Why only multi-millionaires get senior government positions

By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

25 May 2025

Chris Harris is has observed that “all the candidates for state offices are multi-millionaires as per their net-worth revelations”. He is worried that this implies that only wealthy Kenyans have the brains to run state affairs. Is this a valid concern? I guess it depends on how you look at it.

By law, senior government positions in Kenya can only be filled by people who have high levels of education – at least a university degree. Candidates for the technocrat cadres (Principal Secretaries, heads of state corporations etc.) require many years of working experience, usually more than 10 years, in addition to the academic credentials. We certainly don’t want a recent college graduate to be in charge of a government department!

Now, who is a millionaire in Kenya? Isn’t it a person whose net worth is in the millions of shillings? And how much does one need to set aside monthly in order to accumulate one million shillings in, say, ten years? It’s a simple calculation: 1,000,000 divided by 120 months. The answer is Sh8,334.

Should we then be surprised that a university degree holder with more than ten years’ working experience has accumulated a few million shillings worth of assets? For me; I would be concerned if they hadn’t!

Furthermore; this is not how to gain financial wealth – by saving! It is accumulated by investing in cheap assets, disposing them for a profit and using the funds to acquire more valuable assets.

I suspect that this is where the confusion arises: the difficulty in distinguishing the net worth of an individual from their income. If a person is worth, say, Sh50 million, it does NOT mean that he earns Sh50 million! It also does NOT mean that he has Sh50 million in the bank!

Elon Musk, for example, is reportedly worth over $400 billion; this is not money in his bank accounts! It is simply the market value of his assets. One might wonder how Musk paid for such valuable assets. Well, probably very little. The $400 billion figure is NOT what he paid for the assets; it is what he could get if he decided to sell them at today’s prices.

In the year 2001, I bought a 50 x 100 plot for Sh48,000. If I wanted to sell it today, I could easily get at least Sh3 million. Since, I don’t have any loans currently, then, by that one asset alone, I am worth Sh3 million… and I hold a master’s degree and over 35 years working experience. I’m a good candidate for a senior government position!