That is exactly where we are as a country now. Our government has no clue where to take the country. At the moment every state official is begging Ruto for a chance to have a picture distributing food.
Every leader in the Ruto government is flagging off food aid even in places where it is not needed but they have to flag something.
Nobody in the Ruto government including the president himself is flagging off any development plans for food production and economic sustainability. But they have to flag something to look relevant.
And then of course there is the war against climate change.
Every government official today is fighting climate change and they are about to make tremendous success. It is all nonsense but back to the pestle and mortar and how we Kenyans had Unga so ready in our homes without ever visiting a grocery store.
Kenyans actually used to grind maize, millet, and all sorts of grain into usable Unga. My mother did that every day and we had to help her.
So at a local family level, we could make Unga in those days. Today we can’t. What is the alternative? Beg for food? Our country cannot figure out how to produce grains and how to grind those grains into Unga. That is our problem and we have to deal with it openly and with strategies to make things work.
No. The real solution is for us as a country to produce and process our foods. It is a shame that at a time when Kenyan farmers should be putting everything on the ground to get a good farming year and alleviate the food shortage problem the entire Ruto government is focused only on one thing. Get photos with food aid deliveries. You can’t do this for five years.
At some point, Kenyans need and have the capacity to produce their own food to eat and for export. That should be the emphasis. Sadly it is not.
And then Kenya has a bigger grinding fact. The country has to continue borrowing money endlessly even as President claims he is leading the country out of debt. Just complete lies from our president.
I’ll not continue taking our country into debt – Ruto
“I will not be the President that will continue the journey of taking our country into debt.”
Ruto said there is a percentage that the borrowing cannot go past as it will jeopardize the country’s finances.
“It is not possible for us to borrow beyond 10 percent. Anything 12, the last borrowing that we did was at 14 percent, that is unacceptable and that is the trajectory that we are going,” he said.
“I don’t know whether it is good news for you or bad things, but that is where we are going. I don’t think anyone sitting here would approve of us borrowing and taking our country to debt in a way that is not sustainable.”
Cut through Ruto’s jargon and let us deal with the fact that Kenya under Ruto just borrowed Shs 53 billion from the IMF. That is a fact.
Where is that money going to go? Fund the Hustler Fund? How about the food? Who is paying for it?
So agriculture is dead in the country. The government has to borrow every penny to pay for anything. What else is new in this Ruto government? More chaos and disaster? Yes. That would be very new.
Adongo Ogony is a Kenyan Human Rights Activist and a Writer who lives in Toronto, Canada
