Kenya needs a competitiveness plan

Irrespective of who takes over the tenancy at State House after the August 9 General Election, the country is in a transition. Unlike the previous political transitions, this time around, the country’s leadership has to respond to the two years of enduring the ravages of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The impact of the pandemic was felt by everyone. And for the majority who lost their jobs, they are expecting employment. Those who took pay cuts expect better wages and the majority of the youth who are unemployed require skills for emerging jobs.

Effectively, Kenya needs a national competitiveness strategy for it to be relevant.

What do I mean when I talk about a national competitiveness strategy? Michael E. Porter in an article published in the Harvard Business Review explains that national prosperity is created and is not inherited. According to him, in a world of increasingly global competition, nations have become more, not less, important.

“As the basis of competition has shifted more and more to the creation and assimilation of knowledge, the role of the nation has grown. Competitive advantage is created and sustained through a highly localized process. But what makes it stand out is the differences in national values, culture, economic structures, institutions, and histories which contribute to competitive success,” he says.

We are not alone in designing post-pandemic responses.

The Global Competitiveness Report series paused its comparative country rankings to consider how economies should think about revival and transformation as they recover and redesign their economic systems to improve human development and environmental compatibility.

The report lays forth a roadmap for leaders to take proactive actions to integrate revolutionary policies, daring investments, and innovative initiatives.

To show how serious many countries are taking the national competitive strategy, more than 200 leaders from government, business, and civil society met in Davos recently to create a new vision, develop new standards, and implement scalable, collaborative action in four sectors: economic recovery, transformation, and growth; work, wages, and job creation; education, skills, and learning; and diversity, inclusion, equity, and social justice.

The goal was to extend the perspectives of policymakers, businesses, and the public on how to improve economic productivity and resilience by looking beyond growth alone. And all that is required especially for a developing nation such as Kenya, is to adopt the competitiveness strategy.

Several times in this column, I have said that our future competitiveness lies in skilling and reskilling our young people. This is because they are our greatest resource.

In turn, more jobs either locally or internationally will be directed to where human capital is abundant and capable of exploiting the emerging idea of a future of work that is characterised by offshoring jobs.

The continent has a working-age population that needs to be converted into a demographic dividend. Already, we are experiencing movement of talent from low- to high-wage locations.

In the recent past, Kenya has lost talent to the Middle East where the salaries of coders are higher than the local market. Internally, there is a shortage of experienced computer experts with multinationals absorbing virtually all the best programmers.

As digitalisation intensifies, more talent is required in especially artificial intelligence, data science and cybersecurity.

There is also fear that very few of our youth embrace science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). And once they are trained, they move to the diaspora.

For Kenya to grow economically and to compete with other nations for foreign direct investments, human capital and other resources, we must adopt or develop a national competitiveness strategy.