[kictanet] Vision 2030: ICT and Other Sectors Converged (Day 3)

[bitange at jambo.co.ke]

From the Blackberry (forgive unintended mistakes).

Grace,
Allow me to wish everybody a prosperous 2012.  My year did not end well having lost a dear friend and mentor, Prof. Donald Woods.  I have followed the debate but I must say here that I was rather disappointed.

Mugo is one of the most accomplished Kenyan having risen to the pinnacle of both Private and Public sectors in Kenya.  I got the feeling that we treated him with kid gloves.  I did not see any question with respect to our expectation of the public in achieving the vision.  Let me elaborate what has happened in developed countries' guiding policies.

Adam Smith thought that politics and the economics are two different activities.  That economic activity happens whether you like it or not.  That is how he came up with his "invincible hand" (you cannot quite see what guides business in a capitalist society) these thoughts guided especially the Western world between 1776 and 1920.  There were many variants of this thinking.  That is how Marx thought it cannot survive.  And indeed it formented bad things such as slavery and extreme poverty.

The separation of economics and politics ended with British economist, Kynes introduction of new thinking leaning more to social democracy arguing that the role of government was to manage the economy.  That is how government intervention in business activity was introduced.  Mainly the role of government here was to make laws of market economics and let the citizen do their thing. This thinking thrived for 40 years and led to great success when new thinking close to Adam Smith's emerged.

Milton Friedman assisted by politicians Thatcher and Reagan.  Instead of treating economics as a branch of politics they went the opposite and treated politics as a branch of economics.  Deregulation set in and massive unemployment crept in.  Enterprises made money and greed of couse set in.  That is how the whole thing came crashing in 2009 and the rise of civil society's demand to occupy Wall Street.

These two competing ideologies have have shaped Western Politics.  We have for many years blindly followed the West and assumed our people understand this.  Capitalism is not bad at all.  It is the most adaptive ideology but yet the most misunderstood.  Take The case of China and Russia.  Both are under the assumption that they are opening up their economies to free market economy.  China has been successful with a regulated capitalism whereas Russia's approach only led to creation of oligarchs and millions of the poor.

Clearly in Kenya we need to define what we want.  What we expect of the government.  What we expect of the people.  The private sector is not capable of exploiting the opportunities we have.  If they were they could have invested in Energy.  If they were they could have put their money in the fledgling ICT sector.

Back to Mugo.  Given the underlying ideological theories and the fact that our peoiple are unaware, what do we expect from the people of Kenya in achieving Vision 2030?

Ndemo.  



Sent from my BlackBerry®

-----Original Message-----
From: Grace Githaiga <ggithaiga at hotmail.com>
Sender: kictanet-bounces+bitange=jambo.co.ke at lists.kictanet.or.keDate: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 20:33:52 
To: <bitange at jambo.co.ke>
Cc: <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke>
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Vision 2030: ICT and Other Sectors Converged (Day 3)

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