RE: Yala Swamp aka Dominion Group Issue: rejoinder to Mr. Orina Nyanmwamu

Dear Mr. Nyamwamu,

You have argued very well on issues of economic empowerment of a people through projects and your thrust is that most foreign projects respond to foreign interests. Your assertion is that foreign projects remain foreign in all their components and fabric. All profits go to the foreigner. The local persons are left as observers and play just peasant roles. This is true initially.

I want to argue that though you have good concerns for us and the poor rural fork, there is a point in the whole chain of development that you are missing. I will give a hypothetical example to put the discussion in context. If you want to move from Kisumu to Mombasa and if Mombasa is the price, you will be confronted with different challenges along the way. These could be filling stations, flat tires, restaurants, road blocks, entertainment spots, etc. You will at each of these places be engaged in different activities, meet different people, learn new things all on your way to Mombasa if Mombasa remains your price.

Making an analogy with human development we start our individual development as babies, where we are completely depend upon our parents, our nannies, our relatives, etc, to get things going for us. Through these people, we learn how to crawl, how to stand, how to talk, how to shake hands, run, etc. We also learn logic and start making reasonable contributions to issues. What I am trying to hint at is that we can never get the price we are looking for instantaneously when a new project is initiated. We must first learn the ropes, appreciate what it is all about, distill and filter what is good for us and build an intrinsic knowledge on the situation we are confronted with. This takes time and you can ask Professor Wangari Mathai. She did not wake up and find herself as a Nobel Price winner. It was a process from her early childhood built through diligence, experiences, new knowledge and a lot of learning. For Mr. Nyamwamu, he has gone to school and is full of ideologies, which is good. What might be missing is grounding the ideologies with facts and realities on the ground.

Now my point is that good and commercial agriculture is still quite new to the people of Nyanza and Western province. Managing successful businesses is not easy for many of us in Kenya and in Africa in general. The perfect example is Dr. Robert Mugabe whom we all know. (Maybe you didn’t know this, I was recently in Zimbabwe and a gentleman confided in me that the people who took over the white farms, sold the tractors, the jembes, and all working machinery to buy beer and merry. Now they cannot cut the trees that have grown on the farms because they don’t have machetes-Zimbabwe as a result is on its knees. They of course own the land and the farms).

Maybe this realization has sometimes made us hire foreigners to get us started before we take over and get things going. Look at Kenya Airways with Brian Davis, Mumias Sugar with the Consulting Group and many other projects in Kenya. Consider the case of Kenya Commercial Bank that was removed from oblivion by the so called foreigners. We must be realistic to our situation. Most of the innovations and technologies we are using have their origin in the West including our still young democracy. Before you become a teacher you must be taught and learn. Central province is where it is because of the Western invasion. After the Mzungu left, the locals took over and perfected what they had learnt and they are now steadily progressing. We need that seed in Nyanza and Western Kenya. Once we internalize and master the variables, process and determinants, you will ‘Just Watch The Space’ as we move the projects to greater heights. Look at Mumias Sugar now. It is being run by one of our own who is even contemplating extending it to the Coast.

In my World, we like to be pragmatic and realistic. If you are a student of knowledge networks, you will realize how the human being gets into contact with old or new knowledge and how knowledge is passed from the provider to the beneficiary. How it pervades and how it is finally put to use. In the rural area with few communication and demonstration tools, this is slow, painstaking and many times filled with doubts and uncertainty until perfected and used by a very well known confidante or relative who passes the new knowledge to the benefactor. We surely want to own the Dominion Farm, but let us first, learn how it works, how it is financed, the bottlenecks, how to keep the books, where the markets are, the kind of infrastructure that ensures success, etc. After that we will own it and will not let it collapse. We can even look for money and buy it from the foreigner since we will be familiar with the money markets and who controls them. We can also put our resources together and purchase it. This is my take on it. Let us give it a chance for the sake of posterity and getting ourselves ready for ownership if that is the penultimate price.

Thanks and good day Mr. Nyamwamu!

Peter Okoth