Hard questions as 4th international investment conference draws close

What is a seriously important event happening around here this week? If we step away from the Middle East and Trump’s Epic (or is it Epstein?) Fury, might it be our ongoing voluntary youth voter registration? 

As said before, 20 million of our potential, if IEBC were serious, 32 million voter register in our 58 million population in 2027 could comprise hustlers and Gen Zs. 

In “tribeless” 2027, where we assume 85 per cent of Gen Zs are hustlers, and 70 per cent of hustlers are Gen Zs, that is, 15 per cent of Gen Zs are non-hustlers, and 30 per cent of hustlers are non-Gen Zs, we have 12 million Gen Z hustlers, two million non-hustler Gen Zs and six million non-Gen Z hustlers. 

Put more clearly, 14 million Gen Zs and 18 million hustlers of whom 12 million are both Gen Zs and hustlers, which translates, after overlaps, to 20 million Gen Zs and hustlers in 2027. Simply, that’s Kenya’s “good jobs” challenge firmly on the ballot.

Or maybe the big event is ODM’s National Delegates Conference, depending on which one we think is the genuine one.  This event will dominate our media headlines at the end of the week, but, in our current state of potty-mouthed politics, does it really matter? 

Significant event

When young people, learning from elders, describe our leadership on prime time TV as anaconda ana konda, we are in a new type of hell.  To borrow from Peter Ekeh’s 1970s exposition of Africa’s “primordial” and “civic” states, it is not that we aren’t civilised, we choose to be neanderthals in public affairs.  And it is both top-down and bottom-up.  It is only in Kenya where you are told “wantam” is hate speech but “tutam” is gospel, while the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) snoozes.

Yet, despite this background, there is another significant event happening this week, the 4th Kenya International Investment Conference (KIIC 2026).  Yes, we truly expect investors to commit their time and money to an environment in which we are busy shouting at one another in a mad pre-election frenzy. 

We are told the mobilisation target is US$2 billion in new investment commitments across a sectoral laundry list, including agriculture, finance, ICT and artificial intelligence, creative economy, leather, mining, textiles, pharmaceuticals, business process outsourcing, renewable energy, waste management and the circular economy, e-mobility and clean cooking.  What is missing is our holistic industrialisation road map.

It is difficult to see how we advance our economy without graduating from growing and buying to actually making things.  From consumption-led, services-driven economics to industrial production and value-added exports.  But here we are, climbing the tree from the top yet again by thinking first about money!  And that is before our endless politicking while we wonder why our business environment is shaky at best.

Let us take a step back.  Is this really our fourth international investment conference?  Actually, no.  We can go all the way back to the 1994 conference at which, guess what, our privatisation agenda was loudly announced.  We could jump to NARC’s 2003 national and 2004 international investment conferences. In those two, there was at least some presence of mind to first engage domestic investors, then foreigners.  It was the latter trajectory-shaping event that actually launched Kenya’s first-ever investment code.

It would seem, however, that “official Kenya” also has a short memory, so the count of these international investment conferences begins with the first in 2013, followed by one in 2014, and most recently in 2023.

Don’t forget, as well, that we have had all manner of county international investment conferences.  So why aren’t we seeing an investment, business, exports or economic boom?  Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is stuck at $1.5 billion a year as we muddle through our five per cent “KANU” economic growth rate.  Do we ever get to hear about the outcomes, short and long-term, from these high-profile jamborees?                                                         

As one who, in younger days, used to rail at Kenyans in public spots when they switched off the business news while complaining about the economy, I hope that KIIC 2026 will be televised or carried online.   It is actually a three-in-one event, including the 2nd COMESA Investment Forum and the African Green Industrialisation Initiative.  The programme offers a rich menu from investment showcases and exhibitions to side-event fireside chats.  In essence, this is where we can proudly show off our civic, not primordial, side.

This brings me to five general thoughts that need to pervade what I believe is this week’s significant event.

The first is drawn from our draft National Investment Strategy, which sets ambitious annual investment targets: FDI at $5 billion (from $1.5 billion),  Domestic Investment (DI) at $45 billion (from $22 billion),  Diaspora Direct Investment (DDI) at $1.7 billion from zero. How are we doing, $2 billion conference target for FDI notwithstanding? And, how are we translating these numbers back into actions that show similar emphasis on domestic and diaspora investors that we accord to foreign ones? At this point, we might, with courage, also ask how we are doing compared to others, like, say, Ethiopia.

A related question here might concern how we are doing on our National Savings Strategy, if there is one, especially as an import-dependent economy with, to repeat, no industrialisation for an export road map.

Third liberation

The second seeks a different angle to our investment perspective. While we prefer to focus on economic investment, where is the pre-budget space in which we debate, say, social investment needs?  Or our governance and security investment needs?  This is probably why National Planning actually matters.

The third is our investment climate, which we simplify into ease of doing business.  What we don’t need to hear is the latest rendition of theoretical rankings on ease of doing business, which are based on written laws and regulations. We have wonderful laws and regulations, but the actual cost of doing business, which relates to enforcement.  The Kenya Association of Manufacturers has had much to say about our excessive regulatory regime, as has the World Bank in assessing our competitiveness.

Flowing from this, the next thought concerns the nature of our government.  Put simply, there is a sense in which we need to better build an entrepreneurial, beyond tenderpreneurial, government.  If we are to achieve our third liberation, the economic one that brings Kenya 3.0, we need Government 3.0 behind it.   We can no longer afford what is mostly Government 1.0 as a key driver of our cost of doing business.  And you don’t need to use the word corruption to see through our tenderpreneurial tendencies.

Finally, the matter of counties.  To repeat my constant refrain, economic Kenya is the aggregation of 47 county economies in which the national and county governments have a presence.  Rather than the single short session the conference affords to counties, shouldn’t we anchor our investment discourse in a bottom-up county lens, in FDI, DI and DDI terms and specifically, in investment climate terms? 

The official 2024 County Competitiveness Index tells us that, in business investible terms, we have four highly competitive counties, 12 promising counties, ten counties on the margin and 21 counties which are far from promising, so basically, if 2/3rds of our counties are not quite “open for business”, is Kenya? 

On that jarring note, let’s hope KIIC 2026, as a civilised break from politics, is as reflective as it is successful.