Calculating the value and mass of Kenya

By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

11 February 2024

David Wanyoike was not fully satisfied with my take on Elon Musk’s net worth versus Kenya’s GDP. He asks: “…so, what is the value of Kenya?”. This is not an easy question. Which value are we talking about? Is it the land or the minerals underground or, perhaps, that of all businesses in the country - big, small & micro - combined?

A geological survey report published last year identified 970 distinct minerals found all over the country. However, their potential value was not given. Nevertheless, in 2013, a private company, Cortec Corporation, announced that it had found minerals worth about US$100 billion in Kwale county. In addition, there is probably at least another US$100 billion of oil in Turkana. Altogether, then, the value of the minerals in Kenya should be in the order of trillions of dollars.

I discussed this question of the value of all the land in Kenya (all the 143 million acres) in this column in April 2019. The total came to about Sh286 trillion, which is about US$1.76 trillion at today’s exchange rates. But, of course, the land hasn’t been offered for sale!

What about businesses in Kenya? From the foregoing, we can also expect their combined value to also be in the order of trillions of dollars. Consequently, it is clear that the wealthiest person in the world is nowhere near worth as much as Kenya!

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Githuku Mungai added a different twist when he wondered about the mass of Kenya. He asked me: “Is it true that the moon is 12,250 times heavier than Kenya?”. He didn’t say where he got that information from but I thought I should fact-check it.

The mass of the moon is known – about 73 billion-billion tonnes. The mass of the earth is also known – 6,000 billion-billion tonnes. If we divide 6,000 by 73, we get about 82; that is, the earth is 82 times the mass of the moon.

So, what is the mass of Kenya? To find the answer we need to compare the area of our country (580,000 square km) to the total are of the planet (510 million square km). The answer is 0.00114. This is also the fraction of the earth’s mass that belongs to Kenya. Thus, the mass of Kenya is about 7 billion-billion tonnes.

It turns out, therefore, that the moon is just 10 times the mass of Kenya. Perhaps Githuku should tell us where he got the figure 12,250 from…