Maggz

The thing @DavidNdii is saying something fairly straightforward: we simply don’t have enough public money for everything we need to do. So, where something can sustainably be funded by the market, why insist on funding it entirely from the budget? You can disagree with him. But then provide the alternative. Show us exactly what you would cut—and from which budget lines. Show us how much that saves. Show us what taxes or revenues you would raise, from whom, and by how much. Then show us how those choices finance universities, water, power, roads, irrigation and the other services a rapidly growing country needs. Because Kenya is adding roughly 3 babies every minute. Those children will need schools, healthcare, housing, infrastructure and, eventually, millions of jobs. And don’t conveniently ignore the rest of Ndii’s argument. He is talking about scaling production—dairy, coffee towards 200,000 MT, irrigation to increase agricultural output and reduce food imports, digital-services exports, infrastructure investment and attracting enormous private capital, including the proposed $20B petrochemical complex. He is making the case that these investments can expand production, exports, incomes and jobs. I knew that @DavidNdii was a good advisor ( but I felt as though he didn’t have skin in the game). I was wrong. He is unusually candid about the fiscal and political constraints Kenya faces. You don’t have to agree with his prescriptions. Attack the assumptions. Attack the numbers. Show where the model fails. Then put a better, costed model on the table. But “private capitalists are evil” is not an economic alternative because as you know Kenya’s problems are too serious for that kind of analysis. Bring the numbers. Bring the alternative. Don’t just rage bait. This is probably one of the most frustrating thing about our opposition today - no alternatives for the country. It’s why I’ll back @WilliamsRuto for Tutam. They actually bring rigor and vision for a country that needs them both.