[kictanet] A good piece by Dr. Bitange Ndemo

[Adam Nelson]

The first sentence does not lead to the second and third:

"We cannot have high unemployment, and at the same time import clothes from
Sri Lanka or mitumba, when we can grow cotton and make our clothes.  We
must defy economic explanations on what works and what does not work.  If
we deployed thousands of youth digitizing land records, we would reduce
caseloads in courts, become more efficient, and create more wealth to grow
our economy."

Kenya should go towards counter-cyclical employment of youth doing
productive infrastructure work: being teachers, building railroads,
digitizing land records, etc...

However, you can't forget Adam Smith who talked extensively of Comparative
Advantage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage).  Sri Lanka
(or really Bangladesh) has a far more economical solution for producing
cotton clothing than Kenya has.  This mostly has to do with the port of
Mombassa being a stranglehold and the fact that a 40M person economy
(Kenya) doesn't have the same economy of scale as a billion person economy
(a guess at the number of people a Bangladeshi factory can export to
easily).

Kenya is a small country and a small economy and if it wants to bring in
more money and reduce unemployment, the solution is around creating an
amazingly well-educated population and doing more knowledge work - not
producing more clothing.

--
Kili.io - OpenStack for Africa: kili.io
Musings: twitter.com/varud <https://twitter.com/varud>
About Adam: www.linkedin.com/in/adamcnelson


On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 9:21 PM, Kivuva <Kivuva at transworldafrica.com> wrote:

> Dr. Ndemo has struck a cord that has been played in this list
> countless times before. I  remember him saying in another thread "you
> cannot have unemployed youth yet we have countless garbage lining our
> streets and estates!"
>
> His argument on us importing cloths yet we can do it here is basic
> economic that any country can master. India went that way through the
> leadership of Mahatma.
>
> But Dr. Ndemo, in the previous administration that you served so
> ardently, the government shipped billions worth of capital on works
> that could be done by Kenyans. I'm talking about the massive
> infrastructure development that took place in the last 10years. That
> capital could have done our unemployed generation justice if it was
> utilized here home. I believe Kenyans can build decent roads, brides,
> buildings and ports. What happened to national pride? It's the same
> argument of importing cloths or planting cotton and producing our own
> garments.
>
> We're still not out of the woods yet, remember the Korean firm
> implementing the PKI?
>
> My cent-less
>
> On 18/11/2013, Dorcas Muthoni <dmuthoni at gmail.com> wrote:
> > A good piece by Dr. Bitange Ndemo
> >
> >
> > *We must be more pragmatic to resolve Kenya's high unemployment*
> >
> http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/blogs/dot9/-/1959700/2077756/-/oodsogz/-/index.html
> >
> > --
> > Muthoni
> >
> > My Blog: http://rugongo.blogspot.com/
> > --------------------------------------------
> > Mahatma Gandhi once said:-
> >
> > First they ignore you,
> > Then they laugh at you,
> > Then they fight you,
> > AND THEN YOU WIN!!!
> >
>
>
> --
> ______________________
> Mwendwa Kivuva
> twitter.com/lordmwesh
> kenya.or.ke | The Kenya we know
>
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