This government came to power with the slogan “pesa mfukoni”. In 2022, they had a clear understanding of the problem.
It wasn’t that the government wasn’t investing in infrastructure projects. The problem was that the economy was underperforming.
Pockets were empty! People were happy to hear someone who seemed to understand their real predicament.
We always told the Uhuru regime that people don’t eat roads. Unfortunately, he mistook our message to mean that we were against the construction of roads.
To make things easier, I made a distinction between primary and secondary infrastructure. Primary infrastructure is infrastructure that directly leads to production and economic growth.
For instance, if you invest in water infrastructure, people can grow food throughout the year. This will translate to money in people’s pockets and also reflect in GDP growth.
On the other hand, secondary infrastructure is facilitative, not productive. If you build a road, it will facilitate the movement of goods and services, but won’t directly produce anything.
The road will only reflect in the GDP during its construction. A country can have a lot of tarmacked roads, but if there is little to transport, those roads won’t grow the economy. People won’t feel the impact due to reduced cash flow.
Some infrastructure, like stadiums, can even be seen as tertiary infrastructure. Water will help produce food, and a road will help transport that food to the market.
One will only go for entertainment in a stadium after meeting most of his or her needs. Such infrastructure can only make sense in a high-income economy. It is not a priority in our low-income setting.
The president has been talking about connecting people to electricity and building roads since 2013. All these things have been done to a great extent, but people are still suffering economically, and the country is struggling with debt servicing.
Connecting people to unaffordable electricity adds no value to the economy. Why continue in this trajectory, yet we can’t see the results? Can’t the president learn from the past?
People are crying that they are starving and can’t afford school fees. The government’s response is that we are building roads. This is the same arrogance and disconnect that saw Uhuru fall out with voters even in his political bedroom.
Interestingly, what puts money in people’s pockets isn’t just spending on infrastructure. It is sound economic policies geared at increasing the money supply and broadening its distribution.
Such policies are a cheaper and better way to boost the economy than focusing on costly infrastructure that the country can ill afford.
If you look at Q3 results of the listed banks, the common trend is that they are increasing lending to the government while cutting lending to the private sector.
This government’s policies have targeted the formal workers with all manner of deductions, whose net effect is decreased disposable income. This is the same worker who is depended upon by so many other people.
No economy can deliver pesa mfukoni when lending to the private sector, and disposable incomes are declining. These twin economic disasters suppress aggregate demand, which slows down the economy and empties people’s pockets.
Going back to where we started, it is true that people don’t eat roads. How many times have we seen people starving in this country? Was it because they had no roads?
My advice to the regime is to implement economic policies that directly put money in people’s pockets. Else in 2027, they will meet a very hungry and angry voter who won’t listen to stories about roads and electricity connections.
Author Iphraim Njega
