MEYER: Why a pothole in Kenya is not just a hen's nest

It's the end of the rainy season in Kenya, and this year's storms were almost biblical, taking away not only the sunny provisions of people, but also their bridges, buses, livestock and crops. But the damage can not be attributed to the weather alone.

The roads were hit particularly hard; potholes the size of cars destroy the highways in the capital. Near United Nations offices on the road to Limuru, for example, traffic drops by half a mile as vehicles head toward oncoming traffic to avoid a particularly water-filled hole.

Elsewhere, vehicles crawl slowly, bouncing from the crater to the crater, while the car-free sway in matatu minatus

You might wonder why the government is doing nothing. After all, potholes are a fundamental and highly visible indicator of the social and economic well-being of a country.

Any government seeking to maintain voter support usually does its best to make the roads pbadable. Why not in Kenya?

The reason is the gross economy: the government can not afford it. Consider the state of Kenya's budget. Today, about half of all revenues are used to fund the salaries and the exaggerated benefits of public servants, including parliamentarians, governors, local and national bureaucrats, and countless legions of trustees. .

Another 40% serves to repay international debt interest, which now exceeds half of Kenya's annual GNP – a red flag for credit rating agencies.

Add to this the mysterious propensity for one third of the national budget to disappear every year and for Kenya to be in the grip of a severe economic crisis that is rapidly ending.

The good news is that climate-related chaos in Kenya coincided with new efforts to tackle administrative and fiscal obstacles.

To begin with, President Uhuru Kenyatta recently announced a major anti-corruption campaign that, unlike past efforts, is already producing results.

Several senior officials were the subject of an investigation and were indicted; some are already on trial, while others have lost their jobs.

These are all first, and the reason is obvious: limiting thefts committed by government buddies is one of the fastest and most effective ways to generate revenue

. The household schedule in Kenya is not a coincidence.

In September, International Monetary Fund officials will return to Nairobi to review Kenya's financial performance – in particular, its eligibility for a $ 1.5 billion support credit.

Kenyan officials are clearly worried because the IMF has already placed Kenya on its debt watch list and will almost certainly require more belt-tightening.

At a time when Kenya needs to borrow more to fill its budget deficit, its leaders are facing the cold calculation of international finance.

If we further expand the perspective, Kenya, like the rest of Africa, is approaching a demographic tipping point that must also be addressed. According to Salih Booker and Ari Rickman of the Center for International Policy, based in the United States, by 2035, Africa will have more young people in the labor market than the rest of the world, and will not be able to. here in 2050, one in four men is African.

If sufficient employment opportunities are created for this wave of young people, the benefits for African economies will be deep.

But if future generations are unable to find productive outlets for their skills, the social spin-offs could be severe.

Kenyan leaders understand this, which is why the government has made manufacturing, health, education and affordable housing priorities in its Vision 2030 development program.

But as commendable as these targets are, the ambitions of the authorities are difficult to reconcile with the realities of a Nairobi street during the rainy season.

Sowing on a rutted track that doubles as a major urban avenue, Kenyans too aware that a pothole is not just a pothole; it's a window to the deeper crises that Kenya, like much of Africa, has been pushing back for too long.

Michael Meyer, former Editor of Newsweek, is Dean of the Graduate School of Media and Communications at Aga Khan University in Nairobi. This article was first published in ProjectSyndicate.com