MAL /18/17
FIRST WORD
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02 due
MAL
19/17 ISSUE
and
acknowledgement
to Marketing Africa Magazine
L
et us look at some sober facts. If Kenya is the
reputed economic giant in the region, with a paltry
population of 40 million, half of whom are not even
economically active, then we must accept the fact that
we are going to be consigned permanently to play in the
economic baby league.
The sad part is that we seem to be proud and strangely
content to be a giant in a pond but more distressing
is that we are actually ahead in this miserable race of
economic dwarfs that is made up of the many fragmented
countries in the region.
The countries that make up the hub of the East African
region and the logical extension to the region have a
combined population of an impressive 400 million people.
Now this is a force to reckon with and a potential muscle
to exploit if only we can access the market.
The fact is that all the countries in this greater region
would benefit economically if they all had access to this
massive dormant market that has proved impossible to
access due to many factors that are largely self- inflicted
and which hinder growth.
East Africa, through some post-independence era
visionaries, had made a gallant effort to create an
economic hub because they had realized way ahead of
many global players that there was economic strength in
numbers if they wanted to prosper.
At independence, we had achieved a hollow political
independence without the attendant economic
independence. The colonists had created artificial nations
based on an economic agenda that had been designed to
exploit the local resources.
The colonists had also created huge markets made up of the
many colonies dotted around the globe that they controlled.
Political power was the means to achieve economic power
and wealth creation which was the end goal.
At independence our leaders realized that the countries
were too tiny geographically to be economically viable
and they resolved to team up to create a larger entity to
enable themselves to survive. We today rue the day that
arrangement collapsed.
Politics has been the bane of our region and the collapse
of the noble economic experiment was the direct result of