Western region needs the minds to anticipate its future for self-development

Fifty seven years since Kenya and by extension the people of the former Western Province gained independence the region through incompetent elected political leadership has failed to anticipate its future and now two generations have been wasted and the third generation is headed the same destiny–being wasted. One can only anticipate his or her future, or as a region by appreciating its basic strengths and weaknesses and designing strategies to amplify, leverage its strengths and minimize its weaknesses.

What the region continues to witness is elected leaders who get elected to advance their personal interests, self-aggrandizement and who give lip service or no tangible service to empower those who elect them. Ask the elected leaders what the vital interest of the region are and they will sing about Mumias, Nzoia sugar companies, Pan Paper, the maize and sugarcane sectors, without stating how those companies and the crop farming can transform the living standards of the majority of the region’s residents without more.

Yes the elected leadership is clueless, unable to define the vital interests of the region and that’s why they can blow hot and cold on any or all the issues that touch on the region. They bend with the political winds controlled from outside their region. They sing and dance songs and dances of others in the political, economic arena unable to compose their own song and dance rooted in the region. They live for today and can’t anticipate the future.

Yes look out how many of the youth of the region have lived through their youth when they are physically and mentally at their productive best doing nothing, unemployed, underemployed and at every election cycle the elected leaders yell all manner of false promises to empower them, create jobs for them for the elections to end and the youth are quickly forgotten and left to their own devices.

Yes, since 2013 the Counties of Kakamega, Bungoma, Busia, Vihiga and Trans Nzoia have combined received close to 200 billion shillings from the national budgetary allocations on top of locally generated revenue yet no Governor from the region can point out with figures how many jobs have been created for the youth and how many have been empowered to earn a decent living from self employment?

Yes, the transformation of the people must remain priority number one 24/7 and 365 days a year for any self-respecting visionary elected leader to uplift the region. Transformation of people is by showing the monthly income each homestead earns per month. Yes the per capita income of each resident is the only measure of whether a County government, an elected leader is delivering on his or her mandate period. It is not enough to shout this or that generic infrastructure project. Development is people first and last.

How does this region anticipate a future where the majority of its adult men and women are able to earn a decent income comparable to what teachers earn or County public servants earn? To anticipate the future is to design our politics and economic architecture to serve, improve, uplift the living standards of the majority of our people.

Looking at the political landscape of the region any discerning person can only see a political class already under capture by politicians from other parts of Kenya and therefore history already primed to repeat itself in 2022 the way it has since 1963. New thinkers, new brave men and women with foresight must emerge from this region who can anticipate the future for its people and thereby enable them realize their full potential.

To anticipate the future with pride and confidence the region must elevate its aspirations, dreams, standards, goals from the ordinary to the extra ordinary and relentlessly strive and measure annually how it is moving in that direction.