This is Guka - Finally, It Hit Me............................And I Dreamt of @Introvert ..................

Field Marshal said:
I think you are stuck in the rut of blaming gavament.......................
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Wewe mzee, innovation and creation only happens when there is a deliberate government policy to support them.
From patents to cheap loans to incentives to less regulation to less corruption to predictable regulatory environment
The Asian countries and the US are great examples of what happens when the government wants you to succeed.
Hapa if you want to set up a factory, Sakaja will show up akitaka shares,unpredictable regulatory environment such that haujui kama next year KRA will come up with new and funny rules that will ultimately affect your business:See what is happening with drones and betting and alcoholic, tobacco and beverage industries.
Yani until there is a deliberate government effort to facilitate innovation and creation, it will remain a pipe dream
 
Field Marshal said:
Today, I decided to have some nyama at Kenyatta Market. From the junction off Mbagathi all the way to the market and inside the market itself, I saw tens and tens of struggling youth selling second hand clothes, underwears, shoes etc. I have seen the same scene almost everywhere in this country - virtually every unemployed young person is turning to selling something, usually a cheap secondhand import. The CBD is now one huge market littered with thousands of stalls selling cheap clothes.

That's when it hit me.

The reason why a good number of Kenyan youth are crying that times are hard - and they are - is that we as a society have moved from CREATING to SELLING. Creating requires innovation, imagination, and a hands-on go-getter mentality that selling doesn't. What's more, creating has many spin-offs - a carpenter will require a timber supplier, a nails supplier, a glues supplier etc etc etc - jobs created! - but a mitumba seller just needs just one importer.

In the 1970s and the 1980s, there were no mitumba or cheap clothing imports to sell. There were no fakes and trinkets from China either. If you didn't get a job you created one by being a cobbler, farmer, carpenter, mason, butcher, tailor etc. YOU CREATED SOMETHING, even if it was food. As a result, the country was food-sufficient, and life was manageable.

Today, as millions of youth cry that there are no jobs, those who have refused to follow the herd to set up roadside or CBD stalls AND INSTEAD opted to be CREATORS are making it big. And creation doesn't need to be physical - Bahati, Churchill, Omondi, a dozen Kikuyu mucisians, top bloggers and other ICT entrepreneurs, small manufacturers, innovative farmers, etc etc - are making it big because they have decided to be creators instead of sellers.

As I was driving up Langata Road, it hit me that this is what African countries like Kenya lack - an army of CREATORS and INNOVATORS who solve local problems using local know-how and resources. Which is why, by the way, we are importing everything from food to match-boxes to tooth-picks. Just why can't a chemistry graduate from UoN start a small matchbox making 'factory' at the back of his parent's house? Across small market centres in the country, I have never found an unemployed food science graduate running a small bakery making bread and cakes for the locals - they are all in Nairobi selling Mitumbas coz they can't find 'work' (in Ndeiya, all birthday cakes for kids have to be imported from Nairobi!).

Funny, but the people who are driving innovation and creation in this country are the poorly educated. Just go to Kariokor and see.

And let no one blame the gavament or the education system. Our culture of complacency, entitlement, copy-catting and laziness seems to be the problem. One guy starts an Mpesa shop, following day there are 10. Ditto mitumba.

One of the most inspirational guys I have met here is that stupid animaliser jaruopithicus, @Introvert . An educated man who, like me, likes to work with his hands. But like me too, he comes from another age. He's a ferking fossil.

Unless Kenya's young collectively decide to be CREATORS like Introvert instead of SELLERS, this country is forever ferked...............
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I like the way you absolve the government and blame it in equal measure when it suits your frothy waters filled bald head.
if the wealthy in Kenya are wealthy due to pilfering public coffers and even with that wealth they can not start a company, what do you expect of a poor young guy who has been born in an environment that is not friendly to start ups.
Even a mogotio goat knows that corruption coupled with foolish economic decisions has a very negative effect on policy implementation. This situation is further exacerbated by a high population growth.
 
Field Marshal said:
@Kasaman and @Sambamba , the challenges of education and even KRA are there, but which country doesn't have similar issues. According to the World Bank, Kenya has improved tremendously in the last 10 years in the ease of doing business. Virtually every market centre today is served by a tarmac road and electricity. But have we seen a corresponding growth in economic output? I doubt it. Why? Let me start with a crazy statistic; over 80 per cent of Kenya's farmers are over 50 years old. That is to say, an ageset which represents less than 10 per cent of the population is producing almost all of the food in the country. The youth are too busy chasing jobs in towns to make their hands dirty. It requires very little to set up cottage industries that serve local needs such as desks and chairs for schools; pastries; dress-making (in Ndeiya I know of a guy who has become a millionaire over the last 10 years supplying local schools with uniforms); candles; soap; nails; treated fencing posts, local websites, community radio stations, etc etc. The problem is not with gavament.

Another example (but of selling): A common excuse for Kenyan youth is that they do not have capital to start businesses. A lady who sells fruits near a petrol station where I fuel, and whose business is now worth about 50K, started it with a Tala loan of 4,500/=. Of course she doesn't bet, which is what a lot of youth would have done with the money.
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World Bank! Even their own economists don't agree with their data and you are here quoting them? Why is it that. Ompa iss are closing and some downsizing?
Troll kapsaaa mania pesa ya pilsner imeisha
 
Montecarlo said:
I like the way you absolve the government and blame it in equal measure when it suits your frothy waters filled bald head.
if the wealthy in Kenya are wealthy due to pilfering public coffers and even with that wealth they can not start a company, what do you expect of a poor young guy who has been born in an environment that is not friendly to start ups.
Even a mogotio goat knows that corruption coupled with foolish economic decisions has a very negative effect on policy implementation. This situation is further exacerbated by a high population growth.
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So what should we do
 
Sambamba said:
Wewe mzee, innovation and creation only happens when there is a deliberate government policy to support them.
From patents to cheap loans to incentives to less regulation to less corruption to predictable regulatory environment
The Asian countries and the US are great examples of what happens when the government wants you to succeed.
Hapa if you want to set up a factory, Sakaja will show up akitaka shares,unpredictable regulatory environment such that haujui kama next year KRA will come up with new and funny rules that will ultimately affect your business:See what is happening with drones and betting and alcoholic, tobacco and beverage industries.
Yani until there is a deliberate government effort to facilitate innovation and creation, it will remain a pipe dream
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Na venye Guka is a huge admirer of Chinaman and how their government has pushed and financed policies that have literally propelled them to the highest heights of innovation yet when it comes to our motherland we are supposed to innovate with no support, facilitation or whatever from government, his bias against Kenyans clouds his judgement.
 
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