SAM'S SENSE: Inequality: Kenya's two worlds

Two weeks ago, OXFAM Kenya, an international non-profit organization released a report that shows that wealth inequality in Kenya is growing. That 7 million more people have fallen into poverty since 2015.

When you peruse the pages, you begin to understand why the Kenyan economy has, for the last ten years, been growing at an average of 5 per cent, yet that has not been trickling down to the people.

The report shows that 125 people in Kenya hold wealth that is equivalent to the wealth held by 42.6 million Kenyans. Let’s make sense of that.

42.6 million, based on current KNBS projections, is the total population in 43 counties of the country’s 47. That is equivalent to the population in the entire country excluding Nairobi, Kiambu, Nakuru and Nyamira counties.

125 people can fit in two 62-seater buses leaving just one of them behind. 125 people can travel to Mombasa in one Madaraka Express coach via the SGR, leaving 7 of them behind.

And it goes deeper. According to Oxfam, 17 million people in Kenya are now facing severe to moderate food insecurity. Nearly half of Kenyans now live in extreme poverty, which means living on less than a dollar a day.

The US dollar now exchanges at Ksh.129 to Ksh.130. What can Ksh.130 do?

It can buy you a packet of unga for ugali if it’s on discount. Alternatively, it could buy you an 800-gram loaf of bread. Alternatively, it could buy you half a bar of soap. 130 shillings may not buy you half a litre of vegetable oil.

Half of Kenyans have to make the tough decision on what is most essential for their families with less than Ksh.130. In Arid and semi-arid areas, most people have no money to buy food. The climatic conditions are so severe such that no crops can survive to feed the residents. Animals literally fight for survival, entrenching the poverty even further.

The Oxfam report highlights the structural inequalities of our economy and our society. How despite billions allocated to services like education and health, poorer Kenyans still struggle to access quality services.

The slightly above 3 million formally employed Kenyans continue to suffer more through taxation. How their low incomes are crushed by the heavy burden of taxation and levies, such that now, an average worker is 11 per cent poorer as compared to 2020.

The heavy burden of public debt has impoverished Kenyans. Essential services are increasingly out of reach. Public goods are now inaccessible. So much so that Kenyans increasingly continue to seek private solutions to public problems. Parents are taking their children to private schools to escape the trap of lost quality in public institutions. That despite Ksh.700 billion going to education, there is no keen interest in enhancing the quality, especially now when the competency-based education is under implementation.

 In the end, the impact of decisions made by ambitious politicians who are in competition with themselves continues to bite. Taking more loans than the economy can carry saying that heavy infrastructural development is the key to economic turnaround.

Now there is evidence showing otherwise. That it is possible to roll out a Ksh.4 trillion budget that solves no problems of a population. That it is possible to have first-world cities that do not serve the people.

How political ambitions can destroy a society, creating three different nations in one: the poverty nation on one end, the sufferers nation in the middle, who finance political ambitions through sweat and tax and the exclusive wealthy nation that takes advantage of the inequality and political disillusionment.

This is the real state of our nation that we must face. It makes no sense to have a six-course dinner on one dining table while in the neighbouring dark and falling single room, there is no Ksh.130 to buy a packet of unga.

It makes no sense that in one household there is plenty to fly a family member abroad for specialised treatment, while in the neighbour’s, they have no Ksh.300 to pay SHIF subscription. This inequality is unsustainable.