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MAL42 / 21 ISSUE
On Debt Fatigue
A curious incidence took place a couple of months ago sparked by a government communiqué that Kenya had requested for yet another loan this time from the IMF . It was big news partly because Kenya had for a while shifted its debt portfolio to Eastern lenders but were now reverting to the West .
It was also partly big news because IMF had characteristically issued a raft of conditions that the government would have to accept in order to access the loan and the conditions were reminiscent of the dreaded SAPs that were the bane of many developing countries in the eighties .
What was really big news though was what a legion of social media warriors , the indefatigable Kenyans on Twitter ( KOT ), did . They stormed the IMF portal with a deluge of messages that threatened to collapse the portal and IMF had to temporarily close the portal .
The KOT were sending a clear message to IMF that it was the thieving leaders of the government that wanted the loan but the Kenyan citizens did not want the loan . Their beef being that loans are taken by the government , stolen by a well-oiled cartel but the citizens eventually pay the loan .
The KOT were decrying the seemingly insatiable appetite for loans that the Kenya government had yet there was very little to show for the huge loans that the government had taken . Every loan that the government takes is accompanied by a major scandal that is never prosecuted .
Social media had been awash with stories about the heinous Chinese strategy of trapping developing countries with cheap loans with no questions asked with the apparent end-game of taking over the ownership and control of vital infrastructural institutions in the indebted countries .
The KOT were against the economic re-colonization of Kenya by any nation or institution that would compromise the freedom of Kenyans in any way . The KOT made reference to recent projects that they felt supported their stand on the IMF loan or any other loan .
They were incensed by the ridiculously overpriced SGR project that they claimed went nowhere . A railway line that does not even reach a border , as was originally intended , cannot in their view be economically viable or sustainable .
A railway line that does not have a practical vision of serving the various landlocked neighbors cannot claim to be a strategic national project and to have a line that terminates in the middle of nowhere is proof that it was launched as a vehicle to siphon money not to make money .
What is the logic of a Lamu Port when the whole of the grand LAPSSET project seems to have fizzled out after money was loaned to establish the transport corridor ? As soon as the money got into the pockets of the grand schemers the hype died , Kenyans will still pay .
There is a white elephant of an international airport up in Isiolo that is destined to be a camel race track since they have not heard any further updates since the inflated project was completed and now