One of the routine tragedies in the Kenyan property sector is that of a brand-new block of flats that begins to sink into the ground almost as soon as eager tenants move in. Lives are sometimes lost before those tenants can hastily evacuate their new homes.
And the subsequent inquiries into the reasons for that tragedy always reveal the same root cause: the developers had taken shortcuts when it came to the construction of the foundation of the building.
I once accompanied an architect to one of his construction sites, and rather than just wait in his car, I decided to go over and take a look at the work being done. This construction was in its early phases. And I still remember the dizzy feeling that came over me as I looked down the enormous hole in the ground, which was all there was at that stage.
When driving away, I asked him how many levels of parking he had planned for – given how deep that foundation was, I had assumed it represented very many levels of parking. But apparently, only two levels of parking were in his plans. In his professional opinion, that multistorey apartment block required a foundation of just such depth.
As he explained, “Many would-be clients refuse to budget for a proper foundation like this one. They think they can get away with minimal foundations. That is when as an architect, you have to decide if you are willing to be associated with a building that is sure to sink into this black cotton soil, sooner or later.”
I have found that something very similar applies to national economic growth – the one thing which all Kenyans agree we are in dire need of right now.
Deep foundations are required if such growth is to be real and sustainable.
An example I am very familiar with in this matter is the ICT sector, which is constantly mentioned as one possible engine for growth and a potential mass employer of young Kenyans.
Roughly 15 years ago, I was doing some freelance writing for an international business magazine, and part of my assignment was to interview the man who was then leading the project that was to deliver Kenya’s first undersea fibre-optic cables: the indispensable backbone of high-speed internet services.
I went into the meeting as a sceptic, as I did not really understand what the fuss was all about. After all, we already had fairly reliable internet services (or so I thought). Cyber cafes were to be found in every street, and even in small villages.
On a different assignment a few weeks earlier, I had stopped by the post office in a small town in the Northern Rift Valley and been impressed to see about five young men, all leaning over the same desktop computer and eagerly scrolling through the websites of various American universities, in a search for scholarship opportunities.
Many of us were coping well enough with the internet services we already had; so, was high-speed internet really a priority for a poor country like Kenya?
He answered that it was not primarily to provide better email services that the government, along with the private sector, were investing in the undersea fibre-optic cables. There were so many rich possibilities he said – and then went on to list a number of services that faster and more efficient Wi-Fi would bring to the people of this country, creating many jobs in the process.
Oddly enough, none of the massive job-creating opportunities he told me about ever came into being (which is why I deliberately avoid naming him).
But that did not make the fibre-optic cables a white elephant.
We were later to have Uber and other innovative transport companies; we now have Airbnb providing local as well as foreign vacationers with cheaper and just as reliable options for accommodation.
We have online shopping apps; Zoom conferencing; not to mention e-banking. And there are many other innovations that have collectively created tens of thousands of jobs.
But the prerequisite for all this is the deep and strong foundation which was laid for the expansion of the ICT sector over a decade ago.
