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KEPSA and the Speakers Roundtable

From time to time I’ve written here about the relationship between the public and private sectors, going back to when I first started being deeply engaged in this interface in the 1990s. My last article on this was a year ago, when we celebrated the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Kenya Private Sector Alliance, KEPSA, the umbrella body of the private sector. What’s prompted this one was last month’s KEPSA Speaker’s Roundtable with the National Assembly, to address policy bottlenecks and fast-track economic delivery.

Such high-level events are always very helpful, not just for the formal agreements reached, but for the quiet behind-the-scenes relationship and trust building, and the mutual influencing. As opposed to taking a confrontational approach, KEPSA has always been calmer and more patient – what I would call more mature, more emotionally intelligent. Yes, they speak truth to power, but not noisily, and combine public campaigns with closed-door advocacy.

KEPSA and its two million direct and indirect constituent business and professional member organisations have certainly not been spectators in law-making, as they actively engage with the three arms of government through the now well-established public-private dialogue platforms. What we must accept, however, is that given membership is voluntary for many of KEPSA’s member organisations, a good part of the private sector is outside of this formal ecosystem.

What we see is that businesses that wish to see a level playing field which creates an enabling and meritocratic environment are the ones likely to join such associations, while for many others this is the opposite of what they seek. We have a whole spectrum, from the responsible players who engage constructively with each other, with the government and other partners, to the ones who opt to operate on their own, wheeling and dealing as they defy ethical behaviour. Plus so many in between, swinging one way or another.

Whether you are in government, in civil society, or just an ordinary citizen, it’s good to acknowledge the evolution of the private sector, from just profit-driven to today’s more sustainability-focused, with “profits, planet and people” at the heart of business strategies, and treating all stakeholders fairly. Indeed, KEPSA sets standards for its members in such areas.

What I particularly liked about the outcome of the recent Speakers Roundtable is that KEPSA and the National Assembly will meet quarterly to review progress on what was agreed. And that they will look beyond the electoral cycle and beyond Vision 2030. This will ensure transparency and accountability in the joint efforts to translate “Policy to Practice” and deliver through business and government partnership, the theme of the roundtable. The event was structured to facilitate sector-specific discussions involving departmental committees on Energy, Health, Communication, Information and Innovation, Trade, Regional Integration, and Finance and National Planning.

So, what sort of things were agreed upon? First, cross-cutting issues such as driving national competitiveness; exploring inward-focused opportunities and alternative markets within Africa to enhance regional economic integration and resilience; developing adaptive, responsive policies and legislation; and a tripartite meeting between the private sector, parliament, and he judiciary to ensure alignment of the legislative and judicial systems to support a conducive business environment.

Then, on the state of the economy, to promote innovative investment channels for diaspora remittances; have the banking sector develop and implement a transparent, standardised credit pricing model; further explore and restructure Public Private Partnerships to unlock fiscal resources, accelerate infrastructure and service delivery, and alleviate budgetary and public debt service pressures on the national exchequer; address fiscal crowding-out by the public sector and curb overreach by the government agencies; and prioritise export-led economic expansion.

On the cost of doing business, to transition to precise, geo-referenced boundaries for all land parcels to enhance tenure security, reduce disputes and streamline administrative processes; continue to advocate for the implementation of a one-stop-shop mechanism for land administration; explore an energy tariff structure exclusive to telecommunications operators; involve the private sector in the digital infrastructure; and explore proposals around formulation of an infrastructure to regulate data generation, sharing and monetisation.

Finally, on productivity, the digital economy and the social market economy, to collaborate in the enhancement of a structured and evidence-based gig economy; commit to intensifying and diversifying programmes and policy coherence that foster specialised, market-relevant skills among the youth, with deliberate integration of innovation in ICT to drive employability, entrepreneurship and digital transformation.

KEPSA Chairperson Jas Bedi noted that real progress from this engagement will be measured by how many jobs are created, how affordable energy becomes, how competitive exports are, and how secure Kenya’s fiscal footing remains. The fundamentals of Kenya’s economy are improving, he stated, with inflation under control, growth returning, and digital adoption accelerating. Together with parliament and government, he was confident that we could turn this moment of recovery into a decade of sustainable, inclusive growth.

 

 

 

Intergenerational Conversations

The National Cohesion and Integration Commission, NCIC, was established following the post-election violence of 2008 as one of the commissions that would help re-establish sobriety in Kenyan society. It has been going about its work ever since, with the media mainly expecting it to go after those spouting hate speech. However NCIC was not given prosecutorial powers, and so they were often described as “toothless bulldogs” – despite them working closely with other institutions that did possess such powers. Their budgets have also been limited.

The media has by and large ignored NCIC’s other activities, ones that have been occupying most of its time. These included peace-building mediation in different parts of the country, and five years ago I wrote an article about how they went about it. “They collaborated with other agencies,” I wrote then, “benefitting from their expertise and their networks; held public barazas; organised work projects bringing youth together; and through all this started developing a culture of peace rather than of conflict. As a result of their mediation expertise progress has been made, and without needing to resort to judicial intervention.”

More recently, inter-generational issues have emerged as a serious source of conflict, and so NCIC decided to apply its skills and experience to hosting meetings that brought together members of different generations, as well as both genders and various sectors of the local communities in which these town hall meetings were held. They held them where conflict issues specific to those communities were evident, in Marsabit, Isiolo, Nairobi, Taita Taveta, Kisumu, Busia and Kilifi.

They called these meetings Intergenerational Conversations, a really nice term, as it speaks of listening as much as speaking, and this is in a friendly atmosphere. NCIC applied its mediation expertise to facilitate a coming together between the different elements present.

In the selected counties, where interethnic tensions and historical marginalisation have strained community relations, the need for cross-generational dialogue was particularly pressing. Intergenerational and interethnic mistrust have continued to fuel misunderstanding, polarisation and vulnerability to manipulation by extremist actors. And when youth – especially Gen Z – feel alienated and unheard, they become more susceptible to recruitment into violent networks and misinformation campaigns.

Conversely, when they are meaningfully engaged and connected to mentors, elders and institutions, they become powerful agents of peace and resilience. The county-level Intergenerational Conversations bridged these generational divides and created a platform where all voices were valued. By bringing together the experiences of elders, the innovation and energy of youth, and the influence of women and local leaders, the conversations facilitated mutual understanding, addressed generational grievances, and fostered a shared vision for peaceful coexistence.

In Isiolo, for instance, the forum generated several recommendations and achievements, including calls for increased youth representation in governance, review of public participation laws, and strengthened mentorship programmes to bridge generational gaps. It fostered peace, unity and social cohesion by encouraging dialogue and understanding across age-groups. A key outcome was the recognition that elders provide wisdom, while youth bring energy and innovation, helping dismantle the “us versus them” mentality and replacing it with a shared vision of cooperation.

NCIC followed up with podcasts where diverse voices from across Kenya were heard to engage in honest, reflective, positive and forward-looking discussions on governance, leadership and political culture.

The first episode, “Wisdom in Transit”, explores how values, ethics and lessons on leadership are passed across generations. “New Guards” highlights emerging youth leaders and their role in reshaping Kenya’s governance culture. “Old Wisdom: Bridging the Ages” examines how traditional knowledge and modern governance can coexist to promote cohesion. “Political Decency in Action” focuses on civility and integrity in political engagement, while “Government Without Borders” discusses collaboration across counties, institutions, and communities within a devolved governance system. The sixth episode, “The Cost of Indecency,” analyses how intolerance, corruption and disrespect weaken democracy and development. “Youth Agenda: The Future of Governance” centres on the aspirations of young people and their inclusion in leadership, and the final episode, “A Shared Vision”, calls for collective action toward a just, decent and unified Kenya.

Given an availability of budgets, NCIC would host many more town halls, create and distribute more podcasts, and follow up on earlier engagements. Indeed I am encouraged to see that the recently appointed NCIC CEO/Secretary, Dr Daniel Mutegi, has a serious background in monitoring and evaluation, including through the World Bank, and he has been a member of the Vision2030 Secretariat. All this means he will be focusing on the long-term impact of such initiatives in a robust manner.

And as Rev Dr Sam Kobia reaches the end of his term as chairman of NCIC, we can look back on all this “toothless bulldog” has accomplished to promote cohesion and integration, much of it quietly and behind the scenes, as such activity is at its most effective. Well done, Dr Kobia.

So see NCIC’s Intergenerational Conversations as role models for how to bring Kenyans together, within their communities and higher up to the national level.

Power of a Positive No

I’ve been reading The Power of a Positive No: Save the Deal Save the Relationship – and Still Say No by William Ury, the author of the earlier bestseller, Getting to Yes. Ury is an experienced mediator, at levels from the corporate to the national, and he is a co-founder of the Harvard Law School Negotiation Program. I found his writing very helpful… just as I do the related Disagreeing Well initiative at University College London, where I was an undergraduate.

Ury’s three-step method for saying a Positive No shows us how to assert and defend our key interests by first, exercising our power; then how to make our No firm and strong; how to resist the other side’s aggression and manipulation; and how to do all this while still getting to Yes and protecting our relationship. The Positive No helps us get to the right Yes, the one that truly serves our interests.

When he asks participants in his executive seminars why they find it challenging to say No, the commonest answers he receives are: “I don’t want to lose the deal”; “I don’t want to spoil the relationship”; I’m afraid of what they might do to me in retaliation”; “I’ll lose my job”; and “I feel guilty – I don’t want to hurt them”.

In reply, Ury gets us to avoid what he calls “the three-A trap”: Accommodation (saying Yes when we want to say No); Attack (saying No poorly); and Avoidance (saying nothing at all), none of which works. Instead, we should “go to the balcony” as he puts it, to adopt a detached state of mind that enables you – as I would put it – to separate how you feel from how you behave.

By sheer coincidence, as I was reading through the book I came across a speech by Obama on my phone that fully reflected Ury’s thinking. Who knows, it may be thanks to Obama’s own Harvard connections. It’s about how the Indian Minister of External Affairs Dr S Jaishankar so offended Trump when he was in his first term by refusing to simply go along with his demands that India should stop buying weapons from Russia, stop doing trade deals with Iran, and generally pick America’s side in every global dispute. India was not into negotiating – they would be making their own decisions. No explanations, no apologies, just making deals with whoever offered the best terms: the Positive No.

Trump took it personally and was furious, and that was the end of the good relationship. What he failed to accept was that America is no longer the super-power that it was, and India is no longer the poor, weak supplicant but a fast-growing world force with a population of 1.4 billion.

It all happened in one conversation, away from the cameras, where Trump was simply told ‘No’. The Indians now expect to be respected, and will no longer simply go along with anything that America demands, explained Obama. But Trump’s entire foreign policy is built on personal relationships. He needs world leaders to like him, to have him feel important, to seek his approval. But Jaishankar treated him as an equal, and just spoke straightforwardly.

“It’s not India that’s the problem,” Trump later said, “It’s one Indian who destroyed our relationship.” The man who dared to say No. It’s about people, about ego. Even allies had choices now, and could say No while also dealing with others. Your power doesn’t come from making others comfortable, Obama explained. You aren’t just grateful for scraps because you need them more than they need you. You know what you value, and without getting angry, you just know what you deserve. Americans now know they must treat India as an equal.

Trump reacted in similar ways to Angela Merkel of Germany, to Emmanuel Macron of France, and to Justin Trudeau of Canada, all of whom had the audacity to treat him as an equal rather than as a superior.

Now Obama told us we can apply these principles in our personal lives. Your boss who demands more work for the same salary, your client who demands the same payment for more product… But do you simply acquiesce? Sometimes relationships aren’t worth keeping, said Obama, like if they require you to accept less than you deserve. Why be silent if there is unfairness? Why compromise your values?

Successful people aren’t the ones who say yes to everything, he concluded. That’s when their character gets tested, as dignity isn’t negotiable.

So there we are, reflections on the power of No from two Harvard fellows.

Mark Carney, no populist

Some months ago, I was sitting at Mombasa airport waiting for my flight back to Nairobi when my eye caught the cover of a book someone near me was carrying. Its title was “Values”, not at all unusual, but the word was printed upside down, and I wondered why. I asked the gentleman with the book to let me see it more closely, and read that it was “An Economist’s Guide to Everything That Matters”, published in 2021. And who was the author? Mark Carney, the former Governor of the Central Banks of Canada and England… and now the Prime Minister of Canada. I immediately bought a copy of the book.

Why was the word upside down? Because Carney was so concerned about the poor values we are living with these days, and this made his point. His 456-page book opens with his 10-page preface, and just on the first page of that we really get to know the man. He writes about how privileged he was to benefit from all the advantages he did, including with his elite education at Harvard and Oxford. He was with Goldman Sachs for 17 years, and then – and he goes out of his way to say it – it made him very humble as he tried to build a better world for all, while turning challenges into opportunities.

On to the second page, where he tells us he wrote the book because radical changes are needed in the world to overcome the crisis of values – this thanks to the inequalities we are witnessing. It’s all to do with inequalities of wealth, education and health opportunities, with climate change, and with too many valuing the present over the future.

Let me now jump to page nine, where he summarises that the success of an economy is contingent on a set of immutable, fundamental, common values and beliefs, which he lists as:

  • dynamism – to help create solutions that channel human creativity
  • resilience – to make it easier to bounce back from the shocks while protecting the most vulnerable in society
  • sustainability – with long-term perspectives that align incentives across generations
  • fairness – particularly in markets to sustain their legitimacy
  • responsibility – so that individuals feel accountable for their actions
  • solidarity – whereby citizens recognise their obligations to each other and share a sense of community and society
  • • humility – to recognise the limits of our knowledge, understanding and power so that we can act as custodians seeking to improve the common good.

Carney has a whole chapter on leadership, which he describes as key, but not in the heroic form of “follow me”. He writes: “In my experience, behavioural and participative forms of leadership underscore the extent to which leadership is less about what leaders achieve themselves and more about both the sense of purpose they impart to their colleagues and the actions they catalyse in pursuit of that objective”.

For him, they must assess the landscape to determine how their organisation can plan the future: “Ambitious leadership means helping to shape the future rather than just reacting to it.” Good leaders combine personal humility, self-knowledge and the ability to learn. This means “admitting mistakes, seeking and accepting feedback and sharing the lessons.

In school but not learning

In my article today I’m going to share with you how Prof. Olubayi Olubayi cried on my shoulder about the terribly low pass rate for the Kenya National Examinations Council’s (KNEC’s) Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations. It’s been bothering him for a long time, and he has now shown me the evidence which, with his academic scrupulousness, he has been compiling.

The KCSE pass mark is C+, which is usually less than 50% of the score in a subject. Prof Olubayi has been studying the KNEC website and media reports on the issue, and here’s the sad reality: since 2016, 80% of Kenyan children fail their KCSE after twelve years of schooling, meaning only two out of ten students pass. This with the exception of 2017 and 2018, when only one out of ten passed.

“Imagine a business that manufactures products,” Prof Olubayi lamented, “but where only two out of ten are good enough to sell. How long would such a business last?” That is the situation in Kenya, despite our hugely expensive public education system. The Government spends approximately 20% of its annual budget on this broken system, with the amount allocated for 2023/2024 being Shs.628 billion.

He went on to explain that there are many reasons for this mass failure – while adding that solutions do exist. Kenya has achieved near universal school attendance, but not universal learning, which reminded me of how the difference between diversity and inclusiveness has been described: diversity shows an invitation to the party, while inclusiveness sees you being invited to dance.

Prof. Olubayi concluded that the country is funding failure, where the victims are the majority of children, inevitably resulting in lowered development potential for the country.

If you ask Kenyans, whether well-educated professionals or ordinary citizens, to guess the pass rate for KCSE – as Prof Olubayi has been consistently doing – most suggest 70% or 80%. But as we see, the reality is very different. Sadly, most of the 20% who pass went to private primary schools or academies for their foundation primary schooling of Grades 1 to 3. Almost all the children of the truly poor, who cannot afford private primary schools, simply fail after attending school for twelve years. They attend, but they do not learn.

On January 20th 2023, the Nation ran the headline “The majority of 2022 KCSE students get low grades”. It was referring to the results that had just been officially announced by the CS Education, who stated that only 173,345 out of the 881,416 students who’d sat the Grade 12 (Form Four) national examination had passed with a C+ or above. This translates to a 20% pass rate, where C+ is the minimum Grade 12 national examination score that qualifies one to study for a degree programme at a university.

The low pass rate of only 22% for 2023 is the highest in the last 8 years. By comparison, in Mauritius – which has the best education system in Africa – the pass rate for the school certificate examination in 2022 was 78%. The pass rate in Malaysia is 55%. The percentage of students passing GCSE in the UK with a grade of C or higher was 73%, and those attaining a grade of A or A+ was 26% – which is higher than those passing with a C+ or higher in Kenya. In France, the pass rate for the baccalaureate is usually around 80%.

It is for these reasons that in 2012 Prof Olubayi created Kiwimbi, an NGO learning centre focused on interventions to raise the pass rates in primary and secondary schools in Kenya.

There they use the “Teach at the Right Level” (TaRL) method of the Indian NGO Pratham, in combination with “spaced-repetition”, a learning technique typically performed with flashcards, and they are obtaining excellent results. In the 2023 KCPE results one of the primary schools next to Kiwimbi in Amagoro had more than half the students score more than 300 points – a performance as good as that of our best private primary schools. The same methods are being deployed elsewhere in rural western Kenya, with similarly encouraging results in secondary schools.

Other interventions include persuading principals of selected boarding schools to respect the science of learning by allowing students to sleep for 8 hours, removing calculators, promoting general reading, and tutoring students in small groups.

Learn more about how kiwimbi operates and the impact it has been achieving by going to their website, www.kiwimbi.org. And beyond just browsing it, how can you help it to go to scale in its mission of transforming our pass rates? Surely together we can do so much better.

From Jomo to Uhuru, Rao’s Nine Lives

Like Joe Wanjui and Manu Chandaria, about whom I have written recently, I got to know Sharad Rao through Rotary. But having recently read his autobiography, From Jomo to Uhuru, Rao’s Nine Lives – Reminiscences of the Power, Courage and Intrigues that Shaped Kenya’s Post-Colonial History, I now know him very much better.

Being with Rao one appreciates his integrity and frankness, calling a spade a spade, plus his calmness and clarity of thinking, his wonderful memory and his gentle humour – such powerful contributors to his extraordinary legal career. All this is so clearly reflected in his memoir, a follow up to his earlier book, Indian Dukawallas – Their Contribution to the Political and Economic Development of Kenya, which was published in 2016.

His autobiography was launched in June of this year, and in it Rao takes us from his origins through his education and his legal life to the community projects that now occupy his time in his late eighties. Two themes within the book stood out for me: the racism of the colonialists vis-à-vis both Asians and Africans, and what it takes for judges to perform honourably.

Let me start with the racism, and I can’t resist sharing with you this awful quote in the book from Charles Eliot, the colonial administrator who initiated the policy of white supremacy here: “The average Englishman tolerates a black man who admits his inferiority, and even those who show a good fight and give in, but he cannot tolerate dark colour combined with an intelligence in any way equal to his own.”

Rao also quotes Colonel Grogan as having proclaimed “We Europeans have to go on ruling this country and rule it with iron discipline.” Don’t mention Grogan in my house, as my wife Evelyn Mungai’s great grandmother Wanjiru had her land where the Norfolk Hotel now stands grabbed by this awful fellow.

Prejudice against Asians continued after Kenya became decolonised, and he tells us numerous stories of how he and others became victims of such exclusion.

Let me now turn to the second theme that struck me. In a chapter on his chairmanship of the Judges and Magistrates Vetting Board in 2011 we learn so much about what it takes to be a high performing judge. For as he and his colleagues sat in judgement on the extent to which the behaviour of the judges was consistent with the recently passed 2010 Constitution, they had to reflect deeply on who should qualify to continue serving on the bench and who should step down.

Their purpose, he writes, was “to remove the taint of the judiciary as being corrupt, unduly favourable to those in power, obsessed with technicalities, incapable of dealing with cases with requisite promptness, and generally unable or unwilling to administer justice in an appropriate manner.” He writes about what good and bad behaviour entails, and it occurred to me that the best way of summing it all up would be to say they must be highly emotionally intelligent.

Among Rao’s many wonderfully narrated stories, I want to pick out the one in 1974 where President Kenyatta announced that from then on Presidents of all societies, associations and clubs should be called Chairman and not President – as Kenya had only one President, himself. This happened shortly before Rao was due to visit China, and he told then Attorney General Charles Njonjo that Chairman Mao would take offence if he also called himself Chairman. He was given exemption, so for the two weeks he was in China Kenya had two Presidents. A good example of Rao’s easy humour.

For many years thereafter the edict was adhered to, till one day at a Rotary Conference where Kijana Wamalwa was the Guest of Honour and I was giving the vote of thanks I asked him whether Rotary Chairmen could now again be allowed to be called Presidents, as they were everywhere else in the world. “What’s in a name?” he mumbled, and I said I took it this was an assent. From then on the title “President” was again no longer restricted to State House.

I read that in 1957, while studying law in London, Rao lived in Hampstead – which is where I grew up. What stage was I at in 1957? I had just entered my high school years. Oh well, now we are both in our third age, with so many ups and downs in our lives to look back on. I have yet to do so in the form of a book, but so good that Rao has.

Taming the abuse of power

Readers of this column will have seen previous articles of mine in which I have written about Leaders Circles I have facilitated with my colleague Frank Kretzschmar. The last one was about sustainability, and the theme of our most recent one was “How we deal with power: from victim to perpetrator to victim”.

We’ve all heard that “information is power”, and as Frank and I looked up other suitable quotes before our story-telling gathering we came across some useful provocations, including “Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best,” from doomsday merchant Edward Abbe; and, also pessimistically, William Gaddis shared that “Power doesn’t corrupt people, people corrupt power.”

More upliftingly, Lao Tzu told us that “Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.” And Alice Walker reminded us that “the most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”

How power is wielded lies at the centre of whether things work or don’t work, we briefed our participants as we invited them to the event. Power itself is values-neutral. So at what point does it become good or bad? Where and how does abuse begin?

Who determines that power was indeed abused? How is it even possible that power does get abused? Does it happen when moral concepts are excluded from the exercising of power? When corruption is used to distort rules of the game that had been based on a broad consensus? When individual powerful people lose all sense of self-awareness and proportion?

We are seeing that too many neurotics and egocentrics are key players in the power game. And as a result, we give up on essential issues out of comfort, thoughtlessness or anticipatory obedience. They then take advantage of the resulting vacuum. Are we not to blame for this?

So how do you tame the abuse of power? As leaders, you cannot do without power. How do you empower yourself and others? And how far may or must you go in order to gain (back) power and influence?

How do the exercise of power and ethical action coexist, for there are fewer and fewer fixed reference systems? Exercising power without stepping over the boundaries of individuals is not possible. But is it possible to exercise power while remaining innocent? It is undoubtedly a question of balance.

We were interested to hear where and how those who participated in our event have succeeded in keeping power in the good area, and this we certainly did. We learned about the challenge of leading volunteers, in business and professional organisations, and in service clubs like Rotary and Lions.

And we talked about the need to “decolonise” and spread decision-making from the over-influential Global North towards the Global South, including in how research funds are allocated.

We also heard stories of power abusers – from our own traffic police to Vladimir Putin – and of being the direct victims of more powerful and unconstrained players.

One spoke about the fragility of power, as evidenced in the Arab Spring (and more recently in Sri Lanka, and with Johnson in the UK); while another worried about the constraints faced by the UN Security Council in fulfilling its mission of holding the world together.

I reflected that rather than wanting to feel powerful, my expectation was and is that I can be of influence, and above all in bringing people together – as a mediator, an integrator, a connector.

I enjoy helping others to building their capacity so I can empower them, and hence delegate to them. I see the goodness of power-sharing, which requires openness and trust.

Here I am, deep into my third age, a time of life when most of us no longer expect to wield direct power (except, perhaps, in the political arena). One way in which I hope I am being of influence is through these columns.

A few weeks ago I published by 400th one, and this one marks fifteen years since by first contribution here. My sense has always been that I largely preach to the already converted, but my hope is that my readers will emerge reinforced in their views, and so promote them more boldly. I might even convert a few here and there, and who knows, perhaps enable them to become more powerful.

In closing, I urge you to exercise your power by voting next month for men and women who will wield power responsibly. Or else you will be their victims. But hey, I’m preaching to the converted.

Morality through the eyes of chief rabbi

I have been reading an amazing book by an amazing man. The title of the 2020 book is Morality – Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times and its author is Jonathan Sacks. Sacks rose to become the Chief Rabbi of Britain, and was known as one of the country’s leading public intellectuals.

He was knighted in 2005, and was later awarded a lordship. Lord Sacks died in November 2020, the year in which his last book was published. His first rabbinical appointment was at the Golders Green Synagogue in North West London, just a few miles from where I was brought up. He was appointed there in 1978, a year after I moved to Kenya, but I have since heard him speak on BBC – which was always very rewarding.

His morality book is so consistently informative and thought provoking that I felt like quoting every other sentence. In it he worries about the current unfortunate move from “We” to “I” in the West, with liberal democracy threatened by the demagoguery of populism (as personified by Trump’s election in America and the Brexit battle in Britain). Public discourse has grown toxic; family life has been breaking down, and drug abuse and depression are on the rise, particularly among youth.

The book takes us back to how morality has looked from the time of the hunter-gatherers to the philosophers of ancient Greece and through the subsequent centuries until today. His gloomy contemporary analysis relates in particular to Britain and the US, but as soon as I saw his distinctions between the “We” and the “I” I immediately thought of Ubuntu as capturing the spirit of the former and of our Kenyan scenario as reflecting too much of the latter.

Relative to those in many other African countries we Kenyans tend to be more individualistic, materialistic and aggressively competitive, and our politics reflect the same never-ending zero-sum squabbles as Sacks writes about in his world. It’s why despite him never referring to Ubuntu or to Africa more generally, so much of what he describes is as relevant for us as it is for his Western readers.

He traces today’s crisis to our loss of a strong, shared moral code and to our promotion of self-interest over the common good. We have “outsourced” morality to the market and the state, he complains, but neither is capable of showing us how to live. Sacks shows that “there is no liberty without morality and no freedom without responsibility,” arguing that we all must play our part in rebuilding a common moral foundation.

He comes down really hard on the liberal revolution of the 1960s, the “Swinging Sixties” of my youth, which championed individual freedoms over traditional values. It was the time of “free love”, the time when smoking marihuana became all the rage. For many, life was all about self-indulgence and instant gratification, about rights over responsibilities.

He also blames the deregulation of the 1980s that defined the economics of Thatcherism and Reaganomics; and the austerity policies that followed the financial crisis of 2008. All this has led to increasing inequality, with many being left behind.

Sacks shows how the “culture climate change” of migrating from “We” to “I” has seriously undermined the moral foundations that once held us together, and it is what led to many of the societal problems with which we are grappling in this 21st century.

So is there hope for a future with a stronger moral underpinning? For the late Chief Rabbi the answer, as it always has been, is to work from the bottom up, through the family and the community, through small groupings where the blight of urban and national anonymity is absent.

He recognises the higher levels of morality shown to be displayed by those who regularly attend places of worship, and by those who are active in voluntary organisations. And he emphasises the vital importance of building high-trust relationships, not least in business – the contemporary idea that one can simultaneously do well and good.

There’s some talk in Kenya about living our national values and developing a national ethos, including in the BBI. But there’s woefully little on that from our leaders. So it’s up to us, you and me. In our families, in our communities and in our workplaces; in our places of worship and where we volunteer.

Let us focus on national values in Covid-19 times

At this time of national crisis I’ve been thinking about our national values – that long list buried deep in our Constitution. For the small proportion of Kenyans who may have forgotten one or two of them (pardon my sarcasm) here they are:

  • Patriotism, national unity, the rule of law, democracy and participation of the people
  • Sharing and devolution of power
  • Human dignity, equity, social justice, inclusiveness, equality, human rights, non-discrimination and protection of the marginalised
  • Good governance, integrity, transparency and accountability sustainable development.

As I scanned the vast collection I asked myself whether what we’ve been going through has led us to live these values differently from before, and it didn’t take me long to reach a positive conclusion. At least for many of them, and in particular the bunch in the third bullet.

Certainly the government, and by no means just the government, has been concerned about protecting the marginalised, and adopting an inclusive approach to its policies – which it has been developing in partnership with the private sector and others. We have seen fine examples of respect for human rights and human dignity – with the notable exception of that terrible display of police brutality on the first evening of the 7pm curfew.

Keeping with government, we have applauded the way our elected leaders have put aside their political games to focus on the wellbeing of the citizenry. In a spirit of national unity, we are so relieved that the boisterous BBI rallies and all the money wasted on them is now being put to better use.

What a challenge it’s been for the media, who must now come up with headlines other than ones that just feature Ruto, Raila and Co. But they’ve done well, informing us and guiding us on the latest developments with the Coronavirus outbreak, enabling citizen participation.

Then, as far as national unity in the context of devolution is concerned, the national and county governments have been collaborating well together, with the frequent zero-sum games between them muted.

Kenyans have never been known for exhibiting great patriotism – except for when our athletes break the tape in New York or London or Berlin. But now we have one of our cabinet members on the global podium: Mutahi Kagwe, recognised in America’s Wall Street Journal as “Kenya’s unlikely coronavirus hero,” making us all proud of him.

Next my mind turned to the Covid-19 Emergency Response Fund, whose board consists of a distinguished group of private sector leaders who have pledged transparency and accountability as they “support the government’s efforts in the supply of medical facilities and equipment and support for vulnerable communities with their immediate needs, including food.” Plus working with professional services firms PwC, Deloitte and EY who are providing pro-bono assurance services.

See? It’s too easy to pick out examples of different levels and sectors of society doing a great job behaving in ways consistent with our national values.

The big question will be whether what we are seeing now is sustained. The last value in the list features sustainability, along with development. For sure what we are going through presents a massive national challenge to the sustainability of everything from the Big Four to public debt to tax revenue generation, while so many both for-profit and not-for-profit private entities are at risk of total collapse in the not -too-distant future.

For now though let us celebrate all the ways in which our national values have come to life at this most difficult of times. They have brought the best out of us, and it is a good moment to reflect on what it will take to prevent us regressing to those more selfish, greedy ways that already seem like long ago.

It’s all about leadership of course. In the last few weeks many of our leaders have proved to us that they are more than capable of guiding us to better places. Yet when the Coronavirus will no longer be there to draw us together, and as the 2022 elections beckon ever closer, it is us citizens who will need to insist that our leaders hold on to the higher standards they have reached, making these the new normal. Kenyans, we have shown we can. But will we?