural inputs is wrong because it makes Kenyan agricultural produce less competitive in the East African market.
Click to expand...

It must be hard to speak from your arsehole and mouth at the same time.

Now you are right back where the article at the top of this thread was: mismaagemrnt, incompetence, greed and thievery have negated whatever gains all the borrowing and infrastructural projects were supposed to achieve. That is why graduates are selling eggs and still not surviving.
 
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