The Torching Of Tea Harvesting Machines Is Just A Tip Of The Iceberg

A few years ago, and without notice, app-hailing taxis invaded the market place displacing the ubiquitous yellow-line cabs in service. What followed was a violent reception mounted by some older drivers whose cars could not match up to the new standards in agility and pricing posed by the tech-aided cabs. The perpetrators were swiftly apprehended and dealt with comprehensively.

Now, tea companies in the South Rift region are belatedly facing the wrath of some locals for deploying tea-harvesting machines. In neighboring Nandi county, machines have been in use for a decade but it is feared that this menace might just catch on.

The South Rift violence is about a loss of the market found in the thousands of tea pluckers whose money circulates through their consumption of locally produced foodstuff. Labour in the tea plantations is provided by an army of immigrants from neighbouring non-Kalenjin-speaking counties. This in years gone by was the cause of political tensions and frequent episodes of friction owing to the differences in the political persuasions separating locals from labourers. It is as if all of a sudden the locals have connected the economic dots lent by the presence of the multinationals' workforces.

That machines were destroyed is as much an indictment on the political leadership as it is on the irresponsible locals from the affected area because besides causing losses, they are exposing their lack of economic creativity whilst fighting a losing battle the wrong way.

The law of nature tells us that it is never the strongest of the species that survives but rather the most adaptive of them that thrives. This isn't the time to show or use muscles, it is time to leverage other strengths afforded the locals by the environment. The 4th industrial revolution is a global technological phenomenon that leverages the combination of two or more technologies to generate much higher levels of output at the least possible cost. The obvious setback is in job shedding, a bad thing when we are facing hard times, as the economy is in the ICU.

To the multinationals, the reaction of the locals, equally, is an indictment on them. These companies have the best-experienced pools of technicians in carpentry, welding, vehicle maintenance and repairs, plumbing, electrical works, landscaping, and more who work in factories, workshops, and the expansive estates. Without much effort, these companies can pass such skills to the surrounding communities at minimum cost as part of their CSR activities besides building and maintaining good roads from where they get additional crop to offset the idle capacity in their factories. Skills transfer is where the rubber meets the road in so far as bottom-up economics is concerned.

With electricity now widely available, these multinationals can broaden their skills transfer at lower levels and the mid to upper levels. They too have a large management pool that produces world-class teas. Their practices can be transferred via instructor-led sessions in class and field in areas such as audit, marketing, people and inventory management.

The companies cannot grow alone, they must grow with the host communities whom they dispossessed of land at the advent of colonialism. The carpet with which the truth was swept underneath is worn out and cannot easily be replaced as before. The democracy advocated for by the British at home is now vibrantly giving feedback to the source in London from dusty rural Kenya and must be respected. The government of the day has a moral obligation to its populace and must address festering historical matters fairly.

There is a need for the surrounding counties too, to have alternative skills passed to their people so that they can find better luck elsewhere as the 4th industrial revolution bites hard. Everything in life is the way it is because of action or the lack of it. Misuse of resources over the years has come to haunt us so much so that some witty beggars are richer than many in employment, a contradiction that now proves too hard for many to take lying down. Innovations elsewhere will continue to take their toll on residents for as long as the local and multinational leadership exhibit dinosauric tendencies in their approaches to present time challenges.

What they did when the five cents coin could purchase several items cannot happen today when the same is nothing more than a relic from a distant past. Others can no longer carry the burden of poverty so that some can continue getting richer. The transfer pricing that happens in these multinationals denies the locals their fair share in taxes, thanks to creative accounting at its best. Trusting foreign corporate land snatchers with having clean books is a big ask of them and very much a sore thumb type irresponsibility on the part of the government.

It's high time the veil of ownership was lifted so that the powerful collaborating local stakeholders can be known. And even if not now, the clock is ticking toward that day of disclosure. Real democracy knows no bounds, if anything, we simply must play catch up with the number of times the word has been shouted at us from London. And it is more times than we have won the marathon.

What has begun as an act of arson could be equated to the little rash that signals trouble in the body. Once the ailment is detected, it must be treated urgently. It is time for thorough forensics in the tea sector, after all, it generates more for us than is reported, the leakage, just like the recently discovered secret four-kilometer oil smuggling undersea pipeline in Nigeria, must be stopped. For far too long, and strangely though, the ticks have had equal rights with the cattle in formulating the pesticide as the locals are being sucked dry.

And by the way, we still have the KTDA elephant in the room to contend with. Someone must be held responsible for the teas gracing the warehouses in Mombasa for over a year now since the government interfered with tea marketing. Annual bonuses on unsold teas got paid to the farmers from a commercial loan to cover up the goof that was in the Munyanomics prevalent in tandem with Covid at the time.

If the tea sector crashes, it will go down with Kenya. The industry holds on precariously to the last strings of a fast-breaking rope. It's time the government ceased being a popcorn-munching spectator in this theatre of the absurd. Show us a taste of bottom-up tea sector economics.