The current government is in power, for the first time in Kenya, on an anchored economic philosophy. This is good progress since our politics seems to be maturing and moving away from personality focused rivalry to issue-based competition.
However, we remain at the nascent stages. The differentiation is still rudimentary, but a step forward nonetheless. To build on this, the current winners may need to expand their scope of issues for ‘the hustler universe’. As matters stand now, it all starts and ends with the glorified Hustler Fund.
The definition of hustler seems to refer to only the small traders and hawkers not the entire population of the ‘small people’. Under this standpoint, the Kenyans working in low cadres of employment have been left out. Hustling is not limited to the streets and marketplaces, it is also strongly present on shop floors and in households.
Unfortunately, for political expediencies billionaires, former senior politicians and captains of industries have been incorporated into the hustler movement. This will make it hard to clearly delineate who a hustler is, and the subsequent designing of programmes to assist them. It would have been easier if we had defined them with a clearer marker such as those earning below Sh50,000 per month.
Working with what we have for now, our small traders need money to upscale their businesses. The wisdom that cash solves every problem in enterprise is not going away soon, so there is need for a study. Neither was there need for an in-depth audit of the failures and successes of previous funds that include women enterprise, youth and Uwezo funds.
On the other side, there was equally no need to research why hustlers do not save. Why waste ‘money’ on scientific enquiries when we can solve our problems by use of common sense? Conveniently, there is no law in Kenya that compels any scientist to believe in science.
Many hustlers are silently suffering on shop floors across the counties. This started in the mid 1990s when the country was infiltrated by substandard investors brought in by the insensitive dynasties to replace the equivalents of Booker Tate, Bridgestone, Unilever, Procter and Gamble, Reckitt Benckiser, Johnson and Johnson, Colgate Palmolive and GlaxoSmithKline.
The hustlers’ administration should strive to reverse the rot and return the caring investors and employers. Further, it should kick out the enslaving and impoverishing ones that are unluckily sprawling in abundance. Nine out of 10 of the hustlers that I have met confess to me that they actually do not enjoy this hawking thing, especially in their own country.
Freedom has come: let us stop playing games and start building small respectable businesses for our citizens – a small business requires capital of about Sh5 million. Giving Sh500 may be akin to mocking the same people we came to empower. Then, we assist with the marketing and quality control for sustainability.
Technical communication practitioner based in Kakamega
