Kenya's great development illusion: We built the infrastructure, but forgot the people

Kenya has built much of the physical foundation of a modern economy. Roads have expanded, electricity access has increased, ports have been modernised, digital infrastructure has transformed communication, and public investment has reshaped the country’s physical landscape. Yet beneath these visible achievements lies a difficult question: Has infrastructure translated into prosperity for the majority of Kenyans?

As Kenya approaches 2030, the deadline around which its most ambitious long-term development blueprint was constructed, the country must honestly examine the distance between what was promised and what citizens actually experience.

Vision 2030 was never simply a construction programme. It was conceived as a transformation agenda: a plan to make Kenya a newly industrialising, middle-income country providing a high quality of life to all its citizens in a clean and secure environment.

That distinction matters.

A road is important. A port is important. A railway is important. Electricity is important. Digital connectivity is important. But these are means to development, not development itself.

The ultimate test is whether farmers earn more, young people find decent jobs, mothers access safe healthcare, families can afford nutritious food, pastoralists access water during drought, children remain in school and ordinary households can build secure economic futures.

The danger of measuring development by what is easiest to photograph

Kenya’s development debate has increasingly become dominated by visible infrastructure. A highway can be photographed. A bridge can be inaugurated. A railway station can be opened. A port can be displayed.

Household prosperity is much harder to photograph.

There is no ribbon-cutting ceremony for a family that escapes chronic poverty. There is no grand inauguration for a young person who obtains productive employment. There is no monument to a community whose children no longer suffer preventable illness because clean water has reached their homes.

Yet these are precisely the outcomes that should define national development.

Kenya must therefore move from input-based development to outcome-based development. The question should no longer be simply, *How much did we build?* It should be: What changed because we built it?

The unfinished promise of Vision 2030

Vision 2030, launched in 2008, provided Kenya with a long-term framework for transforming the economy and society through successive five-year Medium-Term Plans.

There has been genuine progress. Electricity access has expanded significantly, digital financial services have transformed economic transactions, major roads have improved connectivity, the Port of Mombasa has undergone modernisation, and Lamu has emerged as a strategic infrastructure investment. Kenya has also expanded investments in health, education, ICT, energy and water.

These achievements should neither be dismissed nor underestimated.

But the broader question is whether these investments have produced the structural transformation originally envisaged.

The answer is mixed.

Kenya remains heavily dependent on agriculture for livelihoods, yet productivity remains vulnerable to drought, floods, high input costs and weak market systems. Youth unemployment and underemployment remain serious concerns. Informal employment dominates much of the labour market. Many households face pressure from food, housing, education, healthcare and transport costs.

Economic growth has occurred, but growth has not always translated into broadly shared improvements in living standards.

Infrastructure is the foundation of prosperity, but foundations are not the house.

LAPSSET and the lesson of incomplete ecosystems

The Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport Corridor, commonly known as LAPSSET, illustrates this challenge.

The original concept was much larger than a port. It envisaged an integrated regional transport and logistics corridor connecting Lamu with Ethiopia and South Sudan through roads, railways, pipelines, airports and other infrastructure.

Its strategic ambition was enormous: open up historically marginalised regions, stimulate trade and strengthen Kenya’s position as a regional logistics hub.

But infrastructure projects rarely generate their full economic potential individually.

A port needs roads and railways. Roads need productive economic activity. Industrial zones need reliable power, water, skills, markets and investors. Farmers need storage, processing facilities and access to markets.

This is the difference between building infrastructure and building an economy around infrastructure**.

Kenya has sometimes been too comfortable celebrating the first while neglecting the second. Every major infrastructure investment should therefore have a clear economic ecosystem, with measurable targets for employment, enterprise development, trade and household incomes.

The five-year politics of a long-term country

There is another structural problem: Kenya plans for decades but governs through five-year political cycles.

Vision 2030 was designed as a long-term national framework. Elections, however, create powerful incentives for each administration to establish its own identity. One government promotes one flagship agenda, while the next introduces another. Terminology changes, priorities shift, and projects are renamed, redesigned, delayed or abandoned.

This creates a fundamental contradiction:

A country cannot build a 30-year future using five-year political attention spans.

National development should outlive presidents. A national vision must be owned by institutions, Parliament, counties, the private sector, civil society, academia and citizens—not simply by the administration in power.

Kenya needs stronger institutions capable of preserving technical knowledge, monitoring implementation and evaluating results.

The problem is not that individual experts leave.

The problem is when institutions fail to remember what they learned.

Vision 2060 must begin with the ordinary Kenyan

If Kenya develops a Vision 2060, the starting point should not be another catalogue of mega-projects. It should begin with one deceptively simple question:

What should an ordinary Kenyan’s life look like in 2060?

The answer should include adequate food, clean and reliable water, decent housing, quality education, accessible healthcare, productive employment, social protection, personal security and the ability to build wealth.

These fundamentals should become the centre of national planning.

Food security must become an economic strategy

Kenya cannot become prosperous while millions of households remain vulnerable to food insecurity and agricultural shocks.

Agriculture should therefore be treated not merely as a rural livelihood sector but as a central pillar of industrialisation. Kenya needs sustained investment in irrigation, water harvesting, climate-smart agriculture, livestock development, extension services, research, storage, cold chains, agro-processing and market infrastructure.

Every agricultural region should have a strategy connecting production to processing, processing to markets and markets to incomes.

Food security should not simply mean producing enough food. It should mean creating a productive food economy capable of generating jobs, incomes and exports.

Water must become a national security priority

Water affects health, agriculture, livestock, education, industry, household incomes and, ultimately, human dignity.

Yet water scarcity is too often treated as a humanitarian emergency rather than a long-term development challenge.

Vision 2060 should make water security a national strategic priority through investment in water harvesting, irrigation, dams where appropriate, boreholes, watershed protection and climate-resilient urban and rural systems.

A child should not have to walk kilometres for water in a country capable of constructing multi-billion-shilling infrastructure projects.

Kenya must redefine what it means by a job

Kenya often celebrates employment creation without sufficiently examining the quality of employment.

A job that barely pays for food and transport may technically be employment, but it does not necessarily create economic security.

The future development agenda must therefore focus on decent and productive employment.

Kenya’s young population can become an extraordinary demographic dividend if young people receive quality education, technical skills, access to finance and opportunities in productive industries.

The country needs deliberate industrial policy around agro-processing, manufacturing, textiles, pharmaceuticals, digital services, renewable energy, logistics and the creative economy.

Counties must become engines of development

Vision 2060 should recognise that Kenya’s transformation cannot remain Nairobi-centred.

Devolution created an opportunity to bring development and decision-making closer to citizens. Counties, however, require stronger planning, technical capacity, accountability and economic development strategies.

Every county should identify its competitive advantages. One may have strengths in livestock, another in fisheries, tourism, horticulture, minerals, manufacturing or renewable energy.

The national government should provide enabling infrastructure while counties develop local economic ecosystems.

The objective should be to create multiple centres of prosperity, rather than one dominant economic capital surrounded by regions struggling to catch up.

This is particularly important for historically marginalised regions. Northern Kenya, for example, should not permanently be treated as a humanitarian space requiring emergency interventions. Its livestock economy, renewable energy potential, cross-border trade, tourism, logistics and youthful population offer significant opportunities for long-term transformation.

From projects to measurable human outcomes

Vision 2060 should introduce a new national development rule: Every major public investment must demonstrate the human and economic outcomes it is expected to produce.

Instead of measuring only the kilometres of roads constructed, the government should measure how many farmers gained access to markets, how much travel time declined and how household incomes changed.

Instead of measuring electricity connections alone, the government should measure businesses created, jobs generated and productive activity enabled.

Instead of counting hospitals and health centres, the government should measure maternal mortality, child survival, immunisation rates and access to medicines.

Instead of counting classrooms, the government should measure literacy, numeracy, completion rates and employable skills.

This would fundamentally change the culture of government by forcing policymakers to ask whether public expenditure is producing public value.

Kenya needs a national development scorecard

Vision 2060 should be accompanied by an independently monitored national scorecard that ordinary citizens can understand.

It should track household income and poverty, food security and nutrition, access to safe water, youth employment, maternal and child health, learning outcomes, agricultural productivity, industrial output, county-level economic growth, public debt sustainability, inequality, regional disparities and environmental sustainability.

The public should not need to read hundreds of pages of government reports to understand whether Kenya is progressing.

Development performance should be understandable to the ordinary citizen.

The politics of completion

Kenya also needs to develop a culture of completing what it starts.

Too many development projects become permanent works in progress. A serious national development agenda must prioritise completion, value for money and economic utilisation.

Before launching another mega-project, the government should ask:

What unfinished strategic investments could deliver greater value if completed?

This does not mean Kenya should stop building. It means Kenya should become more disciplined about what it builds, why it builds it and whether those investments generate measurable returns.

The era of development as political spectacle must give way to development as public service.

The real meaning of development

It would be unfair to describe Vision 2030 as a failure. The framework established a long-term national development language and supported substantial investment in infrastructure and public services.

But it would be equally misleading to describe it as an unqualified success.

Its broader promise of structural transformation, inclusive prosperity and improved quality of life remains unfinished.

Kenya’s next national development agenda should preserve what worked, correct what failed and establish stronger mechanisms for continuity, accountability and evaluation.

Ultimately, development is not about concrete.

Concrete is a means. Development is about people.

A highway matters because it reduces the cost of moving people and goods. A port matters because it facilitates trade. Electricity matters because it enables production. Water infrastructure matters because it protects health and enables livelihoods. A hospital matters because it saves lives. A school matters because it equips children for the future.

Infrastructure is therefore important—but only when it serves human progress.

Kenya now stands at an important crossroads. It can continue measuring development by what governments build and inaugurate, or it can begin measuring development by what citizens experience.

The second approach is harder because it requires uncomfortable questions about inequality, corruption, public expenditure, institutional capacity, political incentives and policy continuity.

But it is the approach Kenya needs.

Vision 2060 should not be another catalogue of impressive projects. It should be a national promise about the quality of life of every Kenyan.

Its success should be visible in the kitchen, where families can afford nutritious food; at the water point, where women and children no longer spend hours searching for water; on the farm, where higher productivity translates into higher incomes; in the factory, where young people find productive employment; in the classroom, where children acquire relevant skills; and in the clinic, where preventable deaths become increasingly rare.

Ultimately, it should be visible in the family bank account, where economic security allows citizens to plan beyond tomorrow.

Kenya did not fail because it built roads, ports, railways, power systems and digital infrastructure.

The danger is that we may mistake the foundation for the finished house.

Vision 2030 gave Kenya an important foundation. The responsibility now is to build the house—and make sure that ordinary Kenyans can actually live in it.

The next national development vision must therefore be judged by one uncompromising question: not what has government built, but how much better has the life of the Kenyan people become?

That is the unfinished promise of Vision 2030.

And that must be the starting point for Vision 2060.

- The writer is a Professor of Psychology, Governance and Leadership Expert