Resource and resourcefulness: a Kenyan case study in rethinking human capital
If we want our enterprises and our economy to thrive and keep pace, business must recognise the great stake it has in all human capital – a wide and malleable resource that can also be described as society at large. The damage done by an untapped pool of human resource can be as boundless as human potential itself. So business must be resourceful.
This was perhaps one of the most startling messages – subtly implied yet honestly and insightfully illustrated – by Rita Okuthe in her opening speech at the ACT’s inaugural Africa Forum a fortnight ago. She spoke brilliantly and candidly on the state of the Kenyan economy, laying out a considered roadmap for future growth. It seems poignant that in doing so she effectively also delivered an understated but powerful argument for rigorous and radical new ways of understanding and developing human capital.
Her words were those of a proud Kenyan in possession of the critical and realistic eye possessed only by an expert and a native. The talk owed much of its punch to the fact that it was personal and it was specific. Nevertheless there were plenty of ‘transferable’ ideas (to borrow from a popular HR term) which are highly relevant to businesses leaders and corporate strategists across the globe today.
Okuthe is Director of the Enterprise Business Unit at Safaricom. A pioneering enterprise in itself, which another speaker pointed out “is telco, tech-co and bank all at once – a beautiful embodiment of Kenyan opportunity and freedom to innovate and not something I’m likely to find back in the world I come from…back in Europe”. Rita has been noted as one of 50 global CMOs to watch in the telecoms sector. It was easy to see why. And, whilst she took to the stage humbly down-playing her own accolades, what ensued was a clear – but not simplistic – rallying cry calling for savvy business leaders to play an active role in promoting and nurturing Kenya’s economy and hence its finest resource: human talent.
Kenya is the fourth largest economy in Africa. That’s after South Africa, Angola and Nigeria. But as Okuthe pointed out, strikingly, in this group of ‘top four’, the other three have one thing in common which Kenya lacks: minerals and precious metals. “So the fact that Kenya is fourth” she said “tells me that there is huge opportunity in the market”. Kenyans, she said, should be truly proud of this because it indicates that they are able to make money by adding value. Not mining the inert. And it’s that ‘adding value’ which is what humans can do because human talent is almost endlessly versatile when properly harnessed. “Wherever you go in the world”, asserted Okuthe, “be it at a large corporation, or a major NGO – there is always a Kenyan at the table and this goes to show the quality of the personnel that we have”.
The problem is that Kenya has not figured out is how to translate this into running an economically successful country with a properly prospering society. Pointing an unapologetic finger at a public sector dogged with inefficiency Okuthe was equally adamant that business cannot – and must not – look away. The stark question put to the audience: “If we don’t fix it, guys... who’s gonna fix it for us?”
55% of the Kenyan population is under the age of eighteen which means that the country sees one million new people joining the job market every year. There are not enough jobs. Add to this the impact of current interest rates which stand at 17% and – says Okuthe - a crisis can be discerned on the horizon.
She cited the cultural imperative for Kenyans to own land: "What is the most precious resource to our human resource? Land". Yet, as she pointed out, at current interest rates, 90% of the population is locked out of access to the loans necessary for purchasing land or property. This only serves to propagate the rich/poor divide, feelings of failure and resentment. And inequality is a potent catalyst for disaffection, apathy, civil unrest and corruption. “What happens when people don’t own what they feel is most precious is that they feel they have nothing to lose”.
Eventually the consequences of unemployment and poverty are explosive. But this is preceded by years of steady, prosaic deterioration. “So how do we reverse that and make credit and jobs more accessible to more Kenyans?” she asked the audience. “We as business leaders need to think about this. We need to hold ourselves to account. We need to hold government to account. And we need think about the country, the economy in the long term”.
Short-termism destroys our talent pool. Why? Okuthe barely used the word sustainability – if at all. Instead she just got on with it. She talked about all the practical implications of short-termism and opportunism and illustrated with compelling elegance the many ways in which a different approach could considerably change things for the better. She spoke of a deeply engrained culture of corruption in Kenya which “celebrates people who’ve made money through dubious means” – or at least does not stop to ask how he/she acquired unlikely riches. (Fakes, counterfeits and deadly faux-medicines were suggested as but a few regular sources of elicit cash.)
She talked about tribalism, nepotism and a culture of ‘favours’. Indeed diversity took on its own specific meaning in the Kenyan context as she highlighted a need for business leaders to think of themselves as Kenyans first and as tribe members thereafter. (The default position for a Kenyan over 30 is to identify as tribe first. Favours or simply unconscious bias are a frequent result). Okuthe asserted that the onus is on business leaders to establish cultures of inclusivity and fairness – of being conscious of unconscious biases and of embracing the benefits of diversity as a sensible business strategy. She warned the room against surrounding themselves in the workplace with “people who look and sound like you”. Bluntly: it’s bad for business.
She spoke with candour of a tacit understanding or expectation that those who have reached positions of power or influence owe it to their families to ensure that they use this influence to familial benefit. She also spoke of a more ‘above board’ but no-less damaging short-termism practiced by banks and businesses looking to make a quick buck out of customers, rather than thinking about where these customers’ spending power will be coming from so as to ensure economic growth in years ahead.
Okuthe thrust down the gauntlet in the room: “We, in business, must lead by example. There is no excuse for the slightest whiff of corrupt activity in business”.
Further still, the duty of treasurers was directly addressed: “Treasurers, accountants, auditors – you must hold the corporate world to account, that is your role and that is how you help to root out corruption”.
The picture painted appears to be of a somewhat exploitative culture but Okuthe’s insight on it was much more interesting. She was not committing a character assassination on her fellow countrymen. Not stating that the Kenyan moral compass has ‘gone south’, so to speak. Rather, she suggested that such behaviour is a pretty logical consequence of a wide-spread and entrenched scarcity mentality: ‘By some fluke you have this now, you’ll never have it again so you have to really take advantage of it – now.’
And it was not only the scarcity mentality which was illustrated. It was also the fact that corruption is the enemy of earned satisfaction and pride. In a professional sense it is the opposite of ‘ownership’, which we know is key to ensuring that workers are properly invested in their work. A degree of felt ownership and investment is the lynchpin of productivity and innovation. The word fluke gives it all away.
So it makes sense that a scarcity mentality, which helps drive corrupt behaviour, works as a powerful force for propagating further disaffection, alienation and sense of scarcity in a population where notions of earning and owning are being severely undermined. The sense of powerlessness tied up in this seems to speak of a workforce who can’t yet enjoy the autonomy and choice afforded the skilled and the trained. Of course that’s not to ignore the role of law enforcement, political leadership, and many other factors crucial to reforming culture and conduct. But if knowledge is power – or rather professional agency – then over time professional training must surely act as one significant antidote to the sort of corruption described.
“Terrorist groups provide training and training means opportunity” – as Okuthe made this point its powerful rhetoric needed no elaboration. She was speaking to a room full of (potential) employers in the public and private sectors. What should be theirs to provide is being offered by a deeply dangerous and profoundly sinister competitor. But beggars are rarely choosers. If terrorists lure our most disadvantaged and disaffected young people with promises of purpose, community, payment and training, then this is business’s business.
Okuthe gave direct, hands-on instructions to her audience: “It’s up to us to help young people get to where we are one day. They need to be able to speak to business leaders – for advice, for inspiration for guidance and for education. We as a community can and must make that difference”. She emphatically cautioned against forgetting that young people have ideas which will be of enormous value to the economy as it evolves and modernises. “Don’t ignore your young people. Those millennials. Listen to them” she urged. In this she also spoke of young employees not only potential future employees. “Too often” she said “ideas get lost somewhere down there within the businesses”. That’s a lost opportunity for you, the company and the employee. It is also a lost opportunity for the economy and society.
But it’s all very well waxing lyrical on professional training, mentoring and nurturing talent. Okuthe let us know that in an economy with an estimated 1.3 million businesses, only 500,000 are registered and only 300,000 pay tax. That is to say the economy is an overwhelmingly ‘informal’ one. Who supposes that the informal economy invests in its human capital? There’s a long way to go.
However she did point convincingly to the rise of technology and of simple, effective digital solutions as a very real source of positive transformation. Technology is leapfrogging old obstacles and is effectively formalising even the smallest of businesses. Through apps and basic digital solutions, enterprise owners can now monitor output, input, supply chain, stock movement and cash flow. They can track their goods and their labour and they can measure and therefore incentivise performance. Through this data they can apply for and gain credit and they can forecast and strategise. With all of this in place the employer can suddenly begin to consider investing in his employees. He knows the skills required, the investable cash available, and the return on his investment.
Even corruption might have met its match in the pervasive power of social media and the internet. That is the power to hold to account and to disseminate information widely to the public. So, she implored, businesses must use news media and social media and internet comms responsibly, transparently and inclusively.
And due to technology (particularly the internet), the skills and education revolution starts earlier and reaches further. For all her talk of inequality, alienation and disaffection, Okuthe identified real hope in the levelling potential of the internet for young people in Africa today. The digitisation of education through long distance and e-learning, access to new forms of pedagogy, information about university or professional courses, at home or abroad, as well as access to educational texts and resources, international news and social media have vastly opened up the world for Kenya’s burgeoning workforce. Businesses will benefit from the effects of this on future generations as they mature into ‘working age’. But don’t just sit back – utilise the internet of skills so that you drive a surge in the skills you need. As much as choice is increasingly at people’s fingertips, so too is the opportunity to engage and to educate at the fingertips of private enterprise.
It was striking that at a time where significant swathes of western society threaten to throw in the towel on ‘openness’ – or at least appears to be having a severe crisis of confidence in globalisation – Okuthe had only words of enthusiasm, praise and excitement for what global citizenship – belonging to the global village – can do for our young people and future workers. And while it’s clear that the Kenyan context is markedly different to the western context, there are also impressive similarities in the problems faced.
Indeed big business strategists, small business owners and not least of all corporate treasurers in the west are plagued by economic and political volatility which, almost without exception, is tied up with societal volatility and disaffection. And that’s locally in the UK and Europe every bit as much as it is global. Indeed the dynamics which seem to underlie the rise of populism in Europe, Trumpism in the US and the Brexit bombshell here all seem to echo many of the problems described in Kenya: unemployment, lack of ownership (in every sense), disaffection with an apparently corrupt and unaccountable elite, growing inequality in wealth and residues of inequality in education ….
So why not take a leaf out of Okuthe’s book?
When it comes to volatility driving uncertainty the problems don’t look that different and the solution, she says, is in businesses stepping up to the plate and engaging with people.
