On a busy September afternoon in 2002, Mwai Kibaki, then the head of the official opposition party in Kenyan parliament and the chairman of the Democratic Party of Kenya, sat in his office relaxed and unhurried, ignoring signals by his aide to cut short an interview with a newspaper reporter.

Though his campaign for the presidency was gathering steam, his narrative on economic issues was not that obvious to the discerning voter who needed details.

To the ordinary voter, Kibaki was known as a brilliant and gentlemanly economist who had twice failed to win the presidency. He spoke authoritatively on national issues of the day like taming corruption and mismanagement of public corporations. His signature tune was to call on the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to tame the beast of corruption by starving president Daniel arap Moi’s regime of economic aid. He had recently mollycoddled a motley collection of 14 political parties into a coalition called the National Alliance of Kenya, which had given him the clout he need to negotiate with a group of Kanu rebels that called itself the Rainbow Coalition and was headed by Raila Odinga.

If these two camps did not unite, they faced defeat in the hands of Uhuru Kenyatta, a 42-year-old protégé of Moi, in the December election. Later that October, Kibaki would get the momentum that would steamroll him into the presidency after signing a coalition with the Rainbow team that became the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC).

That afternoon, Alfred Getonga, Kibaki’s personal assistant then, had invited me for a 20-minute chat with the “Chairman” at his offices at Parliament Building to understand his vision for the Kenyan economy. I was working for the Standard newspaper at the time as the business editor.

For a young journalist, the chat with the chairman turned out to be a confusing deviation from the traditional question-and-answer session between a reporter and a source, into questions of political economy, rural economics, and occasionally literature. Basically, he spoke of stamping out corruption in the public service, investing in the rural economy by subsidising milk and coffee farmers, restarting failed state corporations, and fixing infrastructure. All this was in generalities. The chairman cleverly sidestepped any attempts to extract details that I presumed already existed in his famed economic mind or even the party propaganda that NAK had fashioned.

The interview lasted almost two hours. I could claim I had a good conversation with a man who could one day become the president of Kenya — for he was one of the several contenders — but I did not have a story.

I never wrote a word about the interview, and I even remember an angry Getonga calling me in the middle of the night castigating me for blacking out his candidate, when the likes of the Financial Times and New York Times were falling over themselves to write about him.

On Monday, December 29, 2002, Kibaki was sworn in as Kenya’s third president sitting in a wheelchair in front hundreds of thousands of supporters at the Uhuru Park and millions watching the event on television. His 1,922-word speech — possibly the best ever he has ever made—brought tears to the eyes of many and a new sense of nationhood.

400 days to go

Now 3,455 days since that swearing in ceremony and nearly 400 days more to go from this week, and nearly $90 billion of public spending programme that his two terms will cover, how has the Kibaki presidency changed or not changed Kenya? How has the image of the country shifted in the eyes of the international community? This is a question that will both interest historians and ordinary folk struggling to understand a complex and fast changing world.

In order to answer this question, The EastAfrican chose to parse Kibaki’s presidency through a measurable metric that can allow ordinary Kenyans to judge how it has affected their lives — the change in the quality of life over the past decade. This has been made possible by the release last week of significant amounts of government information going as back to 2001 under the World Bank-funded Kenya Open Data Project on the Internet as part of the global Open Government initiative that the country aspires to join.

When Kibaki took over, recently revised economic data reveals that Kenya was starting to recover from the trough of a decade-long economic decline induced by a debilitating toll of grand corruption that sapped public finances and the resulting shocks induced by massive cuts in economic aid.

There were no decent jobs for college graduates, businesses had cut costs to the bone, including a series of massive layoffs, banks typically charged individual borrowers 30 per cent interest for a loan, the masses could not easily open a bank account, tarmac roads were impassable, and the waiting list to get a telephone connection was estimated to be in the range of 500,000 customers.

As for the quality of life, at least 56 per cent of the population was classified as living below the poverty line, which meant they earned less than $1 a day. The situation was even more critical when measured against key statistics that make up the UN Development Programme’s Human Development Index.

Kibaki’s Grand Strategy

While Kibaki’s mission was to foster a national renewal through the fight against corruption, and economic reconstruction through investment in social services and infrastructure, he was also focused on framing the emergence of a new Kenya in the context of the wider region.

In the off-the-cuff remarks after his first inaugural speech, he identified restoring Kenya’s image in the world as his third priority after promoting nation building and economic reforms.

“We as residents of East Africa, we will unite with our sister countries, which are here today to build a new Africa,” he said, “My government will continue to play a leading role in East Africa, Africa and the world. It will support and facilitate all positive efforts to resolve the conflicts in Somalia, Sudan, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and other trouble spots in Africa. Kenya continues to bear a heavy burden of these regional conflicts with hundreds of thousands of refugees in our land. As a country that has suffered two devastating terrorist attacks, we shall work closely with others to root out causes of terrorism in the world. We desire to live in a peaceful world, united by a common sense of purpose in pursuit of a safe common future.”

Clearly, with or without intending it, President Kibaki on his first day stated what academics and the foreign policy community call the Grand Strategy — a collection of plans and policies that comprise the state’s deliberate effort to harness political, military, diplomatic, and economic tools to advance that state’s national interest.

Kenya under the Kanu regime had played an important role in peace negotiations in the Sudan and Angola and at one point the country was among the biggest contributor to troops to UN peacekeeping missions around the world. But presidents Kenyatta and Moi were not big on foreign policy adventurism.

Under Kenyatta, and later Moi, Kenya had made major strategic blunders that dimmed the country’s image in pan-African politics. For instance, Kenya not only failed to grasp the strategic importance of supporting ANC in its fight against apartheid — a role Zimbabwe and Tanzania grabbed — but went ahead to support the white supremacists. Kenya under Moi watched quietly as Rwanda descended into genocide and even facilitated the escape of some of the biggest perpetrators of crimes against humanity.

It is no wonder, that after his first official state visit out of Kenya, to Uganda in July 2003, South Africa was Kibaki’s second port of call the following month, with visits to the US and Britain in October that year. He would visit Rwanda in April 2004.

However, Kenya’s diplomatic blunders continue to affect its relations with South Africa today as witnessed by the cool relations Nairobi has with the likes of Jacob Zuma and Cyril Ramaphosa, after the latter was snubbed as a negotiator between the Kibaki and Odinga camp during the 2008 political crisis. The relations with Rwanda have fared much better, with Kenya helping the country navigate the political terrain of joining the East African Community in 2006 and recently giving up the fight to have its own national become the secretary general in favour of Rwanda. Trade between the two nations has thrived.

While Moi’s foreign policy had been shaped by the destabilising effect of civil conflicts extending from the Great Lakes region to the Horn of Africa, and a decade-long isolation by a Western world order that wanted him out of power, Kibaki’s worldview on the first day saw a vast realignment shaped by economic opportunity.

This was to be achieved by courting Kenya’s neighbours in the EAC and South Africa, as witnessed by his official state visits, and the West, which meant mostly the Americans and British. These were his most enthusiastic supporters in his first year in politics. The Americans saw a key ally who would advance their national interests in their counterterrorism strategies, while the Brits wanted to cement historical economic and cultural ties.

Honeymoon, interrupted

However, the honeymoon did not last long. In the first weeks of Kibaki’s first term, his closest political advisors had sown the seeds of destruction while the president was ailing in the first month — and it is widely believed — during his first year in power. Five days after being sworn in, Kibaki announced his first. It represented a major betrayal of his coalition partners. In the final weeks before the 2002 election, the coalition had signed a power sharing agreement that promised a prime minister’s post to Odinga and a more equitable sharing of Cabinet positions. This agreement was tossed out and murmurs of betrayal started being heard. Another major strategic miscalculation was that the new president had not clearly organised a broad-based transition team and he failed to bring his coalition partners as equal players to the table earlier on.

This meant that his closest advisors (private businessmen from his Kikuyu community) who helped him pick the first Cabinet — composed mainly of outsiders — had little knowledge of how the government ran and had misread the mood of the country to mean that the electoral landslide for the coalition meant a mandate for Kibaki to rule unilaterally. In its first month in power — for current head of civil service and Secretary to the Cabinet Francis Muthaura started on the job at the beginning of February — the government was in disarray.

Cabinet ministers had opened wars on many fronts trying to upend Kanu’s well-oiled corruption machinery. And corruption did fight back. This would become clear a year later when the media reported that the men who whispered in Kibaki’s years had inherited a monstrous security procurement scandal now known as the Anglo Leasing saga that had been marinating for six years under the Moi regime. Anglo Leasing spoilt the mood of Kenyans, who now favoured the Odinga faction in the NARC coalition, and foreign governments such as the UK — which was most vocal; and the US —which would have cut links, but was more worried about its security interests.

The significance of Anglo Leasing in defining the narrative of the Kibaki presidency lingers to this day. While the new president had promised a bright future where the CEO of Kenya Inc. would spend his days signing deals with foreign multinationals rushing to open local subsidiaries, local middle-aged businessmen chasing deals in the region, and happy schoolchildren enjoying a good education and free lunches, the reality turned out to be different. The opposition, the media and diplomats would paint a meta-narrative of an ineffective president who was unwilling to punish his powerful-and-corrupt political friends.

It did not help that the seemingly growing stockmarket and economy only widened the gap between the rich and poor, who were constantly fed on a media image of a raving kleptocracy gone amok. This image led to the biggest failure of his first term — his inability to deliver a new Constitution not in the first 100 days in power as he had promised, but in the first two and half years in power after he lost the first referendum to change the supreme law of the land in May 2005. He dissolved NARC the day after he lost the referendum, fired Odinga and his men and brought in a government of national unity. Thus began the second chapter of Kibaki’s presidency, which would end up with his controversial re-election and a political disaster.

The economic man

However, if one were to look only at Kibaki’s political failings, one would miss an important element of his presidency that is evolving, but which will be appreciated many years after he leaves power. That yes, there have been lots of political problems, but his years in power have been marked by remarkable economic and social progress compared with Moi’s last decade in power.

To put it in perspective, at an average exchange rate, in 2002, public spending was in the range of $3.6 billion, in 2011 it ranges at $12.5 billion. This massive growth in public expenditure has largely been fund by increased tax collection as the economy has grown and improved collection rates. Kibaki’s first economic plan also ushered in an era of low interest rates, which coupled with the government’s decision to leave the private sector to thrive allowed businesses to increase domestic investment and hiring. The growth in public spending was also financed by heavy public borrowing — underwritten by a growing economy — that saw public debt double from $8.5 billion in 2002 to $16.4 billion in 2011. An expanding economy was largely financed by a huge trade deficit and large remittances and capital inflows kept the balance of payments in the black.

When the new regime was elected, a key campaign platform was free primary schooling and creation of at least 500,000 jobs annually. Statistics from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics show that the promise has largely been met, with 70 per cent of the jobs coming from the informal sector. However, this achievement pales in comparison with the scale of unemployment in the country, which needs at least one million jobs a year to make a dent.

The government has come under heavy criticism over the failure of the benefits of growth to trickle down to lower income groups, leaving household incomes to lag far behind the rate of inflation and the cost of living.

A recent UNDP report ranked Kenya among the most unequal societies in the world, indicating that the steady growth that the country realised in the past five years has done little to bridge the yawning gap between the rich and the poor. The average annual wage per worker has shot up 33.9 per cent over the past five years. Ordinarily, such a level of income growth should have left households with more disposable income and stimulated consumer markets’ growth but high inflationary pressure that almost tripled from 11.9 per cent in 2005 to 29.3 per cent late in 2009 eroded much of the public’s purchasing power.

With inflation having climbed for seven months now, this has ignited the old debate as to whether the recent economic growth has had any impact on Kenya’s proverbial mountain of poverty that has left more than half of the population in the bottom income band. It should also temper recent enthusiasm over Kenya’s economic prospects, which the analysts see as promising but fraught with downside risks.

Towards social progress

While economic growth has taken too long to trickle to the bottom, one way of judging Kibaki’s presidency is looking at social progress in health, education, and general quality of life. The Kenyan population suffers one of the biggest disease burdens in the world, mostly from malaria, respiratory diseases and HIV/Aids. The biggest killer diseases in Kenya are preventable either through proper sanitation, drainage or the use of bed nets.

In 1998, only 44 per cent of Kenyans had access to safe drinking water. A third of the rural population, and 87 per cent of urban dwellers could get a clean glass of water; a decade later in 2008, the number had risen to 59 per cent. 

The 2009 census data showed that the pit latrine is the most common human waste disposal method in Kenya (69.6 per cent of households mainly use a pit latrine). Out of 47 counties, only one county—Nairobi—uses a main sewer line as the major sanitation facility (47.7 per cent of Nairobi households use the main sewer line). Seven counties use the bush as their main disposal method, mostly in arid and semi-arid Kenya, such as Turkana, Samburu, West Pokot, Marsabit, Tana River, Narok and Wajir. The significance of this data comes from the fact that half the number of illness reported in Kenya can be traced to unsafe water and poor sanitation.

One of the areas where Kenya has seen some progress is in lowering the number of children and mothers who die at birth in the past decade. In 1990, out of a sample 1,000 babies born, 64 or 6.4 per cent would die before their first birthday, 100 would die before the age of 5. However, in 2009, child deaths before first birthday had fallen to 55 deaths per 1,000 births and 84 would see their fifth births.

Kenya seems to have done a good job in advancing the quality of life in the past decade, but it still lags behind the major achievements by Rwanda and Tanzania. For instance, Kenya has seen full immunisation coverage for children under one year grow from 47 per cent in 2002 to 83 per cent last year, an indicator more children are now protected from killer diseases such as TB, polio and measles. However, Tanzania and Rwanda have over 90 per cent coverage. The region is also racing ahead in the fight against malaria, with Rwanda achieving full coverage of the population sleeping under a sleeping net.

When he came to power in 2003, President Kibaki promised to roll out free learning both in primary and secondary schools, the two programmes that have over the years found themselves in the middle of a clash between public policy and politics.

Enrolment in primary schools has climbed from six million in 2002 to 9.3 million last year, an indicator the free primary school education programme has attracted more children to school, although one million children are still said to be out of school.

The subsidised secondary education introduced three years ago has helped push enrolment from 882,000 in 2003 to 1.7 million last year.

The introduction of the twin social welfare plans was touted as the most effective social equalisation programme, opening the doors for children from poor backgrounds to attain basic education and giving them a chance to scale the career ladder.

While the programmes have proven successful by raising enrolment, their effectiveness seems to be running into headwinds, especially at the secondary school level, where the main beneficiaries are children from well-to-do families. A study by Uwezo, a local education think tank, on the status of Kenya’s primary education shows a child from a Kenyan wealthy family is twice as likely to perform better in school and land a good job than one from a poor household as parents can afford better incentives. This highlights the contribution of the education system to the widening gap between the rich and the poor.

Foreign policy adventurism

As the final chapter closes on Kibaki, he is increasingly cultivating an image of a statesman with wide interests in foreign policy, namely securing Kenya’s economic and security interests in the region. He is pushing for the world to pay more attention to Somalia and South Sudan. He has scolded Eritrea, which is accused of financing Al Shabaab; he wants to open trade links with Ethiopia and South Sudan and deepen security co-operation.

Since January, Kibaki has hosted at least four presidents from Africa and Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss issues ranging from trade to security in the region.

In March, he met Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo to discuss a “significant amount of gold,” estimated to be worth $113 million, smuggled into Kenya from eastern Congo. Two weeks ago, he hosted the German Chancellor Angela Merkel as Europe’s biggest economy sought the support of African countries in bid to get a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, while also seeking to secure sources of energy. President Kibaki invited German investors to take up huge lucrative infrastructure projects such as the construction of the Lamu Port and the Lamu-Ethiopia-South Sudan rail, road and pipeline link.

“Initially, the president looked like an inward leader but of late he is showing more impetus on regional affairs, perhaps with an eye to leaving a holistic legacy that will have implications both in Nairobi and the EAC region,” said Adams Oloo, who teaches political science at the University of Nairobi.

“Since the referendum last year, we are seeing Kibaki becoming more visible both in the region and also taking control of national affairs. However, I am not convinced he will be so enthusiastic about playing the regional role after he retires,” said Dr Lukoye Atwoli, a political analyst. “It seems it is his minders who are pushing him into regional visibility for political leverage,” he added.

The president, analysts said, is keen to turn negative economic data such as surging inflation, poverty and joblessness to his advantage as his tenure enters the final stretch. He seems to have learnt harsh political lessons along the way that saw him choose popular causes that are in line with mood of the country, such as his support for the new Constitution and allowing due process to follow its course in appointment of key officers in the judiciary.

However, the biggest challenge to his legacy as he leaves office will be whether he delivers a free, fair and peaceful August 2012 presidential and general election.

Additional reporting by Christine Mungai and Mwaura Kimani