While the rest of us are navigating the chaos of Nairobi, wondering if the SHA will actually cover a hospital bed or if the latest “Last Mile” phase is just another way to inflate a bill, President William Ruto is in Addis Ababa talking about trillions. He’s telling the African Union that the continent is the “premier destination” for green industrialisation. It sounds lovely on a teleprompter, doesn’t it? But for the average Kenyan, “green” is just the color of the notes we don’t have enough of to pay for the ever-rising cost of electricity.
Ruto is throwing around figures like $2.3 trillion as if that global shift toward low-carbon energy is going to land in a mwananchi’s pocket by Monday. He claims Africa’s renewable energy makes us “uniquely suited” for investment. Tell that to the small business owner in Gikomba whose “industrialisation” involves a noisy diesel generator because Kenya Power decided it was a good day for a blackout. To him, “reliable and affordable power” isn’t a “core driver of competitiveness” - it’s a myth whispered by politicians at five-star hotels.
The President is very proud of the Nairobi Declaration and the $100 billion commitment from African financial institutions. We’ve seen these “commitments” before. They usually look like fancy MOUs that gather dust while the youth he mentions are left to figure out survival on their own. He talks about sustainable jobs for the “youthful population,” but the only thing the youth are industrialising right now is the art of the side hustle and the desperate hope that a multi-bet will finally click.
It’s the same old script: high-level summits in Ethiopia while examiners and supervisors back home are still begging for their delayed payments. The government admits delays, promises “light at the end of the tunnel,” but the tunnel just seems to keep getting longer. We are told climate priorities are at the center of economic planning, yet our immediate economic reality feels like a series of poorly planned shocks designed to see exactly how much a Kenyan can bleed before they stop breathing.
If you want to see where the real “investment” is happening, don’t look at the AU Summit; look at the betting shops. While Ruto chases global green billions, the youth he claims to be championing are losing their last coins to apps. As we’ve noted before, SportPesa Is Not Your Side Hustle: How Kenyans Can Stop Bleeding Money to Betting Apps, but when the state’s version of “development” feels like a gamble, you can’t blame people for playing the odds.
In the end, this “Green Industrialisation Initiative” is just another shiny toy for the elite to play with on the international stage. Ruto can talk about “electrified value chains” all he wants, but until the cost of unga drops and the “iron ladies” in the kitchen actually have something to cook, these Addis speeches are just expensive noise. We’re being sold a future in 2025 while we can’t even afford the present in 2024.