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At different moments over the past year, a similar question has been put to rising political voices: If given the chance, what would you do differently?
It sounds like a simple question. It isn’t.
During the Gen Z protests, one of the most visible young voices, Kasmuel McOure, was asked precisely that. He spoke fluently about what was wrong: corruption, exclusion, a broken system. But when it came to what he would actually do differently, the clarity faded. The critique was sharp. The alternative was not.
More recently, Senator Edwin Sifuna appeared in a local interview. He has built a reputation as an articulate, confident communicator, and again, he did not disappoint in criticism. Yet when pressed on what would distinguish his approach in office, the response leaned more toward positioning than a clear plan. At one point, the strongest assurance offered to listeners was that, at the very least, he would not harm their children in the way he accuses the current administration under William Ruto of doing.
That is a powerful political line. It is not a governing strategy.
Similarly, Hon. Babu Owino has been increasingly visible, including in media appearances where he signals ambition to replace Johnson Sakaja as Nairobi governor. He speaks with confidence about the failures of the current administration and positions himself as a capable alternative. Yet when the conversation turns to what a different Nairobi would concretely look like under his leadership: how systems would change, how priorities would be sequenced, how constraints would be managed, the detail remains thin.
These are not isolated moments. They reveal a pattern.
Kenya does not lack intelligent, energetic, or articulate leaders. What it consistently lacks is something else: the ability, or perhaps the incentive, to translate critique into clear, implementable alternatives.
We are very good at explaining what is wrong. We are far less disciplined about explaining what would work instead.
That gap is not accidental. It is produced.
The first driver is incentives: politics rewards persuasion, not execution. To rise in public visibility, a leader must capture attention, mobilise emotion, and frame issues in ways that resonate quickly. Media formats favour sharp lines, not structured plans. Social media amplifies outrage more efficiently than nuance. In such an environment, the skill that gets rewarded is the ability to diagnose problems in ways that feel compelling, not the ability to design solutions that are operationally sound.
Over time, leaders optimise for the game they are playing.
The second issue is that there is little penalty for vagueness. A politician can promise to “create jobs,” “fix healthcare,” or “empower youth” without ever specifying how those outcomes will be achieved. There is rarely a requirement to present costed plans, define trade-offs, or outline timelines. And because voters are rarely given structured ways to compare proposals on those terms, the cycle continues. Clarity becomes optional.
The third issue runs deeper. Kenya lacks a strong culture of policy design and evaluation in its political space. There is limited emphasis on post-implementation learning, on asking why past policies failed, what assumptions proved wrong, and what should change as a result. Without that discipline, each election cycle becomes an opportunity to repackage familiar ideas rather than refine them.
This is why leadership changes, but outcomes often remain the same.
When a new figure comes in, they inherit not just the problems of the previous administration, but also the same incentives, the same institutional constraints, and the same absence of rigorous policy thinking. Without a shift in how problems are approached, different people end up producing similar results.
The cost of this is not abstract.
It shows up in cities like Nairobi, where persistent issues: waste management, traffic congestion, informal settlements, and service delivery, are well-known and widely discussed. Each administration arrives promising change. Each encounters the same constraints. And without a clearly articulated strategy that accounts for those constraints, progress is slower than it could be.
The issue is not that solutions do not exist. Many have been proposed, tested, and refined in different contexts. The problem is that they are rarely integrated into a coherent, realistic plan that connects ambition to execution.
What would it look like?
First, any serious leadership claim should be tied to a clear theory of action. If a candidate wants to transform Nairobi, for instance, they should be able to explain (plainly) what their top three priorities are, what specific steps they would take in the first 12 to 24 months, what those steps would cost, and what trade-offs they would require. What will be cut to fund new initiatives? Which interests will be challenged? What happens if initial plans do not work?
These are not technical details. They are the substance of leadership.
Second, media platforms need to evolve the questions they ask. It is not enough to ask leaders what they think about an issue. The more revealing question is: what would you do, specifically, and what would you give up to do it? Until that becomes standard, it will remain easy to substitute rhetoric for strategy.
Third, voters themselves play a role. As long as political success is driven primarily by identity, personality, or emotional resonance, leaders will continue to optimise for those signals. A shift toward rewarding clarity, however uncomfortable, would change the equilibrium.
None of this is to dismiss the importance of critique. Calling out failure matters. Holding power to account matters. But critique is only the first step. Without a credible path forward, it does not translate into better outcomes.
Kenya is not short of voices willing to point out what is broken. It is short of leaders who can convincingly explain how to fix it under real-world constraints.
The next generation of leadership will not be defined by who speaks the loudest or even the most eloquently about problems. It will be defined by who can connect ideas to execution, who can move from diagnosis to design.
Until then, we will continue to cycle through articulate critics who, when confronted with the hardest question: “What would you do differently?”, offer answers that are compelling in tone, but incomplete in substance.
And the system will remain largely unchanged.
George Nyongesa is a lecturer of philosophy and logic at the University of Nairobi and Chuka University
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At different moments over the past year, a similar question has been put to rising political voices: If given the chance, what would you do differently?
It sounds like a simple question. It isn’t.
During the Gen Z protests, one of the most visible young voices, Kasmuel McOure, was asked precisely that. He spoke fluently about what was wrong: corruption, exclusion, a broken system. But when it came to what he would actually do differently, the clarity faded. The critique was sharp. The alternative was not.
More recently, Senator Edwin Sifuna appeared in a local interview. He has built a reputation as an articulate, confident communicator, and again, he did not disappoint in criticism. Yet when pressed on what would distinguish his approach in office, the response leaned more toward positioning than a clear plan. At one point, the strongest assurance offered to listeners was that, at the very least, he would not harm their children in the way he accuses the current administration under William Ruto of doing.
That is a powerful political line. It is not a governing strategy.
Similarly, Hon. Babu Owino has been increasingly visible, including in media appearances where he signals ambition to replace Johnson Sakaja as Nairobi governor. He speaks with confidence about the failures of the current administration and positions himself as a capable alternative. Yet when the conversation turns to what a different Nairobi would concretely look like under his leadership: how systems would change, how priorities would be sequenced, how constraints would be managed, the detail remains thin.
These are not isolated moments. They reveal a pattern.
Kenya does not lack intelligent, energetic, or articulate leaders. What it consistently lacks is something else: the ability, or perhaps the incentive, to translate critique into clear, implementable alternatives.
We are very good at explaining what is wrong. We are far less disciplined about explaining what would work instead.
That gap is not accidental. It is produced.
The first driver is incentives: politics rewards persuasion, not execution. To rise in public visibility, a leader must capture attention, mobilise emotion, and frame issues in ways that resonate quickly. Media formats favour sharp lines, not structured plans. Social media amplifies outrage more efficiently than nuance. In such an environment, the skill that gets rewarded is the ability to diagnose problems in ways that feel compelling, not the ability to design solutions that are operationally sound.
Over time, leaders optimise for the game they are playing.
The second issue is that there is little penalty for vagueness. A politician can promise to “create jobs,” “fix healthcare,” or “empower youth” without ever specifying how those outcomes will be achieved. There is rarely a requirement to present costed plans, define trade-offs, or outline timelines. And because voters are rarely given structured ways to compare proposals on those terms, the cycle continues. Clarity becomes optional.
The third issue runs deeper. Kenya lacks a strong culture of policy design and evaluation in its political space. There is limited emphasis on post-implementation learning, on asking why past policies failed, what assumptions proved wrong, and what should change as a result. Without that discipline, each election cycle becomes an opportunity to repackage familiar ideas rather than refine them.
This is why leadership changes, but outcomes often remain the same.
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When a new figure comes in, they inherit not just the problems of the previous administration, but also the same incentives, the same institutional constraints, and the same absence of rigorous policy thinking. Without a shift in how problems are approached, different people end up producing similar results.
The cost of this is not abstract.
It shows up in cities like Nairobi, where persistent issues: waste management, traffic congestion, informal settlements, and service delivery, are well-known and widely discussed. Each administration arrives promising change. Each encounters the same constraints. And without a clearly articulated strategy that accounts for those constraints, progress is slower than it could be.
The issue is not that solutions do not exist. Many have been proposed, tested, and refined in different contexts. The problem is that they are rarely integrated into a coherent, realistic plan that connects ambition to execution.
What would it look like?
First, any serious leadership claim should be tied to a clear theory of action. If a candidate wants to transform Nairobi, for instance, they should be able to explain (plainly) what their top three priorities are, what specific steps they would take in the first 12 to 24 months, what those steps would cost, and what trade-offs they would require. What will be cut to fund new initiatives? Which interests will be challenged? What happens if initial plans do not work?
These are not technical details. They are the substance of leadership.
Second, media platforms need to evolve the questions they ask. It is not enough to ask leaders what they think about an issue. The more revealing question is: what would you do, specifically, and what would you give up to do it? Until that becomes standard, it will remain easy to substitute rhetoric for strategy.
Third, voters themselves play a role. As long as political success is driven primarily by identity, personality, or emotional resonance, leaders will continue to optimise for those signals. A shift toward rewarding clarity, however uncomfortable, would change the equilibrium.
None of this is to dismiss the importance of critique. Calling out failure matters. Holding power to account matters. But critique is only the first step. Without a credible path forward, it does not translate into better outcomes.
Kenya is not short of voices willing to point out what is broken. It is short of leaders who can convincingly explain how to fix it under real-world constraints.
The next generation of leadership will not be defined by who speaks the loudest or even the most eloquently about problems. It will be defined by who can connect ideas to execution, who can move from diagnosis to design.
Until then, we will continue to cycle through articulate critics who, when confronted with the hardest question: “What would you do differently?”, offer answers that are compelling in tone, but incomplete in substance.
And the system will remain largely unchanged.
George Nyongesa is a lecturer of philosophy and logic at the University of Nairobi and Chuka University
By George Nyongesa