The “Project” Culture

When the former president Moi endorsed Uhuru Kenyatta as the man to take over from him, we all referred to Uhuru as the project. It was the first time I had heard the word ‘project’ used in a purely political form. Inasmuch as the word had not been widely used before, the culture it represented was not entirely new. It was also not the last time we were going to have a political project. If anything, that occasion seemed to have ushered in a new era in our development (or lack thereof).

As Kenyans, we have cultivated and perfected what my layman’s mind tells me is a dangerous and retrogressive mindset. None of us can seem to look at the bigger picture of what is supposed to be our collective vision. We are all together in this from the President to the lowliest layman, and everyone in between. We are disjointed in our thinking and our actions. Instead of being one country moving steadily in one direction, we are just a series of projects, each moving in its own direction.

There is a belief that one cannot do anything without help. The government has always looked to the West (and recently to the East) for help in doing every small (or big) thing. Building roads, class rooms, and slum upgrades, require to be set up as projects so that we can go begging for funding. Buying ambulances and digging boreholes cannot take place in the normal development agenda; it has to be planned around the project model so that those concerned can get maximum benefit. Even the digging of pit latrines has not been left behind.

What is wrong with having a properly run development agenda where the use of available resources can be optimized? Why does every small thing have to be thought of as a free-standing project instead of part of the bigger wholesome agenda for the country? If we studied developed countries, would we find them treating every single activity as a project, or would we discover that they plan everything to be an integral part of the country’s agenda?

The Kisumu county MCAs recently voted for themselves to be bought I-Pads. They further voted to be given intensive and expensive lessons on how to use the gadgets. Such is the audacity the ‘Project’ culture can instil in its adherents. I-pads are today what paper was a hundred years ago. They do not qualify to be considered as a project. Instead, they should have been part of the plan to make work easier and so should have appeared in the same budget as stationery. Besides, county government money should not be spent on training grown-ups how to use a gadget that takes a 10 year old only a few hours to master.

As a country, we seem to believe that we are backward, late in development, and unable to do much on our own. For this reason, we feel that taking our development by the horns is too much of an undertaking for us. We therefore believe that everything has to be broken down into manageable projects. This is not wise for a country that wants to be in the big leagues. It slows us down and ensures that we will always be behind.

Devolution, as envisioned in our constitution, did not mean reducing the size of our activities. It just meant doing things that were closer to the common man. It meant having development in the smallest village in the country. What others seem to understand however, is that devolution means breaking down of useful development into useless disjointed projects whose sole purpose is to provide avenues for “eating”.

There are many NGOs running myriad projects in the country. Most of these are ostensibly to lift us and keep us out of poverty. Their effectiveness in achieving this goal is in serious question. Foreign governments are also assisting our country to achieve various goals through projects. Many of these have only helped sink us deeper into debt without changing our standards of living. The word ‘project’ is as innocent as any other English word. It has however always left a bad taste in our mouths. The above is just food for thought from the layman. It is my ‘project’ for the week.

P.S. Uhuru becoming President may have been the most successful project in Kenya – after all.