Growth agenda should be based on 4Ps of progress beyond talk shops
Tourism CS Najib Balala and PS Fatma Hirsi (centre) at the tourism summit on August 31, 2016. PHOTO | KEVIN ODIT
Despite the usual absence of pre-event publicity, Wednesday’s televised State House Tourism Summit in Mombasa made for a fascinating study of the Jubilee administration’s continuing efforts to demonstrate delivery to Kenyans on its ambitious agenda.
Cabinet secretary Najib Balala argued that tourism recovery is on course, insisted the summit was not a PR event and promised a tourism master plan by December — eight months before the 2017 polls.
While the headlines focused on pricey hotel charges and Kenya Airways ticket prices, there was no mention of the really big things in the tourism part of Vision 2030.
Remember the three resort cities — Isiolo, North Coast and South Coast? Recall the premium parks and under-utilised parks initiatives?
What of niche products — sports, cultural and eco-tourism? Or the ‘home-stay’ sites initiative? What happened to the culture and heritage tourism strategy, and the agro-tourism strategy developed by the Grand Coalition Government? How is the cradle of mankind tourism circuit performing?
It is easy to see why the promise of yet another plan might be taken with a pinch of salt. Government’s strategy-upon-strategy approach signifies lots of motion, but less action. Tourism is one example.
The same story applies to agriculture, manufacturing and wider industry. It goes without saying that our predilection for masterplans is a harsh indictment of our weak monitoring and evaluation culture.
Simply, plan-ignore results-plan again — repeat cycle till next election, then start again.
But didn’t this Summit mention 95 per cent implementation of something? Yes. Speakers pointed to the fact that almost all of the recommendations made by the Tourism Recovery Task Force established in 2013 have been effected.
Does this include the big Vision 2030 stuff above, or are we simply talking about tax rebates, enabling infrastructure and security measures?
After all, private sector players in any task force have little incentive to consider “new” stuff if it is inimical to their business and profit interests, right?
Take nothing away from these summits. Beyond glitz, they tell us what government is (officially) up to.
Yet the lasting impression is one of future promises, not tangible achievements. Further, since these promises will not be implemented in the air, it does not help that the Land ministry is not being dragged out of its title deed issuing reverie to provide spatial context.
Without an understanding of how we optimise the use of our 145 million acres of Kenyan land space, these plans are “pie in the sky”.
These summits are also useful in helping us to reflect on Kenya’s developmental path and consider whether, as the Americans say, “we are making progress”.
Here, development is building a school or hospital — progress is more children getting a quality education or more people getting quality treatment. In other words, progress has a “quality access” dimension that adds to development’s “physical availability”.
It goes beyond the “build and they will come” attitude characteristic of successive governments since independence, and epitomised by the current administration — and these summits.
So what would a progress agenda comprise? I see four interrelated elements — people, private sector, products and policy — call this the 4Ps of progress.
By people, I mean a pro-poor agenda that emphasises inclusion. The runaway success of M-Pesa, by example, is pure marketing 101 — the poor and less wealthy are early adopters and the early majority of innovation, the middle class are the late majority and the elite and urban-rich are laggards.
By private sector, I do not mean big business, but anything outside the state and religion. But it’s also about “platforms” and “pipes”.
To quote Sangeet Paul Choudry, a leading thinker on business models in the Internet age “in the future, every company will be a tech company”. Pipe, you ask?
The traditional business model where companies create and sell product and service. Platform? The emerging business model where companies do not just create and sell, but they allow users to do the same.
In other words, a business model that creates producers and consumers. To use his example — TV Channels work on a Pipe model but YouTube, which allows users to create product/content, works on a Platform model. So, where are the platforms that will drive our future?
By products, I mean innovation. According to WIPO’s 2016 Global Innovation Index, Kenya ranks third in sub-saharan Africa, behind only Mauritius and South Africa.
We are one of the few economies punching above our economic weight — our innovation rating has been at least 10 per cent higher than peer countries by GDP every year since 2011.
According the report, we are “innovation achievers, pillar outperformers and innovation outperformers”.
Like our athletes delivering gold despite feckless and incompetent administrators, we score better on innovation outputs — knowledge, technology and creative — than innovation inputs (institutions, laws, infrastructure, market and business sophistication). So, how are we promoting product innovation?
Finally, public policy — defined as “political decisions for implementing programmes to achieve societal goals”. To a large extent, policy responds to problems translated as issues, rather than conditions.
Too often, our policy responds to conditions which are yet to manifest into widely accepted problems and issues. So standard gauge railway project is our policy response to an existing run-down railway in need of maintenance.
Let us view two illustrations of the 4Ps. First, Safaricom – our one emerging platform business, and M-Pesa. The policy issue? Financial inclusion.
The platform? Safaricom and its producers (apps developers). The product? M-Pesa — a wallet on your phone, and the multiple user apps that have emerged therefrom. The people? 25 million-plus subscribers, 15 million-plus M-Pesa users. Enough said.
Second, banks. The policy issue? High lending and low savings rates, are now regulated. The platform? The first bank that realises that space and staff are so yesterday —the virtual bank that creates producers and customers.
The product? Money innovations that deliver profit within a 7.15 per cent interest rate spread. The people? 30 million deposit and loan accounts looking for a good deal. Watch this space.
What of, say, tourism? Let’s go mad and ask — isn’t tourism mostly about fascination (think “sights and sounds”)? What “sights and sounds” fascinate people?
How can we innovatively fascinate people? How do we create a “fascination” platform for producers and users? Finally, what is the policy problem/opportunity/issue?
In short, away with the traditional dichotomy between “policy and people” vs “private sector and products”. Instead, think “people and product (innovation)” first. Delivered through a partnership of “private sector” (platforms) underpinned by “policy” (digital, lean government).
Now imagine if these summits, and other development discourses, were built around the 4Ps? I suspect that’s what Japan in its innovative private sector messaging was really telling us at TICAD VI last week.
