Of usawa ni sawa, endless campaigns and the 2027 budget policy statement

When IEBC announces that the official campaign window is 10 weeks, politicos tell us they haven’t started campaigning; they are just meeting the people. [Philip Muasya, Standard]

We still have 41 weeks to go but any visitor to Kenya would think our August 2027 election is happening in the next week or so.  As we long for the time when, first, elections aren’t an event that closes the country down over an extended period, and second, we have a “between elections” life beyond permanent campaigns, you also get the feeling that Kenya Kwanza’s 215 weeks in office have been a lifetime.  There is something about how we do things that doesn’t lend itself to stable, long-term nation and state building.

So here we are, again.  “Development tours” on one hand.  “Wantam” rallies on the other.  And, lest we forget, we still have 41 whole weeks to go.  For soccer-loving Kenyans, that’s the calendar equivalent of an entire Kenya Premier League or even English Premier League or Spanish La Liga footballing season.

When IEBC announces that the official campaign window is 10 weeks, politicos tell us they haven’t started campaigning; they’re just meeting the people.  That visitor to Kenya might wonder about huge crowds, organic or rented, in attendance at weekday rallies, knowing full well that the leaders calling these rallies are the same ones also busy asking the visitor’s home country for “poverty-reducing” aid grants and loans.

It’s not all bad, however.  A fast-growing number of Kenyans now see that their democratic participation is not just “at elections” by voting but “between elections” through civic engagement.  “Gen-Z”, anyone?

Let’s step away from the clouds and look at today’s landscape.  On the political (campaign) front, President Ruto and his Kenya Kwanza administration are trying to raise the stakes for 2027, claiming development milestones and progressive achievements and calling out likely opponents and detractors on their lack of an alternative agenda.  This relentless call for ideas is growing; even the media is beginning to question prospective leaders on their actual alternative plans and programs beyond slogans and sound bites.

And now, before we get those alternative ideas, the administration has taken its messaging a notch higher, with the slogan “Usawa ni Sawa, Mbele Pamoja” (Equity/Fairness is Right, Let’s Move Forward Together).

On one hand, it is a subtle pivot from “Hustlers versus Dynasties”; on the other, a clever riposte to the “Shareholders” narrative that pervaded the regime’s first two years before the Gen Z protests.  Pivot because the hustler narrative quickly wore thin; riposte because shareholders (“bling-bling” and other spoils of the 2022 victory) is exactly what 2023/2024 looked like, even though some said it louder than others.

That Gen Z accountability disruption erased these early narratives, forcing a retreat into today’s stabilising broad-based government.  Thought about this way, “Usawa ni Sawa” is a re-anchored brand for 2027.

To be clear, that Kenya Kwanza has revealed its defining campaign framework this early also suggests their own calculation that the opposing lines are empty.  In a country where, historically, the opposition’s narrative has centred around regional marginalisation and unfair resource distribution, the launch of “Usawa ni Sawa” pre-emptively captures the ideological high ground of equity ahead of time.  In theory, this theming around inclusion leaves the opposition struggling to frame a diametrically different agenda.

Unless, of course, there is another way.   Since we’re talking about today’s landscape, it shouldn’t be forgotten that we are in the middle of the 2027/28 budget process, which is an accelerated process owing to the 2027 election itself.  The outcome of this process will be a budget that the next administration, even if it is the current one, will have to implement.  We are presently at the Budget Policy Statement (BPS) stage, for which a draft was circulated by the National Treasury on Friday, October 23, with public comments expected by Wednesday, October 28 (usual concerns about short notice for feedback remain). 

The BPS stage is arguably where the politics of the budget is always resolved. The Budget Review and Outlook Paper (BROP) is a policy guide that comes too early in the process; the actual Budget Estimates are the end-point of the process and it is too late to effect significant, especially structural, budget changes.  Any bets that there’s any input on this 2027 BPS from the people who could inherit the 2027/28 budget?

Let’s imagine what this input might have been, taking a high-level view of the BPS itself while testing the administration’s new message against imaginary “street-level” messaging. We do this in three short parts.

First, the policy verdict.  The whole point of “Usawa ni Sawa” is fair resource distribution.  Yet, the overall budget has expanded to an astronomical Sh5.416 trillion, driven mainly on the recurrent cost side.  Initial development estimates in the draft BROP were slashed from Sh958 billion to Sh916 billion in the final BROP and this BPS.  Is that a point of enquiry on “Usawa ni Sawa” as the capital investments we need to build true equity?  This raises the point about our fiscal tradition, from planning to budgeting to execution, where ambitious development ends up being sacrificed for recurrent emergencies. So the street-level counter-narrative here is “Usawa ni Kawa” (as in kawaida – normal/ordinary).  It is language that strips away the grand rhetoric of “development”, which isn’t a gift or a political favour, but a minimum obligation.

Second, the strategy verdict.  When the recurrent budget blows past Sh4 trillion, is that the cost of national unity or political survival?  It is difficult to reconcile the multiple claims of “spending pressures” with the sheer spending waste and extravagance we observe across government, or to marry the claims of budget inflexibility with the per-diem-driven, frequent-flier proclivities of this administration of large delegations.

And it's not just within government; one calculation suggests that this regime runs the largest and most expensive parallel administration in Kenya’s history easily, from Task Forces and committees to advisors. 

So if this isn’t about service delivery, might the street see this as “Ujanja ni Janja”? (clever is trickery)?  Remember too, the prevalence of off-balance-sheet financial engineering that the BPS cannot even capture.

Finally, the integrity verdict.  If we remember 2024, we were promised a break from past fiscal indiscipline, a pledge towards strict public finance management, sweeping anti-corruption reforms and deep austerity to appease Kenyans and reassure international markets.  Yet here we are, with an aggressive Sh4 trillion ordinary revenue target which still leaves a Sh1.353 trillion deficit (5.9 per cent of GDP) that requires huge chunks of domestic and external borrowing.  If we had retained the original BROP revenue target, we would be talking 6.4 per cent deficit, so there’s a question here about making revenue a balancing figure between out-of-control spending and a deficit target that doesn’t spook the IMF or global markets.

The fact that we also have contradictory gaps in the data, particularly between the recurrent-development spending splits at macro-level versus sector and programme-level allocations, might invite the streets to demand “Usafi ni Safi” (cleanliness means clean).  This speaks to integrity as well as the performative nature of our “stabilisation” given our structural deficit, debt mountain, financial jiggery-pokery triage.

This is not a case against “Usawa ni Sawa”; it is a brilliant slogan.  The test of imagination today was to view this slogan in the context of the 2027 BPS.  Yet, even this high-level take reminds us that there are structural realities within our economy and the fiscus that are beyond campaigns, especially in a country which celebrates development and forgets about service delivery.  “Usawa ni Kawa” reminds us that equity is routine.  “Ujanja ni Janja” takes us “nyuma ya tent”.  “Usafi ni Safi” tears down the myth.  As 2027 approaches and this transition budget is finalised, may the streets not say “Ulafi ni Lafi”.  Enough said!