By Isaac Dan Bw’Onyancha
In recent months, the Kenya Kwanza administration has increasingly leaned on a curious model of economic empowerment: weekly political fundraisers, often dubbed “hustler engagements,” where money is mobilized and distributed to organized groups, especially in the informal sector.
While such events draw crowds and generate political mileage, they raise serious questions about sustainability, equity, and economic logic.
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Handouts, however well-intended, are not empowerment. Real empowerment lies in building a conducive and resilient economic ecosystem where businesses and investments can grow organically.
This requires deliberate policy reforms—improving the ease of doing business, expanding access to affordable credit, creating functional markets, and investing in infrastructure and human capital.
Empowerment should enable people to stand on their own, not to line up again next weekend for another envelope.
What we are witnessing is not empowerment but tokenism.
These weekly cash disbursements are rarely accompanied by financial literacy, reinvestment strategies, or accountability mechanisms.
Once the money is handed out and the politicians leave, the structural poverty remains.
No economy has ever transformed on the back of random, untraceable giveaways.
More concerning is the selective nature of these fundraisers.
The so-called empowerment drives are disproportionately concentrated in politically aligned regions, raising legitimate concerns of state-sanctioned favoritism.
Such development bias contradicts the constitutional principle of equitable resource distribution and undermines national cohesion.
Face the truth
State power must never be used to reward political loyalty at the expense of fairness.
This is, in truth, President Ruto’s biggest game of brinkmanship—an elaborate performance meant to hoodwink citizens into believing the government is actively working for the vulnerable hustlers.
It is a distraction from the hard policy choices and structural reforms that remain unattended.
The optics are clever, but the outcomes are hollow.
If the government is sincere about uplifting hustlers and grassroots enterprises, it must pursue institutional solutions. Strengthen SACCOs and cooperatives.
Empower the youth and women enterprise funds. Remove bottlenecks to credit. Support innovation hubs in counties. Empowerment should be measurable, inclusive, and transformative—not just loud and performative.
Kenya does not lack entrepreneurial spirit. What it lacks is a coherent, inclusive economic policy that gives citizens dignity through sustainable livelihoods.
In the end, no amount of staged generosity can replace the hard work of governance. A nation is not built on optics, but on opportunity.
Dan Onyancha is a Leadership and Governance expert and commentator
