Use data to inspire economic activity

Peter Drucker, Austrian-born American management guru, famously said, “What gets measured gets improved.”

By this, he meant that one could only improve if he/she regularly measures progress and takes note of it to keep focused.

The launch of the Gross County Product (GCP) 2019 Report provided the public with the measurement to gauge their county’s economic progress, revenue potential, preparedness to attract investment, highlight its development plans and keep the county administrations focused on achieving social and economic development.

The measurements were rich with necessary data needed to make critical economic decisions.

However, a number of people in the street who I interviewed said they did not feel the 6.3 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate announced at the ceremony. They argue that their status has either remained the same or gone worse.

In some sense, they are right given that the growth reported is simply an aggregated national average. Some may have seen huge benefits from the previous year’s policy intervention while others many not have seen the same.

GDP is often criticised that it is not a good indicator of wellbeing. Indeed, the Monarch of Bhutan discarded GDP and devised what he called Gross National Happiness (GNH).

It is possible that citizens in general want happiness but since it is not measured, they are disappointed with the current indicators.

As employers of the elected officials, they want them to account for the general disappointment with economic progress. Unfortunately, they do not have means of developing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that can be used to determine the effectiveness of the leaders. Their only recourse is to scrutinise the GCP data and try to relate to the performance and effectiveness of their leaders.

The problem though is the fact that statistical data can be misleading. Some counties have a huge private sector that has been there even before the county governments were in place.

It is false to say, for example, that the economic performance in Nairobi was as a result of actions taken by elected leaders. Nairobi just happens to have the most industries so that its performance has nothing to do with county KPIs.

Like the Bhutan philosophy of measuring social and economic progress, the statistics agency therefore should consider a new performance indicator to measure the level of happiness with county leadership.

The per capita indicator in my view is most deceptive given the fact that less than 10 percent of the population controls more than 90 percent of the wealth in the country. Income in Nairobi, for example, is unevenly spread. Counties with a much less per capita income could be having more people living a better life than those languishing in shanties in Nairobi.

Common goals

Nevertheless, the alignment of national and county economic development plans (CEDPs) to achieve common goals such as the Vision 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals does inspire counties to focus on some of the pressing issues of our time. We have indeed made progress by moving from national aggregated averages to disaggregate the data that enables citizens to see granular data at their own counties.

More sophisticated counties will leverage the data to see opportunities especially around potential new sources of revenues generation and reduce their dependence on national budget.

The KNBS should make an effort to publish national consumption data as a strategy to highlight the gaps in demand to motivate farmers to produce more.

Kenya’s wheat consumption as per Knoema index has increased from 911,000 tonnes in 2000 to about 2.4 million tonnes in 2018 while production has declined from a high of 512,000 tonnes in 2010 to 165,000 tonnes in 2017.

We must provide data that inspires people to do more.