Mwai Kibaki - High Points

High Points

President Kibaki, the economist whose term as Finance minister in the 1970s is widely celebrated as outstanding, has done much to repair the damage to the country’s economy during the 24-year reign of his predecessor, President Moi. The country, compared to the Moi years, is much better managed, and has by far more competent personnel, and is already much transformed.

The improved management of the economy during the Kibaki presidency has seen continued Kenya GDP growth from a low 0.6% (real −1.6%) in 2002 to 3% in 2003, 4.9% in 2004, 5.8% in 2005, 6% in 2006 and 7% 2007, a very significant recovery from the preceding near total economic collapse and decay .

The President has also overseen the coming into being of the Vision 2030, a development plan aimed at raising GDP growth to 10% annually and transforming Kenya into a middle income country, which he unveiled on 30 October 2006.

Many sectors of the economy have recovered from total collapse pre-2003. Numerous state corporations that had collapsed during the Moi years have been revived and are performing profitably. The telecommunications sector is booming. Rebuilding, modernization and expansion of infrastructure has been going on in earnest, with several ambitious infrastructural and other projects, which would have been seen as unattainable pipe dreams during the bland and largely stagnant Moi years, planned or ongoing. The country's cities and towns are also being positively renewed and transformed.

Development is also ongoing in all areas of the country including Kenya's hitherto neglected and thus largely undeveloped semi-arid or arid north. Further, it was during the Kibaki presidency that the Constituency Development Fund, CDF, was introduced in 2003. The fund was designed to support constituency-level, grass-root development projects. It was aimed to achieve equitable distribution of development resources across regions and to control imbalances in regional development brought about by partisan politics. It targeted all constituency-level development projects, particularly those aiming to combat poverty at the grassroots. The CDF program has facilitated the putting up of new water, health and education facilities in all parts of the country including remote areas that were usually overlooked during funds allocation in national budgets.

The president has also overseen a reduction of Kenya's dependence on aid by western donors(which still remains significant though),with the country being increasingly funded by internally generated resources,tax revenue collection having grown tremendously during his term, and also by increasing investment,grants and loans by non-western countries, mainly Japan, People's Republic of China and the Middle East, and to a lessor extent investment by South African,Libyan and Nigerian corporations, and even Iran.

President Kibaki's style is that of a competent technocrat, as opposed to the populist buffoonery, or strongman dictatorship, so common in Africa. He,unlike his predecessors,has not tried to establish a personality cult. He has not had his portrait on every unit of Kenya's currency, neither has he had all manner of streets, places and institutions named after him. He has not had state sanctioned praise songs composed in his honour, does not seek to dominate and lead all news bulletins with reports of his presidential activities, and does not engage in the populist sloganeering of his predecessors.

Kenya is also much more democratic and freer in the Kibaki era than it was during the Kenyatta and Moi eras.

When he came to power in 2003, President Kibaki rolled out free learning both in primary and later in secondary schools. Enrolment in primary schools has climbed from six million in 2002 to 9.3 million in 2010, while the subsidised secondary education has helped push enrolment from 882,000 in 2003 to 1.7 million in 2010. The success of this program has earned Kibaki recognition from various world leaders including Bill Clinton.