LETTERS: Change comes with desire for better future

Progress, whether for an individual or people, is not an accident. It is deliberate. It starts with a desire for something better than the current. This is then followed by a decision to pursue this and sustained efforts towards making the dream a reality.

Just over 102 years ago, my father came to Kenya. Armed only with vernacular education acquired in India, he could barely speak, read or write in English or Kiswahili, the country’s main languages. He would later venture into business, running a shop, but always leaned heavily on others for help with official correspondence, conducting bank transactions and other errands that required reading or writing. My mother, on the other hand, was illiterate.

It is from their background that my parents decided that if the future of their children had to be any different than theirs, they had to be educated. No effort was spared and eventually, all his children not only went to university, but also went on to build and run a successful family business.

It is from this foresight of investing in our education that we were able to transform the small Mombasa-based family business that employed only 40 people into a behemoth employing about 40,000 people, with operations in 40 countries. It all started with my parents’ strong desire to make the lives of their children better than what they had.

Similarly, about a decade ago, Kenya took a deliberate decision to improve the quality of life of its people. Coming just after the unfortunate post-election violence that led to loss of property, destruction of property, and a general economic slump, the country wrote up what would become Vision 2030 to do more than just restore it to its heyday.

The desire was for a newly industrialised, upper middle-income country providing a high quality of life to all its citizens by 2030 in a clean and secure environment. I had the honour of participating in the development of this vision, together with other individuals from the public and private sectors, with the happiness of our people as our driving force.

It was about the private sector becoming partners rather than adversaries with government, in order to deliver a greater good. The first step, flowing out of the creation of a National Economic and Social Council (NESC) just as it is in other emerging economies, was instituting a longer term national development blueprint, as opposed to the then five-year plans. This was critical even for the private sector, because once a decision is made on a policy direction, businesses can plan and invest, safe in the knowledge that all is stable and predictable.

It was thinking about the future of our children and how to make it better; considering the future population and how to look after it by delivering amenities, such as education and health. It was imagining the lives of children born in 2008 and the years to come, creating what we desired for them as adults, and planning for it in a manner that guaranteed them a better future.

It was ensuring that these children do not go to bed without food, do not live in slums and are also able to attain their aspirations. It was making sure that every Kenyan could earn a decent enough living to take care of their families.

A decade later, huge strides have been made towards delivering the Kenya that was envisioned. We probably would not be where we are if we neither had a dream, nor aggressively worked towards achieving it. Progress is the difference between doing something to improve the lot of our children or doing nothing. If my father had not thought of the future of his children and pushed himself to work towards it, we probably would have ended up like him.

Progress does not happen overnight – and neither will Kenya’s economic transformation. The vision had to be planned for, thought about, borne, and steadfastly implemented. So much has been achieved over the last ten years, and a lot more still remains to be done.

Most importantly, we need to cultivate local industry by fixing its challenges and ensuring that it is big enough to feed and look after all Kenyans by creating job opportunities for them. We need to bring back the cobblers and tailors who previously dotted the streets to fix shoes and clothes. This change can only happen if people are effectively doing something that cumulatively adds up to national progress.

Thankfully, the foundation to facilitate an economic take off has been laid over the last ten years of implementing Vision 2030. We are inching closer to delivering this Kenya that we want to our children.

Manu Chandaria, industrialist.