Land documents at Ardhi house, Nairobi. FILE PHOTO | LUCY WANJIRU | NMG
When lawyers staged a demonstration to protest the deplorable state of service delivery at the Land Office, they might, unwittingly, have given the erroneous impression that all was well at other government registries where they ply their trade.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. Despite all the hype about the digitalisation of government services, commercial lawyers will readily confirm that the more things have changed the more they have remained the same.
Corruption networks, which thrive on creating an artificial bureaucracy to make government services a precious commodity for sale are alive and well.
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Yet, going by the pronouncements, body language and gusto of President William Ruto since taking office, both friend and foe agree that efficiency is the buzzword in his administration.
If rhetoric could be translated into action, Kenya might well resume its stalled journey towards becoming a middle-income economy by 2030 as envisioned by our late President Mwai Kibaki and the late Tom Mboya.
According to popular legend, Malaysia and Singapore which attained independence in 1963 and 1965 respectively, simply made a copy of Kenya’s first economic blueprint contained in Sessional Paper No. 10 of 1965 entitled African Socialism and its Application to Planning in Kenya, the brainchild of Mboya and Kibaki.
Unlike us, however, they implemented it to the letter while the original continued to choke in the dust until Kibaki became President nearly four decades later.
Today, a comparison between their respective GDPs and Kenya’s looks like fiction.
If the ambitious economic growth targeted by the Ruto administration is to be achieved, the civil service will have to undergo a resolute change of mindset, systems and modus operandi, starting with registries that regulate business entities.
They must shift focus from obfuscation and the creation of unnecessary roadblocks to the delivery of concrete results within a reasonable timeframe.
This will enable businesses to get on with their agenda rather than spend valuable man-hours and financial resources chasing services that appear like a mirage.
It is ironic that in most government registries, the IT system that was installed at a huge taxpayer expense to enhance efficiency and reduce corruption is currently the most cited excuse for the unavailability or slow delivery of services.
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The Companies Registry, which is the nerve centre of corporate Kenya, has made significant strides in transiting from the manual to the digital system and thereby brought some relief to the business community.
That it is now possible to incorporate a company within a day is a commendable milestone considering that the process used to take several months not too long ago.
Unfortunately, this is about where the good news ends.
A lot more remains to be done by this important registry to improve Kenya’s ranking in the ease of doing business index from the current position 56 out of 190 economies globally, compared to Rwanda at number 38.
Fortunately, most of the existing challenges at the Companies Registry require fairly easy fixes but promise exponential returns.
The mystery of missing files which was meant to become history after digitalisation remains the most indomitable challenge at the registry.
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