The Populous

“Happy families are alike; unhappy families are all miserable in their own way.”

That line from Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina resonates deeply with Kenya. We live in a country where there are a lot of unprivileged people, where being rich or wealthy can almost feel like a taboo and should not be spoken about, yet deep down, most of us desire to be rich.

Many Kenyans, especially those who grew up before Gen Z, were raised with physical punishment. If you did not do something, you were beaten. At school, at home, and sometimes even outside by the community, punishment was part of growing up.

So the question becomes: how do you win in such a battleground?

It depends.

For some people, these environments create resilience, discipline and ambition. For others, they create resentment, fear, low trust and scarcity mindsets. When you grow up believing that there is never enough, you naturally become more protective of what you have. Someone else's success can start to feel like your loss.

And I think this affects how we build our country.

We sometimes want freedom, but we also want someone to control everyone else. We complain about corruption while sometimes looking for our own small way around the rules. We want rich people to succeed, but we can also become suspicious when someone becomes too successful.

This is why building a great Kenya is not simply about building roads, schools and hospitals. It is also about changing the environment that produces the people.

The State

I have a libertarian and capitalist mindset, so naturally I believe people should have a lot of freedom. People should be able to build businesses, create things, become wealthy and live their lives without unnecessary government interference.

But I don't think freedom means having a weak state.

Kenya is not America. We have different problems, a different history and a very different neighbourhood.

Take surveillance. The word itself sounds bad, and there are very good reasons to be careful about government surveillance. But I don't think surveillance is automatically evil. Kenya has experienced major terrorist attacks in the last few decades. We live in a difficult geographical neighbourhood. We cannot pretend security threats do not exist simply because we value freedom.

Sometimes you need a strict mathematics teacher.

When you are young, you may hate the teacher because they force you to do the work. Years later, you may thank them because the discipline helped you.

Government can sometimes be like that.

We need some level of control to keep society safe and functioning. But there is an important difference between a strict teacher and an abusive one. The teacher must still have rules. The same should apply to the government.

I don't want a government that controls everything.

I want a government that is very strong at the things it is supposed to do and very limited everywhere else.

It should be extremely good at protecting property, enforcing contracts, protecting the country, maintaining security and enforcing the law.

But it should stay out of people's lives when it has no legitimate reason to be there.

This is where I think Kenya has to stop copying political systems simply because they worked somewhere else.

America designed much of its government around the fear of an efficient dictator. The American system has many checks and balances because the founders were deeply afraid of concentrated power. In many ways, they would rather have an inefficient government than give one person too much power.

Kenya has a different problem.

We are a country that recently learned how to walk, yet we are often expected to carry other toddlers.

We are still trying to build strong institutions, fight corruption, grow our economy and provide security, while also being told that we must carry the weight of the entire region.

I don't think that is sustainable.

Kenya has to protect Kenya first.

That does not mean we should hate our neighbours or abandon Africa. I actually believe strongly in trade, cooperation and free movement of people and ideas. But the idea of “One Africa” should not become an excuse to ignore reality.

If regional cooperation makes Kenya safer, richer and stronger, then we should cooperate.

If free trade helps Kenyan businesses reach millions of people, then we should trade.

If intelligence sharing protects Kenyan lives, then we should share intelligence.

But if something weakens Kenya, we should be willing to say no.

We cannot build a great country by pretending our circumstances are the same as America's, Europe's or anyone else's.

We are Kenya.

We are in the South.

We have our own problems, our own strengths and our own neighbourhood.

And perhaps the first principle of a great Kenya should be very simple:

The rules of the land must be king.

Not the president.

Not the wealthy.

Not the tribe.

Not the mob.

Not the international community.

The law.

If we can build a country where the government is strong enough to protect its people, limited enough to leave them free, and disciplined enough to obey its own laws, then perhaps we can finally begin to build the Kenya we keep talking about.