As Kenya enters another season of presidential campaign manifestos, we are once again about to be flooded with grand promises and lofty political rhetoric.
But if there was ever a time for serious, hard-nosed economic debate, it is now.
Presidential candidates must demonstrate a clear grasp of where our economy stands, where it is heading, and how we intend to navigate the headwinds ahead.
We need presidential candidates with blueprints teeming with ambition—blueprints grounded in bold, innovative thinking.
Almost every contender identifies public debt as the primary millstone around our necks. There is near-unanimous consensus that managing debt will be the defining challenge for the next administration.
With our debt-service-to-revenue ratio hovering near a crushing 70 percent, reducing this burden by at least half is non-negotiable.
Lowering debt-servicing costs is our best—and perhaps only—chance to restore the fiscal space needed to fund basic development. Yet, our political class remains trapped in conventional thinking.
We have tried every trick in the liability-management toolkit: contracting new debt to settle maturing Eurobonds, switching domestic paper, and pursuing non-traditional lenders.
Ideas like debt reprofiling and repudiation have been floated, but beyond vague promises to "restructure and renegotiate", candidates offer zero sustainable solutions.
Where is the presidential candidate bold enough to open a public debate—or enforce a moratorium—on corruptly procured, highly commercial debts?
A look through the official external debt register reveals shocking anomalies. More than two decades later, taxpayers are still servicing billions of shillings for loans tied to the infamous Anglo Leasing scandal.
Why are dubious entities pretending to be creditors—names like Apex Finance Corporation, Midlands and Finance, and Sound Day Corporation—still active in our official debt register?
What exactly are we paying for when every Kenyan knows those projects were total phantoms?
The same applies to the Kimwarer and Arror dam projects. The dams were never built, yet official debt registers show we are still dutifully repaying Intesa Sanpaolo for loans extended to construct them.
Who pocketed these funds, and why is the Kenyan taxpayer perpetually left holding the bag for phantom infrastructure?
On domestic debt, we desperately need long-term institutional reforms. Commercial banks currently hold roughly 70 percent of outstanding Treasury Bills, giving them a virtual monopoly that allows them to orchestrate market boycotts whenever they demand higher yields. Where are the proposals to break this oligopoly?
A serious manifesto must champion deep structural reforms in our government-securities market.
A proposal for a system of primary market dealers has been on the table since 2014. The thinking was that by creating a structured network of market-makers we would eliminate cartel-like behaviour and stabilide government paper auctions.
We also debated the creation of an independent treasury management agency. The idea behind this was that carving out fiscal-agency responsibilities from the Central Bank of Kenya would eliminate the inherent conflict of interest between monetary policy and debt issuance.
We wanted to develop a functioning retail market for government paper. Where are the ideas on how to overhaul M-Akiba to make micro-investment in government paper seamless and genuinely accessible to everyday retail investors via mobile channels.
Beyond public finance, the energy sector demands urgent intervention. High electricity tariffs continue to cripple manufacturing competitiveness and strain household budgets.
Tackling this requires more than platitudes about parastatal corruption. We need an explicit commitment to initiate a new round of renegotiations for expensive Independent Power Producer (IPP) contracts.
Furthermore, energy experts broadly agree that our best path toward immediate tariff reductions lies in converting coastal diesel generators to natural gas.
Why is the proposed Dar es Salaam–Mombasa natural gas pipeline project not being treated with cross-border diplomatic and economic urgency?
Finally, candidates must confront the silent crisis on consumer balance sheets. Millions of Kenyans are now hooked on daily, small-ticket digital borrowing—not for business expansion or mortgages, but through Fuliza overdrafts, Hustler Fund loans, and predatory mobile lending apps to smooth everyday survival.
While instant digital credit offers immediate liquidity, fee-driven structures and endless debt rollovers are quietly trapping households in compounding debt cycles.
We need a regulatory framework that mandates total cost-of-credit disclosures and curbs predatory micro-lending practices before fragile household finances collapse entirely.
An economic manifesto that ignores these core structural choices is not a blueprint for national transformation; it is merely an invitation to another five years of stagnation.
The writer is a former managing editor of The EastAfrican.
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