THE CHURCH OF UNEMPLOYMENT: How Africa’s Leaders Built GOD TEMPLES INSTEAD OF FACTORIES:

In Africa, where unemployment queues stretch longer than Sunday sermons, our leaders have chosen to solve the job crisis by building churches—divine real estate dedicated to holy worship and unholy waste. It is a continent where prayers are policy, and incense is infrastructure.

While Asia was building factories, Africa was laying foundation stones for cathedrals. While Latin America was creating free trade zones, African presidents were holding crusades with budgets fatter than ministries of industry. While Europe invested in AI and robotics, Africa invested in choirs, altars, and imported Italian tiles for the “House of the Lord.”

President Félix Houphouët-Boigny of Côte d’Ivoire takes the early gold medal in the Holy Olympics of waste. In the late 1980s, he built the world’s largest church—the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace—in Yamoussoukro, a sleepy administrative capital with more goats than cars. It was modeled after St. Peter’s Basilica, but at a time when most Ivorians didn’t have access to piped water.

The church cost over $300 million, or more than KES 39 billion today, in a country where per capita income was under $1,000. But who needs bread when they can kneel on Italian marble? The Basilica can sit 18,000 people, but it rarely sees more than 300 during services. Talk about ghost towns.

Not to be outdone, Kenya’s President William Ruto is following the sacred script. In 2024, he broke ground on a KES 1.2 billion church funded by the government. Not privately funded, not crowd-funded, but taxpayer-funded. On public land. In a country with over 20 million unemployed youth.

This is divine irony. In a nation where mothers die giving birth on cold hospital benches, the President is busy constructing a massive sanctuary for prayers. Perhaps he’s hoping God will descend and fix our broken economy after the final stone is laid.

We are building pews while others are building production lines. We are importing crosses from China while exporting our youth to slavery in the Middle East. We are building cement blocks while drowning in public debt.

Kenya’s national unemployment rate stands above 43%, but among the youth aged 18-34, it soars past 85%. Instead of vocational centers, we get mega churches. Instead of seed capital, we get oil-anointed handkerchiefs.

But this is not just Kenya or Côte d’Ivoire. Uganda’s President Museveni has built and funded religious institutions while suppressing youth-led entrepreneurship. Nigeria’s politicians donate SUVs to pastors while their graduates sell phone accessories at roundabouts.

It seems across Africa, political salvation is achieved not through economic performance, but through church optics. A leader is considered moral if he tithes KES 10 million, not if he creates 10,000 jobs.

And don’t forget the “prayer breakfasts”—annual budget-funded events that pretend to solve poverty through Scripture while ignoring data. In Kenya, every crisis is met with a prayer rally, as if God moonlights as a civil engineer.

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Data from the World Bank shows that manufacturing contributes less than 10% to Kenya’s GDP. In contrast, countries like Vietnam and Bangladesh, which were once poorer than Kenya, now export billions worth of garments, electronics, and furniture.

Why? Because they built factories, not sanctuaries. They trained youth in welding, coding, and machining, not just in reciting Psalms.

Africa’s youth are not lazy. They are not prayer-resistant. They are policy-starved. They are infrastructure-deprived. And they are tired of being told to “wait on the Lord” when what they need is a job in the morning.

President Ruto’s KES 1.2 billion could have set up 12 cottage industries at KES 100 million each. That’s eight regions equipped with juice processing, maize milling, fish freezing, or leather tanning. Tens of thousands of jobs—gone to heaven instead.

Instead of turning Kenya into a breadbasket, we are turning it into a prayer mat. Instead of industrial parks, we get pastoral visits. Instead of exporting farm produce, we export prayer warriors to crusades in South Africa.

The tragedy is, these churches will eventually become museums of failure. Tourists will visit and marvel: “So this is where an entire economy was sacrificed on the altar.”

Meanwhile, thousands graduate every year into an economy with no space. No startups, no capital, just pulpits and politicians quoting Jeremiah 29:11.

But let’s be fair. Churches are not evil. Faith is not the enemy. What’s criminal is using public money to construct spiritual monuments in the name of politics while neglecting the constitutional obligation to provide jobs, healthcare, and dignity.

We can love God without stealing from the poor. We can be devout without being delusional. God doesn’t need a palace to hear our cries. But a hungry youth needs a factory to answer theirs.

The Kenyan Constitution declares Kenya a secular state. Yet, the President behaves like a Bishop-in-Chief, complete with government donations to religious outfits, crusade appearances, and now, his taxpayer-funded temple.

In 2024, Kenya increased taxes on basic items—bread, sanitary pads, fuel—while channeling public funds to construct a cathedral. Jesus fed the hungry; Kenya’s government feeds the altar.

Ruto’s administration argues the church will be a “national monument for spiritual unity.” But spirituality doesn’t pay rent. You can’t tithe your way out of poverty if there’s no income.

It’s time we called this what it is: state-sponsored religio-political propaganda. It’s a smokescreen to distract citizens from an underperforming economy and misplaced priorities.

Imagine what KES 1.2 billion could do in Wajir or Turkana. Boreholes. Irrigation. Goat-milk processing plants. School feeding programs. But all that is too mundane for politicians chasing eternity.

The youth, left out of the budget and the ballot, are told to stay calm—God will provide. But heaven has no employment office. Earthly governments do.

The worst part? This religious-political theater works. It buys loyalty, it distracts criticism, and it confuses voters into believing poverty is part of God’s plan, not failed governance.

Meanwhile, leaders live lavishly, shielded from the consequences of their decisions. Their children study abroad. They don’t queue at SHIF clinics. They don’t beg for HELB disbursements.

And yet, they stand at pulpits and lecture jobless youth about patience, faith, and national unity—while building concrete temples for political branding.

Even Jesus, who chased merchants out of the temple, would probably chase some of our leaders out of their taxpayer-funded cathedrals.

Africa doesn’t lack faith. We’ve got enough to export. What we lack is leadership that believes in people as much as it claims to believe in God.

Ruto’s church is not the first, and sadly, it may not be the last. But it is a stark reminder of how African leadership still treats development like divine intervention instead of deliberate action.

In a sane nation, every billion spent should create jobs, not cement legacy. In a working democracy, building churches should be left to believers, not budgeted by government ministries.

The jobless Kenyan youth does not need more sermons. They need welding machines, design studios, and dairy coolers. They need policy, not parables.

A government should worship competence, not popularity. It should be based on science, not superstition. It should lay industrial foundations, not altar stones.

But here we are, led by men who would rather meet pastors than planners, who think you can rebuke inflation with prayer and chase away unemployment with fasting.

Until we build factories instead of sanctuaries, until we empower youth instead of misleading them, Africa will remain a land of holy hunger.

So let the bells ring, let choirs sing. But know this: every note echoes the cry of a jobless graduate. Every prayer whispers a policy that was never written.

And when the ribbon is cut and the cameras flash at Ruto’s cathedral, the unemployed youth will still be kneeling—not in reverence, but in economic desperation.

This is the Gospel according to African Leadership: Blessed are those who suffer now, for their reward shall come in heaven—after the president finishes his second term.

Amen.

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