One thing which is quite obvious about the 47 governors of the 47 counties in Kenya, is that their ideas on matters of development tend to follow a certain pattern of imitation.
Some years back, the fashion was for level-5 referral hospitals. And there was clear logic behind this.
The idea was that those locals who suffered from something worse than the routine malaria or a water-borne disease, need not have to travel to a major urban centre in search of treatment. Whether this more serious ailment be cancer or kidney failure, the local people should be able to get treatment within their own county, more so as such non-communicable diseases were increasingly making their presence felt even among Kenyans in rural areas.
Out of this came some very beautiful buildings and the purchase of loads of expensive medical equipment. But the political rivals of the various county governors could be relied on to argue that these beautiful buildings had been outrageously overpriced. And also that favoured contractors had handed out huge kickbacks to the political elite of that county.
Yet other critics would speak of the beautiful new hospital as an empty shell, which had neither the equipment needed to treat these non-communicable diseases, nor the specialists needed to operate them. But none of this diminished the governors’ appetites for establishing such hospitals, in many cases as a “legacy project.”
Well, since the 2022 election, a new fashion has emerged among the governors. This is the hosting of a high-profile 'investment conference'. Maybe there were plenty of such conferences before the 2022 general election. If so, they probably did not have the kind of publicity that we have seen in recent months, as one county after another hosted its own special event for potential investors.
It seems to me that these investment conferences have much in common with the level-5 hospitals which were so popular in previous years. Just as the level-5 hospitals were in many cases largely prestige projects, which the governors could point to as proof that they were hard at work providing 'development' for those who voted them into high office; so too are most of these investment conferences primarily prestige events intended to demonstrate that the governors are working hard to create jobs.
To illustrate why I have misgivings about the efficacy of these investment conferences, consider the examples of horticulture and tourism – the only two new economic sectors that have emerged in Kenya’s post-independence decades.
Both these sectors provide excellent case studies of what the Nobel Prize winner in economics Paul Krugman studied and labelled as “economic clusters". And although what Prof Krugman studied was primarily the process by which countries that were formerly dependent on agriculture eventually rise to become industrialised nations, the broad ideas do apply to a country like Kenya, which is still largely an agrarian economy.
Krugman made the case that although there are several factors at play in the evolution of these economic clusters, two of the most significant are transportation costs and economies of scale.
Consider how the horticulture sector is mostly “clustered” around the Lake Naivasha region, and parts of Central Kenya. Obviously, proximity to our leading international airport, JKIA, via relatively good roads, was a key consideration for all those who invested in the growing of top-quality fresh flowers, fruits and vegetables for export.
Likewise, the Moi International Airport in Mombasa has been a key facilitator of the expansion of coastal tourism over the past decades. This airport makes it possible for direct, low-cost chartered flights to bring in tourists by the planeload, from Europe to the Kenya coast.
If the tourists first had to land in Nairobi on a regular Kenya Airways scheduled flight, and only then board their flights to the coast, there would be far fewer European tourists coming to Kenya.
You will by now have noticed that there is one major prerequisite for the development of any such “economic hubs” as governors are currently dreaming of: excellent infrastructure. And that is something which only the national government can provide.
County governments do not have the resources to develop multi-lane highways or international airports.