Kenya Deserves the Same Standard I.T Demands From Its Employers

Walk into any established technology company and try to get hired for a senior role without a track record, and you will be shown the door politely but firmly. These companies do not gamble. They do not hire on promise, potential, or a good story. They hire on evidence — a portfolio of delivered work, a history of solved problems, proof that when the pressure was on, the candidate performed. Experience is not a preference in these boardrooms; it is the price of entry.

It is worth asking why we do not hold our leaders to the same standard.

The Cost of Gambling With Five Years

When a company gets a hire wrong, it loses a project, perhaps a quarter's revenue, perhaps a client. It is painful, but it is recoverable. When a country gets its leadership wrong, the cost is measured differently — in stalled economies, in institutions weakened, in opportunities that do not return. And yet we routinely hand over the highest office in the land to people whose only qualification is that we hope, rather than know, they will deliver.

That is not leadership selection. That is gambling — and the stake is five years of a nation's life, years that can reshape an economy for better or worse in ways that take a generation to undo.

Leadership Is Not Inherited

One of the most persistent fictions in our politics is the idea that leadership passes through bloodlines — that the child of a leader inherits, by birth, the judgment and discipline of governance. It does not work that way. Leadership is a set of proven capabilities: the ability to make hard calls, to manage institutions, to resist temptation, and to put the public interest ahead of personal or family interest. None of that is written into DNA. A surname may open doors, but it has never once balanced a budget or built a hospital.

We do not need a reminder of what the last regime left behind. Most of us are still living with it.

The Politics of Affiliation

Perhaps the deeper problem is not bloodlines but tribe, party, and personality — the politics of affiliation, where the question on the ballot is rarely "has this person proven they can lead?" and almost always "is this person one of ours?" It is an uncomfortable truth, but it is our truth: affiliation, not competence, remains the currency of Kenyan elections.

Until that changes, development will keep being deferred. A country cannot vote its way into prosperity by rewarding loyalty over competence election after election. The nations that have made the leap out of poverty did so by demanding performance from those they elevated to power, not by rewarding the right last name or the right handshake.

What Should Matter

When it comes to choosing who leads a nation, neither blood relation nor political affiliation should carry weight. What should matter — the only thing that should matter — is a demonstrated record of selfless service: a history of decisions made for the public good, not personal gain.

Companies figured this out long ago. They do not bet on who someone's parents were, or which club they belong to. They ask one question: what have you actually done? Kenya's electorate deserves to start asking the same question, and to start meaning it.