Kenya is a nation of happy people. We are optimists. A major survey recently commissioned by Expo 2020 Dubai and conducted by British public opinion firm YouGov, called the Global Optimism Outlook Survey, measured the level of optimism amongst representative samples. Twenty-thousand participants around the world shared their thoughts.
The results about Kenya were easy to predict. Kenyans are the most optimistic nation in Africa.
The global average was only 56 per cent of people, while the continental average lists 64 per cent of Africans as optimists. Seventy per cent of Kenyans are optimistic.
Despite it all, we are a happy continent. The only region in the world more optimistic than Africa is South America, where 74 per cent of those who took part in the polls turned out as optimists.
According to the survey, Kenyans exhibited natural resource conservation, alternative energy and zero waste as the main principles to achieve a good future.
In terms of unlocking opportunity in future decades, 85 per cent of Kenyans believe that knowledge gathering, learning and access to education are the main keys.
It certainly is a good thing that President Uhuru Kenyatta places the focus, time and again, on nature conservation and improving the educational system, since these issues are so important to us. CLIMATE CHANGE
The number that made me most proud to be Kenyan when I read the results of the poll was that 70 per cent of us are optimistic about human’s ability to combat climate change.
We have seen first-hand how possible it is to fight environmental damage – just consider the President Uhuru Kenyatta’s plastic bag ban and his work in Geneva at the UN to stop illegal ivory poaching.
It is easy to be swept up in the world’s pessimistic mood, especially after observing global leaders conferring at the UN General Assembly in New York.
If an alien were to land on earth and hear this verbal sparring, he would think that we are doomed.
The future of Kenya is bright and exciting.
We are on track to becoming a middle income country in the next decade, as planned in the Vision 2030 development agenda.
Pilot programmes of universal healthcare have shown great success and will soon roll out to other counties.
This will help alleviate the vicious cycle of poor health and poverty.
It appears that this sense of optimism has much to do with the feeling of unity that permeates our national fabric.There is a well-known African proverb that says, “if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together”. Its wisdom is as relevant today as ever.
The Swahili idea of harambee goes far back beyond the founding of the modern Kenya, but it rose to prominence in the 1960s.
Encouraging citizens to come together as a community and help each other out was the basis for all of our original state planning and development agenda.
Since then, there have been a few gloomy periods of disunity in our history. We persevered under a difficult period of rule in the 1980s and 1990s.
We fought each other bitterly in the aftermath of the 2007 General Elections. But today is different.
We have a leader who extended an olive branch to the leader of the opposition.
President Uhuru Kenyatta is not a leader of his tribe, he is the servant leader. Every step he takes seems to be based on consultations with representatives from each diverse group within the country.
There are a great deal of things to be hopeful for as we share in the achievements of our fellow countrymen. And that is why we are a nation of optimists.
