PERSEPECTIVE
Kenya Post Pandemic:
How Covid-19 Will
Change Our Country
By Walter Nyabundi
I
f you are reading this, I hope you as
well as your loved ones are healthy
and safe. I write this at a time of great
anxiety and uncertainty in our country
and across the world. The unprecedented
scale of the novel coronavirus crisis has
completely upended life as we knew it.
Across the globe, economics, politics,
society and culture are being reordered
in extremely fundamental ways. Even
activities that we previously thought
mundane, such as making trips to the
supermarket, using public transport or
just exercising, have become somewhat
complicated as we try to stop the disease
from spreading by observing new norms
such as social distancing.
When will life return to normal? At this
point nobody really knows. What we can
predict with some conviction is that the
way our governments are run and the
way we conduct business will be altered
significantly forever.
The world has always experienced lasting
change at times of great crisis; this is
true of both World Wars, the Great
Depression, the Spanish Flu pandemic,
9/11 and the financial crisis of 2008.
These pivotal moments in history while
calamitous, have always forced mankind to
adapt, evolve, innovate and compromise,
often for the greater good.
World War 1 and 2 for instance ultimately
laid the foundation for the founding of the
European Union. The financial crisis of
2008 on the other hand led to the passing
of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform
Act by the United Stated Congress to
prevent banks from taking on too much
risk which is what had precipitated the
subprime mortgage crisis.
The coronavirus crisis, as harrowing as it
is, therefore presents an opportunity for
It goes without saying, that had the pub-
lic transport sector been wholly owned
and regulated by the Government, imple-
menting these guidelines would have been
much easier. A direct consequence of this
crisis is that there are likely to be root
and branch reforms in the public trans-
port sector that will see the National and
County governments assume more direct
control.
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the world to reflect and reset as it were.
Already, we are beginning to see a number
of changes. For instance, in the West
discourse around matters such as Universal
Basic Income are becoming more intense.
We are also witnessing the return of big
government even in jurisdictions that have
tried to limit it.
The prevailing fear is that this crisis has
given governments the excuse to display
increasingly authoritarian tendencies.
Whether this will be temporary or
permanent remains to be seen. The signs
from places like China, the Philippines and
Hungary which were already experiencing
notable democratic deficits are however
not encouraging.
In Kenya, we can posit that some of the
expected changes are likely to take the
following form:
Formalising the Informal
Economy
The country’s informal sector is very
much in evidence in Kenya’s rural and
urban centres. Though there are no
accurate statistics on how many people
actually work in the informal economy,
it is estimated that by 2018 the sector
accounted for close to 85 percent of the
country’s total employment. This group is
particularly vulnerable to the economic
impact of Covid-19.
We are likely to see an attempt by policy
makers in the short and long term to create
more formal employment opportunities
for the country’s workers in addition to
offering more social protection to those