This archive report was first published on 5 January 2020.
Kenya's ambitious goal of achieving 10% annual economic growth and self-sufficiency by 2030 is facing a significant hurdle: the country's cultural and social values.
According to the Building Bridges Initiative task force, the lack of a national ethos and skewed cultural values are major obstacles to Kenya's economic take-off.
As the Asian Tigers have demonstrated, values such as the strength of family ties, the spirit of enterprise and hard work, self-reliance, and a sense of individual responsibility are crucial for economic success.
These values have been adopted by countries such as Singapore and China, which have used them to create successful economies.
As former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher noted in her book Statecraft; Strategies for a Changing World (2002), policies that minimise welfare dependency have reinforced the social and cultural values that have helped Asian economies to flourish.
Former Prime Ministers Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore and Dr Mahathir Mohamed of Malaysia have also emphasized the importance of Asian values, which they believe are universal and have contributed to their countries' growth.
Ultimately, Kenya's constitutional amendments will be of little value if the country does not fundamentally alter its social and cultural values.
As governance expert Auscar Odhiambo Wambiya notes, good constitutions are only as good as the values and cultures that the people hold dear.
