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Why post-election peace matters

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Vehicles drive around a burning roadblock during post-election violence in Naivasha, about 60 km (37 miles) west of Nairobi, January 27, 2008. PHOTO | FILE | NMG

As we move into that period of our economic cycle where, in June, business activities are being postponed until September, the impact of our ethnically-rooted electoral system and the violence it so often triggers is being compounded by the darkest of economic alignments.

In the last two weeks, the shilling has hit an all-time low. A leading international credit agency has downgraded Kenya’s rating to an above-average risk of debt default, and inflation is rising.

Amid these dark clouds, the idea is around that the government we choose can restore growth and prosperity: so is it true? What could our next government do to avert our economic slide? And, indeed, what could our current government yet do?

The answer on mitigation has everything to do with cause, and a lot of these causes are beyond our control now: either because they are external, or because they are the product of things we have already done, or didn’t do.

The big external cause is the war in Ukraine, which has seriously compounded commodity shortages. The world was already short of fertiliser, and oil prices were already moving upwards, before the war.

But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the blockade of its ports, disruption of its agriculture, and removal of its grain stores have injected a big, new hole in the world’s supplies of cooking oil, wheat, and maize, with Ukraine a top exporter of all three. That was only made worse by Russia’s own cessation of fertiliser and grain exports. Double trouble.

Without enough fertiliser, the whole world is suffering lower yields this harvest season. Triple trouble. Added to that, oil and gas prices have rocketed on the suspension and rapid reduction by many nations in energy imports from Russia. The oil prices have affected the economics of food production and every activity and its transport. Quadruple trouble.

Then we get to add Kenya’s circumstances: a continuing drought and a heavily indebted government spending much of its revenue on debt servicing. These mean lower domestic agricultural production, and scant room by the government for funding mitigation.

Something we could have done was plant more food, every one of us. It takes one to four cherry tomato plants to feed one person continuously, not so hard even outside a door. With any more space, each sweet potato plant will provide around seven full portions of sweet potato.

But I grew weary of broadcasting the urgency of planting more this season, when even my brother said, ‘it will be fine, they’re negotiating how to get the food out of Ukraine’. Well, that went well (it didn’t).

So now, with the planting season behind us, we can’t plant extra food, and the government never even suggested we should.

So we sit, enduring the rising prices, which are set to get a lot worse and move into severe shortages. We will go broke or hungry, whichever strikes first. And it no longer matters who leads us. They cannot make the rain fall, or the seeds we never planted deliver food.

Oil, likewise, is something we have scant room for manoeuvre on: we just struck a deal with Saudi Arabia for cheaper oil, and that should be cause for real congratulations in this current climate. But we have limited scope to do more to contain the soaring prices. Our hydropower is under pressure from drought, and we cannot put in more renewable energy within months.

And then there’s the government debt and our tumbling credit rating. Whatever government moves in, there is very little revenue to pay for anything.

I still say our biggest hope was a nationwide planting campaign.

But there is still just one thing we can do to reduce the woes ahead, and that is to manage a peaceful election. It isn’t nations’ actions on the other side of the world that determine that. It isn’t delivered on us, like the weather.

The one thing we could seriously do to mitigate the sheer scale of hardship ahead is to move to high-octane maximum efforts for peace. But so far, nothing on that either. I guess it’s like planting extra food. Maybe a miracle will happen.