Which way for the economy as 2015 gets off to dramatic start?

My friend and colleague Wayua Muli put it well; “2015 is only three weeks in and there’s been drama every week,” she sighed on Twitter. “How tired will Kenyans be by March?”

The year, if you hadn’t recognised it yet, has truly been a cacophonous one. From tear-gassed school children, through mysterious landowners and unrequited resignation threats, to foul-mouthed, unrepentant MPs whose only sin, they say, is to look out for the poor people of Kenya; this January has not lacked for noisy distractions that have held Kenyans in thrall.

Of course, in the best tradition of Kenyans, the fun thing about all the events is how much they have given rise to conspiracy theories.

Life in Kenya is better than living in the Matrix movie series, and nothing illustrates this better than a Cabinet secretary who reportedly promises to reveal the “names behind the names” of a hidden land grabber, and then resign.

In the event, she only reveals the first layer of names, leaving the “hidden” ones unrevealed for now, and her resignation letter unwritten.

Kenya is the sort of country in which even the conspiracy theories have conspiracy theories, with some claiming that the tirade by MP Alfred Keter at the Gilgil weighbridge last Sunday was a smoothly engineered effort to distract from earlier scandals and conspiracies.

Of course you are free to take the latest wave of scandal, with its attendant debates, jokes and outrage as you will, and decide whether it is a return to the old ways of doing things or evidence of a newly impatient, inquisitive citizenry.

What’s certain is that the scandals have an economic and business impact, in both predictable and unexpected ways.

The predictable ways are a bit schizophrenic. Foreign investors, particularly Western ones, like quiet, docile countries.

As long as human rights abuses are not too evident or persistent, predictability and a government that can make things happen by fiat are characteristics beloved by international moneymen.

This is why you keep hearing paeans sung to China. China can build entire cities out of nothing in a few months flat, and decades of communist life make people move largely in lockstep. Contrast this (as many investors do) with the closest comparable country – India. India is a raucous democracy where China is a dour dictatorship.

While this is great for the people of India and their democratic voices, it does slow down development significantly.

Every major development is an obstacle course of having to negotiate with individuals and interest groups, and every big project can be held up by months of hearings in different legislative bodies.

Not so fast, though. You will increasingly hear economists tell you that India has a much more resilient economy than China.
The effort that has to go into convincing everyone of the wisdom of a particular government action means that consensus is the driving force, however painstakingly gotten.

Some Kenyans, especially after yet another public protest over one thing or the other, call for a benevolent dictatorship.

The simple retort is that getting the dictatorship is the easy part – the benevolence is never guaranteed.

The flip side to the investment question is that the sheer volume of noise in the Kenyan public sphere makes it one of the most attractive places in Africa to place your economic bets on.

Get into any scandal and count how long before all the memes come flying out of the Internet. They are hilarious, often irreverent, and, above all, produced lightning fast. It points to a people who are creative, and there’s no better indication of economic potential than a creative populace.

Even industrial economies have realised the importance of recognising, capturing and exploiting the creative tendencies of their people. Thus, every Photoshopped caricature that gets shared on Twitter and WhatsApp is an indication of the health of the economy.

Perverse way

Of course, all this may be a negative sign. Every minute wasted creating (and sharing) these caricatures may be another minute not spent improving the economy.

Kenyans, in their perverse way, may take the willingness to discuss scandal to its Warholesque extreme – every two-bit hustler and politician competes to do something stupid in order to have their 15 minutes of fame.

And the more they make it into the headlines and the trending hashtags, the more of a confused joke the country seems to be. If these are the people in national leadership any investor has a right to ask; “What is the state of the country they lead?”

The most unexpected outcome of all this is the discovery that the greatest tools in the protection of democracy might end up being mobile phones with cameras.

While smartphones might have been sullied in their early years by the selfie craze, the fact that everyone is now a TV journalist in their own right means that the relationship between government and governed changes, maybe irrevocably.

And it is not just in the arena of politics and democracy. Customers whose rights are infringed on by corporate monoliths have a tool and an avenue to make their voices heard. Reputations are made and lost with the press of two buttons — “record” and “share”.

So let the drama continue. Maybe the economy will come out the winner. But for Wayua’s sake and mine, please keep it down.

@wgkantai