The World Bank projects Kenya’s economy will slow down to 5.5 this year owing to surging commodity prices and the prevailing drought in the country which has interrupted planting.
The country will receive below average rains that will negatively affect agricultural performance leaving nearly 3.1 million Kenyans in need of food aid. According to a report released in April by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), at least 3.5 million Kenyans are in desperate need of food assistance following a severe drought that was last seen 40 years ago.
The 2021 production estimates indicate that poor rains reduced maize output by 3 percent, wheat by 28 percent, and beans by 13 percent below 2020 levels.
The downturn will also be occasioned by the ongoing Russia Ukraine war which has interrupted the shipping of commodities, Pushing the inflation rate of the country’s upper. Kenya’s inflation rate jumped to 7.1 percent in May, as a result of soaring commodity prices.
According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, this is the highest reading since February 2020, as the cost of food products continued to rise sharply at 12.4 percent compared to 12.2 percent in April 2022, partly due to the war in Ukraine.
The August general elections also play a huge role in the economic downturn. Every time the country nears the election most firms put investment decisions on hold leading to the economy slowing down.
For instance, the 2017 general elections saw the economy dip to 4.81 percent from 5.88 percent the previous year. The same case happened in 2008 when the economy went down to 0.23 percent from 6.865 percent the year before.
This was however not the case in 2013 since the Kenyan economy actually expanded, a trend reversal that analysts credited to optimism over electoral and governance reforms under a new constitution instituted in 2010.
Since its independence, Kenya’s elections are always accompanied by post-election violence. Farming is usually disrupted by the land-related conflict between communities. A good example is the 2007 polls when more than 1,000 people were killed and others displaced.
Kenya highest ever inflation rate of 46 percent was recorded in 1993 just after the 1992 General Election when the country first embraced multi-party politics. The downturn was mainly attributed to the dramatic political reforms as the country shifted to a new political order.