One of the advantages of having a restless two-year-old is that you get to watch a lot of early morning television -- although, you do have to be able to watch and assimilate while reading "Spot Goes To The Park" and keeping a cup of hot coffee away from sleep-befuddled toddler hands. So this morning, just after 6 a.m., I was delighted to find a hilarious item on Citizen TV news about a conference of Arab investors in Nairobi this week.
According to the report, the conference was due to start at 8.30 am on Monday, but well after 10, Kenyan officials from various ministries had still not appeared. Cue shots of the Arab investors sitting down at long conference tables, looking grumpy, shots of empty chairs, cutaways to the clock. Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta appeared quite miffed, and the presentation from one official -- who said Monday morning was evidently not a good time to host a conference -- was truly hilarious. There is a serious side to the story too.
Do you really want people who have money to invest in a country suffering from drought, a budget shortfall of millions of shillings, political instability and endemic corruption to be kept waiting? Kenyatta said yesterday that Kenya needed 480 billion shillings to achieve its growth objectives. The country is increasingly looking to the Middle East and Asia for fresh funds -- an Africa-wide trend that has seen Kuwait invest in Sudanese farms and dams and China pour money into infrastructure and extraction industries across the continent, to name but two examples. But competition for funds is fierce, and credit-crunch-scarred investors are becoming increasingly wary and demanding. If the Arab investors in Nairobi on Monday were rating potential investment destinations on issues of governance and efficiency, Kenya might find itself a ways down the list.
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