Small ambitions

Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, the President of the People's Republic of China, and the Chairman of the Central Military Commission, has persuaded the Boeing Company to build an aircraft assembly factory in China in exchange for the People's Republic buying 300 planes. Many will concentrate on the part of the story that demonstrates China's global political and economic power that has compelled a true blue US company to send jobs to China, but the more nuanced story of China capable of manufacturing planes will not receive much attention. Kenya should pay attention to that story, however.

Both the President of Kenya and Mr Xi are attending the same United Nations' General Assembly in New York City, yet the way both are treated is instructive.

Among the top 10 PCT (Patent and Co-operation Treaty) filing countries, China (+15.6%), the US (+10.8%) and Sweden (+10.4%) saw double-digit growth in 2013. The US saw its fastest growth rate since 2001. China’s growth rate is similar to the one it registered in 2012. Germany (-4.5%) and the UK (-0.6%) are the only two countries among the top ten with fewer PCT applications in 2013 than in 2012. Following strong growth in 2011 and 2012, Japan saw only modest growth of 0.6% in 2013. ~ US and China Drive International Patent Filing Growth in Record-Setting Year (Source: WIPO, 2014)

There is a reason why Mr Xi visited San Fransisco's Bay Area, the heart of the technology industry, where the innovators and the financiers cohere, and the Everett, Washington, the home of Boeing, and why Mr Kenyatta did not. In 2013, Kenya filed 181 patents under the PCT. There is no earthly reason why Boeing would want - or need - to set up a plane assembly factory in Kenya, or Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital or Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers would first consider investing in startups in Kenya before exhausting opportunities in Shanghai, Bangalore or Mexico City - our tech depth is simply not deep enough. That is why the President is meeting with fellow politicians and political pressure groups while in New York and not Dennis Muilenburg, and if you don't know who that is, I shall rest my case. However...

Mr Kenyatta should take heed that while Mr Kibaki may have laid the foundation for a boom in infrastructure development, there isn't a country that powered ahead on shiny highways and fibre optic cables if i did not have a literate, numerate and innovative population. The United Kingdom has the Oxbridge pair and the London School of Economics; Mr Kibaki is quite familiar with the latter. The United States has the Ivy League and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The latter is a global leader in scientific knowledge and innovation. India has the Indian Institutes of Technology which are the equal of the MIT.

Tianhe-2 or TH-2 is a 33.86-petaflop supercomputer located in National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou. It was developed by a team of 1,300 scientists and engineers. Is there a team of 1,300 scientists and engineers in Kenya that could build the TH-2? The answer to that question should be seen in the light of the teachers' strike that starts its fifth week today.

It was not and it should not have been Mr Kenyatta's policy to double down on Mr Kibaki's highways; those ones, with the right mix of oversight and supervision, should have proceeded without too much trouble. Mr Kenyatta should have focussed overwhelming attention and resources to guaranteeing that Mr Kibaki's free basic education improved on quality. This nonsense with the hit-or-miss success with laptops for schoolchildren should have been shelved. Instead, the manner in which children are taught, what they are taught and how they are evaluated should have occupied centre stage. If one day Kenya is to be a destination for Boeing, Airbus or Brazil's Embraer, the airplane makers must be confident that Kenya can buy its planes, but more importunately, Kenya can build its planes to the same standard as they are built in their home countries.

Kenya is not a world power. It is not an African power. Kenya will be a client state of world powers for as long as it sees itself through the small ambitions of its presidents - roads, harbours, bridges and laptops. It is those of small ambitions who live in the bubble where political pronouncements have weight, and not wealth in the hands of the man on the street. So instead of meeting with deans of faculties of science while in New York, they meet with the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda or the President of Guyana - and call attention to the latter. Small ambitions will be the slow death of us.