This archive report was first published on 17 July 2020.
As the COVID-19 pandemic ravages Kenya, it has become clear that the country is facing a more sinister crisis – economic hopelessness. The numbers of infections and deaths are staggering, but beneath them lies a deeper issue that threatens the very fabric of our society.
With the President's lifting of the cessation of movement between counties, our roads have been filled with travelers leaving Nairobi, many of whom are accompanied by their household items, a clear sign that city life has lost its appeal.
Once, education was seen as the path to success, but now it seems that even this is not enough. The President's daughter, Ngina Kenyatta, recently advised jobless youth to start businesses and create employment for others, but this too has proven to be a futile effort.
Businesses need a population with purchasing power to thrive, but as the business people of Kirinyaga Road in Nairobi protested in 2018, the economic climate in the country is dire.
Life in Kenya has never been easy for the average citizen, but at least there was always a clear path to a manageable life. If education wasn't your forte, you started a 'hustle', and if that wasn't forthcoming, you moved to the city to look for a way to earn a living.
But all these beaten paths are proving to be useless now. It is high time we sat down as a people and decided on our way forward. Rwanda and India have shown us that it is possible to create opportunities for our citizens by marketing our country as a tourism and conference hotspot and investing in medical tourism, respectively.
Kenya can and should work for all of us. Maybe this pandemic and its crippling effect on most of our pockets will be the push we needed to sit down together, united by our struggles, and come up with a manual that will see our children get true and tested paths to success.
