Num­bers don’t lie! The final 2022 poll num­bers have clear­ly revealed three groups of peo­ple in Kenya. For starters, 22.1 mil­lion Kenyans reg­is­tered to vote in this year’s elec­tions. Out of these, just over 30% vot­ed for Pres­i­dent-Elect H.E. William Ruto while anoth­er 30% for for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Rt. Hon. Raila Odin­ga. Approx­i­mate­ly 30% of the 22.1 mil­lion reg­is­tered vot­ers didn’t vote at all. Remem­ber that mil­lions more did not reg­is­ter as voters.

Obvi­ous­ly, when cit­i­zens reach a point of such indif­fer­ence, then the coun­try is hurtling towards Inten­sive Care Unit.

The President-elect’s first major task should be to uni­fy these dif­fer­ing groups of Kenyans into a unit­ed force for a bet­ter coun­try. This doesn’t mean that we should all think in the same way. Rather, we should lift each oth­er up instead of tear­ing each oth­er apart.

Since the pres­i­dent is the sym­bol of nation­al uni­ty, he must face the social and eco­nom­ic bulls by horns. If the econ­o­my begins to rise in an all-inclu­sive man­ner, it will empow­er Kenyans from all cor­ners of the coun­try. That’s the kind of prac­ti­cal uni­ty that we need.

In the spir­it of empow­er­ing mil­lions of Kenyan eco­nom­ic suf­fer­ers, I sug­gest that the Pres­i­dent-elect adheres to glob­al finan­cial norms. As Mario Cuo­mo, a for­mer New York Gov­er­nor famous­ly said, ‘politi­cians’ cam­paign in poet­ry, but they gov­ern in prose.’ In oth­er words, the time for elec­tion promis­es is now over, what is now demand­ed is metic­u­lous, inten­tion­al action.

One of these actions is to meet our oblig­a­tion to exter­nal lenders because coun­tries are mea­sured by their fis­cal strength. I sug­gest that we resist any impul­sive temp­ta­tion to restruc­ture our inter­na­tion­al loan repay­ments as this may send mixed sig­nals which result in dire con­se­quences that include a weak­er shilling and issuance of junk bonds. As their name sug­gests, junk bonds have a high risk of default on payment.

A coun­try only starts swim­ming in such waters when the eco­nom­ic storm becomes worse. As such, the Gov­ern­ment must reas­sure inter­na­tion­al investors that their mon­ey is safe with us. This will reroute our eco­nom­ic ship into calmer waters. Such calm finan­cial waters are always the pre­ferred fish­ing ground for For­eign Direct Invest­ment which we must focus on. In addi­tion, the new admin­is­tra­tion must nur­ture such a finan­cial cli­mate that tan­gi­bly entrench­es Pub­lic Pri­vate Partnerships.

Impor­tant­ly, our Green Think­ing Action Par­ty (GTAP) will engage with the Gov­ern­ment in uni­ty of pur­pose based on our pro­found ide­ol­o­gy and will deploy the green score­card to ensure that eco­nom­ic growth does not hurt our envi­ron­ment and soci­ety in any way.

Fur­ther, New State and pri­vate trade part­ner­ships must be forged across Africa. Such trade uni­ty will unlock intra-Africa’s mas­sive trade poten­tial as we empow­er the pop­u­lace. Indeed, time is ripe for the Africa Con­ti­nen­tal Free Trade Area (AfCF­TA) to be turbo-charged.

On the glob­al front, the econ­o­my con­tin­ues to strug­gle, which fur­ther com­pli­cates mat­ters for Kenya and Africa. In the UK as report­ed, infla­tion has hit a 40-year high result­ing to some basic com­modi­ties ris­ing by 12.7%. This proves that sim­i­lar food price hikes here in Kenya are caused by both glob­al and local fac­tors. The new admin­is­tra­tion will need to come clean about this so that they can man­age Kenyans’ expec­ta­tions. Unre­al­is­tic expec­ta­tions based on elec­tion promis­es under­mine unity.

Ulti­mate­ly, it is we the peo­ple of Kenya who must keep build­ing our uni­ty. Those of us whose pre­ferred can­di­dates won the elec­tions must rejoice wise­ly, and those whose can­di­dates lost must lament peace­ably. On their part lead­ers must unite the nation by grow­ing the econ­o­my to avoid an implo­sion of our youth­ful great nation. Think green, act green!