 BAD LUCK IN THE PAST, GOOD LOOK IN THE FUTURE |
Then, what needs to be done to bring Kenya back
to its past splendor?. Probably the first thing
that it needs is to regain its confidence. Throughout
the 6 months that our team spent in the country
compiling information and interviewing top officials
and directors of the most important corporations,
the pervading feeling was that of despair, as if
the world had turned its back on Kenya for no apparent
reason, and as if the elements had conspired to
sink Kenya into a dark hole. Kenya has one of the
highest birth rates in the world: nearly 3% per
annum, but the economy has not been able to grow
more than 2.3% (1997), thus increasing more slowly
than the population. The consequent high unemployment
has caused discontent among the population. This
idleness has in turn procured an unheard of evil:
high insecurity and violence in the urban areas.
In 1997-98 El Niño phenomenon caused heavy
rains and floods which affected dramatically the
agricultural sector and seriously damaged the already
abused roads, creating havoc in communications and
trade. |
The violent political clashes during the 1997 elections in the highly touristic Coast, which caused a few deaths among locals, scared tourists and tourist operators in such a way that charter flights and hotel reservations were canceled en masse. The sector has only recently started to recuperate from this blow. Then came the bomb blast in the American Embassy in August 1998. Furthermore, investments stagnated in 1999 due to the bad state of the infrastructures, extremely high interest rates and budgetary cuts. Kenya has never gone through such bad economic times, and yet it should be seen as a blessing in disguise. Kenyans are finally realizing that they cannot continue counting on foreign help and handouts. They have to start doing things for themselves, and that is precisely what the government and the private sector has started doing. |
