Tool Box
Issue No. 11 - June/July 2003
Unbwoggable!
by Colin Pearce
After four decades of corruption following independence from Britain in 1963, Kenya is finally breathing easy. A new word has lessons for business in any culture.
When I was meeting with business leaders in Nairobi in February I learned a new word.
I was walking through the shopping district and noticed a man remonstrating with a street urchin. I asked my host if the boy had been caught stealing. Laughing my friend said, “No. Since the new government came to power ordinary people are taking it into their own hands to tell street children to get into school. They want Kenya’s young people to be ‘unbwoggable’.”
‘Unbwoggable’ is a locally-coined word which sounds very African if you say it in a deep enough voice. It was adopted by the Rainbow Party in 2002 in the lead-up to the election in December—an election it was unlikely to win in the face of 15 years of corruption and laziness on the part of the former government. Department heads were idle, torture, suspicion and looting of the public purse were commonplace, and no-one dared say a word against the government. Four million children roamed the streets, begging, sniffing petrol and fighting. AIDS ran unchecked.
Once prosperous and safe, Kenya had become just another African basket case.
The campaign to resurrect Kenya was a grass roots movement of the National Rainbow Coalition Party led by Emilio Mwai Kibaki which surprised the world by winning 62.2% of the votes.
To b...
