Gross Domestic Product is the monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced in a period of time, say per year by a country. Gross Domestic Product is taken as the world’s most powerful statistical indicator of the national development and progress of a country. The more goods and services a country produces and sells the wealthier it is and more so if it exports most of its good and services. The measure of how wealthy a country and its people is discernible, readable from its Gross Domestic Product. The productivity of the people of a nation is visible from the nation’s Gross Domestic Product.
The Countries with the highest GDP as of 2016 were-The United States of Aerica (USA) 18,624,475 million US dollars, China 11,199,145 million US dollars, Japan 4,949,159 million dollars, Germany 3,447,796 million US dollars, United Kingdom 2,647,899 million US dollars. In Africa, the countries with the highest GDPs are Nigeria at number 27 worldwide with 404,653 million US dollars, Egypt with 332,791 million US dollars, South Africa at number 39 worldwide with 295,456 million US dollars, Morrocco at number 58 worldwide with 103,606 million US dollars. Sudan at number 60 with 95,584 million US dollars, Angola at 61 with 95,335 million US dollars, Ethiopia at number 66 with 72,374 million US dollars and Kenya at 68 worldwide with 70,529 million US dollars. Kenya’s economy is 264 times smaller than that of the world’s richest country’s richest, the United States of America which has the largest GDP. How is Kakamega or Bungoma County’s GDP compared with Nairobi County’s GDP? Nairobi County controls about 60% of Kenya’s GDP.
It is in the value of all goods and services produced by a County annually that its wealth is generated. West FM challenges the County governments of the Counties of Kakamega, Bungoma, Busia, Vihiga, and Trans Nzoia in 2018, either based on the government financial year or the calendar year to calibrate their Gross Domestic Products and publish the same showing the value of all goods and services produced by each of them. It is the metric of GDP that Counties will be able to demonstrate their productivity from one year to another and also know the level of wealth creation at which they stand and how they must redouble or multiply the efforts five times the endeavour of productivity so as to lift the majority of its residents out of poverty.
It is laughable for County governments and politicians to spew out generalities, rhetoric about fighting poverty without exhibiting the statistical data of productivity as contained in Gross Domestic Product. The Counties of the former Western Province must desist from glorifying poverty and entrenching the culture of handouts to the residents and focus on catalyzing and facilitating citizens’ productivity in their economic activities whether it is in Agriculture, livestock, commerce, and other sectors of the economy.
If the County governments cannot demonstrate their GDPs then we are daydreaming on the frontier of economic transformation of the lives of our people. The same concept of GDP applies to individual families, every adult person in the region. What is the value of goods and services that each able adult person generates? If it maize farming how many bags of maize do you as a farmer produce? If it is milk, how many litres? If it is a salon, how many customers do you serve each year?
We must harness the universally acknowledged tools of measuring development and progress so that we are not led to wild goose chases by elected leaders who cannot demonstrate whether they are improving the lives of their people or not. Let the County governments make public their Gross Domestic Product so that they are interrogated. We cannot grow as a region if we can’t measure our progress or lack of progress.