Tales abound of wasted rural potential by Jackson Mwalulu

Rural development in Kenya has never been a government priority. Successive post-independence governments have treated rural development as part of political favours to be dished out to “well behaved” locals, or home areas of powerful sons and daughters.

But what is Kenya’s rural development policy, if any? When I was growing up in the 1980s, I used to hear of District Focus for Rural Development (DFRD). Many years since the DFRD vanished from our vocabulary, I cannot point out a single development project initiated or completed under the programme in my locality, Taveta.

The Constituency Development Fund (CDF) initiated by the Narc government in 2003 is a big relief to the country’s grassroots. But the fund is only capable of putting up classrooms, dispensaries, drilling boreholes, cattle dips and paving access roads. It is incapable of carrying out big projects like tarmacking roads or exploiting natural wealth for the benefit of rural Kenyans.

As a result, rural development in Kenya remains arrested. Roads remain impassable, especially during the wet season and hopelessly poor Kenyans in the countryside are sitting on billions-worth of unexploited natural wealth. Kenya’s leadership needs to take rural development more seriously if the country is to attain its much hyped Vision 2030.

It is the rural economy that will surely see the dream through. But rural economy cannot be spurred through impassable roads and unexploited natural wealth. As an example, the Voi-Taveta road, untarmacked since the beginning of time, needs to be done. The government knows well how important to the economy this particular road is.

Aside from linking Taveta to the rest of Kenya, it opens into Tanzania and the entire Great Lakes region through Moshi and Arusha. A few years ago, the multi-billion-shilling titanium deposits in the South Coast were the talk of town. Not any more.

In Kitui, huge deposits of limestone lie beneath the expansive semi-arid land. The reason the mineral, used to make cement, is not being exploited is commercial wars between multinational companies over who should exploit it. Can’t the leadership organise the people of Kitui into a giant cooperative society and loan them money to exploit this wealth? Why must cement in Kenya be manufactured by multinationals?

The neighbouring Mwingi District is said to be rich in yet another unexploited mineral: coal. Knowing the importance of coal as a source of cheap and environmentally safe energy, it beats all logic that the government is still not sure whether or not to exploit this wealth.

The greater Taita-Taveta district is well endowed with gemstones, especially within the area covered by the Tsavo West National Park. But apart from pockets of mines around Mwatate and Voi, the gemstones remain largely unexploited even as locals wallow in poverty. It leaves one wondering what is developmental about bodies like the Coast Development Authority.

These few examples of wasted rural potential tell one that there is no part of this country that should be backward four and a half decades after we became independent. Not even the wild Northern Kenya, where life is short, nasty and brutish. It is time to turn attention to rural Kenya if not for any other reason, political stability. Year after year, Kenyan youth stampede to Nairobi in search of elusive opportunities.

The hundreds of thousands of idle youth in our slums combined with the army of young men who daily walk to and from Nairobi’s industrial area, where they slave the whole day for a pittance, is a time bomb that any government would want to defuse without hesitation. Aside from opening up opportunities in the countryside, rural development will also enhance national unity.

The opposition to resources devolution, for instance, is based on the perception that it is only a few parts of this country which produce wealth. Kenyans from these few areas argue that it is unfair to tax them for the benefit of the rest of the country. Allocating not less than 15 per cent of the national budget to counties as proposed by the draft constitution is a valuable step towards rural development. The ultimate, though, is to prioritise rural development as a measure of addressing rural poverty.

jmwalulu@hotmail.com: Mwalulu comments on social and political issues