The problem with economists they will never make you rich but will always tell you why you are poor.

David Ndii came up with some fancy free primary education which was adopted by Kibaki. The effects of that policy will be gravely felt by the poor for many years. Look at olympic primary school

Definitely they should all have access to school. The issue is that sometimes there is more focus on access to education and not enough on quality. Policies/measures to improve education should tackle both simultaneously.

I beg to differ.
The major reason for low performance is indiscipline. Most of the time the teacher is doing crowd control. Numbers don't matter discipline matters (Wazazi wachapwe kiboko!) Now someone should do research on the above.

To a large extent, I agree with the views espoused in those two articles, which, coincidentally I was reading just yesterday.

I have always held that, in a predominantly agricultural economy like ours, a gov't that wishes to lift the greatest number of people out of poverty needs to do one thing: fix agriculture, right from access to inputs, irrigation, marketing, storage, etc.

This is not to say that other sectors like construction are not important, far from it. But, given the limited resources against so much need, I would personally dedicate proportionately more resources to agriculture than to these others. After all, didn't the agrarian revolution precede the industrial revolution?

what about the 1million acre irrigation project? he also doesn't credit UMK for the ESP fish ponds..

Free education is not the cause of poor performance in public schs. Economists are not meant to offer solutions rather their objective is to give a "if-then-else-" kind of scenario analysis.

@Gathige, during Kib's terms, access was the focus. It is now time to focus on quality too.

I find David to be very realistic and practical. We have been fed hype about how we need standard gauge and not meter gauge which is loads of bolony. USA largely uses meter gauge to move loads of cargo on trains moving at 100kph. What we needed to do is replace certain sections of the track that are in bad shape and buy locomotives. RVR is busy doing that and in a year or two you will see the difference. We should be using that loan to build referral hospitals in all counties and equiping them. Cost of health care is a serious challenge and resource drainer in a majority of households.

Kenya is still crawling out of the mess that was left after the 24 years of barbaric rule and utter plunder of our resources. We have to start somewhere - a road, an electric connection here and there and yeah those brick and mortar stuff is a somewhere to start.

I will give a simple example - the 33km Eastern Bypass from Embakasi to Ruiru. Since the construction of this road, there has been aggressive development of the immediate areas along the area where this road passes and even further. Both commercial and residential structures have sprouted overnight along this route. We are talking of fuel stations, supermarkets, countless SMEs which in extension have created jobs both directly and indirectly. Think of the ripple effect.

According to Ndii's argument, one can deduce that Kenya would have relatively been better [economically] if the expenditures incurred for construction of this road were diverted to advance an agricultural project somewhere else. I beg to differ. Kenya's agricultural practices are mostly subsistence and these methods are far outdated and another major problem is that land is severely sub-divided.