In an article written in March 2020, in the Business Daily, Carol Musyoka makes a striking remark: Rwandans have never been here to play. The article goes further to indicate that Rwandans take both their citizens' health and business matters very seriously, over and above the cleanliness and social order that are glaringly apparent in Kigali’s streets.
Allan Olinga writes about the lessons Kenya can learn from Rwanda to tame the boda boda menace. He equally observes how in Rwanda, each boda boda rider (abamotari) and passenger helmet must be stamped with a unique identifying number, which has to be printed on the driver’s jacket and bike as well. And how each motorcycle (locally referred to as moto) is also required by law to have a GPS locator on it for easy traceability in case a criminal act is committed.
Finally, the writer talks about how the sector is governed through more than 18 cooperatives, which work hand in hand with the traffic police to enforce discipline and law.
Make no mistake, the observations and recommendations by these two writers are nothing short of brilliance. However, the only reservation I, and indeed many, have with these two articles is their applicability.
Ours is a country full of experienced and brilliant public policy experts who are never allowed to weigh into serious public policy by the government. As such, public policy has evolved to be more of knee-jerk reactions and not based on research and evidence. This explains why, since Independence, most of Kenya's public policy has been decided by the roadside and during public rallies or public events.
Instructively, the implementability of many public policies has been a herculean task with public servants, many times, forced to put into practice policies that are more costly than beneficial. The government has lost a lot of resources whilst implementing policies that are not backed by research and those that are, by and large, done for political expediency or public mood.
This is, however, not to say that we don’t have a problem in our transport sector. If anything, we need a total overhaul of the sector. It is one of the failures of all the administrations we have had since Independence. It’s inconceivable that Kenya doesn’t have a functioning public transport system.
Even though John Michuki who is, without doubt, the most revered Transport minister, came up with public policy measures to tame the rogue matatu sector, the success of those policies was influenced more by his no-nonsense personality rather than society's willingness to embrace the policies.
If anything, many Kenyans adopted the policies out of fear for their reputation rather than their benefits. And while it's true that the nature and character of some leaders influence the success of many public policies, it is equally true that policies that are successful simply because of the strong personalities behind them are not sustainable. This is why many autocratic states fall as soon as the autocrat vacates office.
But when people understand the need for certain public policies, they willingly uphold those policies. Take, for instance, the trees planted alongside the Nairobi River by Michuki when he was Environment minister.
To date, those trees are still growing and continue to provide shade to many Kenyans who work along the river. Unlike the transport policy, our society has been cultured to appreciate the value of trees. This explains why Kenyans canonise environmentalists such as Wangari Maathai and Elizabeth Wathuti.
Interestingly, the majority of Kenyans neither recognise nor appreciate great Kenyan scholars like Prof Washington Yotto, even though he is the man who solved the London transport crisis. If indeed the leadership of this country was interested in solving the transport crisis, other than building the magnificent infrastructure, it would have engaged known and revered public policy experts, engineers and transport geographers in providing solutions.
But because we are a country that loves the copy-paste public policy technique, as evidenced by how we formulated our current constitution, it won’t be surprising if the political leadership goes forth to borrow the practice from Rwanda and not the principles.
Rwanda, unlike Kenya, has inculcated a culture that makes its citizens compliant with some of the existing public policies. As noted earlier, the Rwandan government has shown its citizens that it values their health, businesses and environmental cleanliness.
The government must, therefore, first, inculcate certain value systems in society. Secondly, the government must think long-term by adopting public policies that will propel Kenya to be where it would like the country to be in 50 years.
Finally, we must fix our politics to fix the economy as the boda boda crisis is a sign of a failing economy.
Political scientist. [email protected]
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