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{
    "id": 397762,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/397762/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 45,
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "only work efficiently, but save time by not travelling 400 kilometres to our counties, just to hold a meeting for one hour and then come back, which we can do right from here. So, if this country has to move to the level that we are expected to move in order to achieve Vision 2030 – which is now looking more like a mirage than a vision - we need to embrace modernity and technology. We need to utilize and have technology work for us to cut down on the cost of our transactions. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I want to agree with Prof. Anyang’-Nyong’o that there is a misguided belief that efficiency lies in the private sector and the Government cannot be efficient. This is a fallacy. In any country, the biggest enterprise is the government. The biggest business to be done is with the government. The biggest owner of resources is the government. We can ask ourselves: How has a country like China, with a command system or centrist management system, moved from a very backward country after the Second World War, to now the largest consumer of raw materials in the world? If today China presses a button and pulls out its money from the American economy, the American economy will crash within less than 24 hours. This has not been because of private enterprises. It is the Government that has done this. Read the story of Malaysia and the amazing Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, a man who left his stethoscope as a medical doctor, took up leadership and transformed an extremely backward Malaysia into what is now approaching a first world country. You can say the same of what is evolving in Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia. Where is the curse of Africa; a continent that has 60 per cent of the world’s natural resources and has exported brains? The whole of Europe thrived on slavery and slave trade, imperialism and colonialism and unequal terms of trade; all exploiting Africa. Mr. Speaker, Sir, even when you see the statistics churned out by the World Bank - which are always false - out of the ten fastest growing economies in the world, seven are in Africa. But this flawed economics are based on the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and not social transformation. If you go to Angola, you will find that they are now pumping more oil than Nigeria. They are pumping 2.6 million barrels a day. So, their balance sheet looks very good. But look at the Angolans; are their lives changing? Look at Kenya today. We have some Kenyans who appear in the Forbes Magazines as the richest men on this continent, but go to Kibera, Mathare, Bungoma and Turkana and see the sea of poverty. So, as we start embracing technology, we must not just look at it as Kenyan issue, it should cut across Africa. Countries with huge resources have remained stagnated in poverty. They have Ministers turning up at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) carrying briefcases and being praised as reformers, but back home things are the same. We must embrace modernity, save our public resources and direct them to areas where it matters most. That is social transformation. That is the only way we will boast in future, that we left this world better than we found it. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I beg to support."
}