Not a good place to be

I read this morning at reference 1 that Kenya has got itself to a bad place. A country of some 50m people, so not that much smaller than us, probably a young country. But a country where servicing the national debt is soaking up more than a third of government revenues and the current government wants to get this down a bit by raising taxes.

There has been much debate about this, but the necessary bill got through Parliament and is just waiting on presidential assent - assent which is not quite the rubber-stamp business it is in this country. We now have rioting in the streets to help him make up his mind, rioting which has drawn down a vigorous response, some deaths and a lot of injuries.

Some of this may be young rioters not wanting to pay for the profligate ways of their elders which got the country into the pickle it is now in. Certainly, a lot of them are unemployed which does not help: too many young men with not enough to do and not enough money in their pockets.

My first thought was that the rich west should just forgive the debt, which might involve governments (or the IMF or whatever) paying off non-government holders of debt. But second thought that was, while there might end up being an element of this, there has to be a process of negotiation. We can't make it too easy or all the other countries with a lot of debt will want the same. They have to wean themselves living off debt, and we in the west have to wean ourselves off lending them more than is proper or prudent.

Either way, a reminder of where one can get to if one lives on credit - as we do here in the UK. I also remember when Macron got rioted at for trying to raise the price of fuel. He was only trying to save the planet - at least that is the part of the story which I remember.

PS 1: the snap above is a more or less random offering from central Nairobi from Street View: what looks like some kind of outdoor market. There is a cathedral near by, but I failed to get close to it.

PS 2: the Edwin Sifuna website of the billboard does not seem to be working this morning, despite Bing knowing all about it. In the meantime, there are references 3 and 4. The latter badly infested with advertisements, quite a lot them for ladies swimwear.

References

Reference 1: Kenya’s Ruto warns of ‘attack on democracy’ after protesters storm parliament: President addresses nation after five killed and dozens injured when police opened fire on anti-tax demonstrators - Andres Schipani, Financial Times - 2024.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenya.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Sifuna.

Reference 4: https://citizen.digital/opinion-blogs/edwin-sifuna-inside-the-witty-mastery-mystery-methodology-and-magnificence-of-a-super-senator-n335985. '... Even in fiery times, in times of insurmountable challenges and scarlet-hot politicking, Sifuna still came off as a cool deliberator, a fluent communicator and a lawyer with a hunger for constitutional expertise and little interest in abstraction...'.