I once happened to be in Germany at a time when there was a general election scheduled to take place fairly soon, and campaigns were in full swing.
And the only reason I knew that campaigns were in full swing was that I read about this on a news website. There was no sign of any campaigning in the streets of Berlin.
Even the campaign posters were largely restricted to designated spaces in the bus shelters and train stations – not plastered on every available wall as is usually the case here in Kenya.
The actual voting may even have taken place while I was still in Berlin. I wouldn’t know. German election campaigns are apparently carried out with a minimum of fuss.
I asked a German journalist how the locals would react if they were to see something that was a staple of Kenyan presidential campaigns: a motorcade of pick-up trucks packed with ruffians, hooting deliriously, and screaming slogans in support of their favoured candidate.
He laughed and said such a scenario was so absolutely impossible in German politics that he would not even bother trying to speculate how the voters would react to such a thing.
Well, German political campaigns may be a pretty sedate affair; but even in mature democracies, frenzied campaigns are not to be ruled out.
That visit to Berlin took place before the Trump era dawned in America. For of course the candidature of Donald Trump brought to the surface in America many of the things we had long grown accustomed to in African politics: for example, the highly charged “mammoth rallies”; and I most definitely saw photos of pick-up trucks loaded with hooligans who defiantly proclaimed their devotion to Trump.
But all such events, whether in the US or Kenya, generally take place six months or so before the presidential election.
What has been notable in Kenya is that election hysteria has begun very early this time around.
Even when the election of 2022 was still more than a year away, we already had massive crowds turning up to meet leading presidential candidates and filling the streets of various rural towns to overflowing when the convoys drove through.
And at political rallies, the crowds have been so big that camera drones flying overhead are needed to give some idea of the size of the crowds.
Who are all these people, who are to be found in virtually every town in Kenya, big or small, and who have nothing better to do than to attend political rallies a full 12 months before any voting can take place?
Well, one immediate and direct explanation of this phenomenon is the collapse of Kenyan rural economies – a topic that I, along with many other media commentators, have written about before.
There was a time when Kenyan small-scale farmers, whether they focused on coffee or tea or sugarcane or maize or rice, or even cashewnuts or mangoes, could be certain of a decent income, paid by the local food processing factory promptly upon delivery of the raw crop.
At the present time it is only the tea farmers who enjoy this luxury of a farm-based middle-class income. And even that sector has its problems.
So, it may well be that it is the end of rural prosperity that explains why there are thousands of unemployed youths to be found in every town or market centre.
And of course, this is why, in a city like Berlin, you cannot get a massive turnout if you call a political rally in the middle of the week: Germany has no shortage of blue-collar jobs.
But then the question arises: If there is so much unemployment in Kenya, how is it that government technocrats lay claim to pretty impressive economic growth rates?
One possible explanation for so many unemployed – even accounting for the post-lockdown rise in employment – is that what we have seen in the Kenyan economy is “jobless growth” led primarily by the government’s investment in public infrastructure.
In time such infrastructure will facilitate improved commerce, connectivity, and economic inclusion through private sector investment.
But at the moment all we have is lots of nice new infrastructure: but no new jobs.
