The President is back at it again, standing in the middle of a dusty road in Isiolo, telling us to be “ashamed” for doubting his grand visions. It’s the classic Nairobi gaslighting special. We are told the 750km Isiolo-Mandera road is at 40 per cent completion, as if that number is supposed to make the price of unga drop. They call it the “Horn of Africa Gateway,” but for the average Kenyan, it’s just another gateway for more Chinese and Eurobond debt to come flooding in while our local businesses suffocate.

Let’s talk about that KSh 100 billion price tag. It sounds impressive until you realize that every kilometer of that bitumen is paved with the tears of taxpayers who can no longer afford to keep their lights on. While the President chest-thumps about “correcting historical injustices,” he conveniently forgets the current injustice of a government that spends billions on “connectivity” while the people it’s connecting are too broke to own a bicycle, let alone a lorry to transport goods. It’s PR at its finest - building a highway to a future we can’t afford to live in.

This obsession with “re-mobilizing contractors” is just code for paying off the boys who stopped working when the previous administration’s checks bounced. He mentions that the IMF and other lenders are watching, but as we’ve seen in The IMF Debt Trap Killing Kenyan Dreams, these mega-projects are the very chains that keep us tethered to Washington and Brussels. We are building 6,000km of roads not because we need them all right now, but because infrastructure projects are the easiest way to justify the massive loans that keep the “system” lubricated.

And then come the promises of ten dams and “millions of acres” of irrigation. We’ve heard this story before - remember Galana Kulalu? It’s the same script, different county. They talk about “food security” from a podium in Garissa, yet the “National Infrastructure Fund” they want to use is just another pot that will likely be raided before the first drop of water hits a seedling. It’s hard to celebrate a tuition block at Garissa University when the graduates will just join the thousands of others hawking sweets on the streets of Nairobi because the economy is in a coma.

The President says he is “opening up Kenya,” but he’s really just opening up our veins for more debt extraction. You can’t eat tarmac, and you certainly can’t pay school fees with a “well on course” airstrip. While the political class celebrates their 40 per cent progress, the rest of us are 100 per cent tired of the same old lies wrapped in new yellow ribbons. At this rate, the only thing being “connected” is the government’s hand to our back pockets.