Over the last three years, I have chosen to spend a large proportion of my time here. I receive no special benefits. I get the same salary and I pay the same taxes as I do when I work in the UK. In Kenya, I have made friends that I know I will have for the rest of my life. I can even watch Manchester United on television here more often than I can watch them in Manchester.

During my career, I have worked in more than 20 countries. Everywhere is different. There are good things and bad things about every country. But one thing I am certain of: Kenya is the country that irritates me most. This is because Kenya is the place that is furthest away from what it could, and should, be.

You should be the economic powerhouse of East Africa and the wider region. Kenya has a coastline within easy reach of major trade routes and with a deep-water port. You control the trade into a large proportion of the continent. You have fertile land with great agricultural potential. There is usually plenty of rain. You should be a net food exporter. You have unrivalled attractions across the country. You should earn so much more than you do from tourism.

Your managers are as well educated as any I have worked with in Europe or in the United States. I am aware of Kenyan-owned companies as well-managed as any I know in those countries. I can find Kenyan products of world-class quality. Investors should be fighting to gain access to these competencies, to your market and relatively cheap labour. At times, I can enjoy excellent service here. I have received better health-care in Kenya than I have ever received in the UK. You are capable of all these things. You do them now.

You are also one of the poorest countries on earth, and growing poorer. History has never been my favourite subject. We cannot change the past and I am certainly not qualified to comment on yours. Kenya is where it is. What matters now is where it goes in the future. I see examples all over the place of Kenyan doing the right things properly. I just do not see them happening enough of the time.

I am annoyed when I hear Kenyans accepting a situation with a "what do you expect, this is Kenya". I know I am considered an arrogant mzungu because I want things to be different; because I am critical of so much that happens here. Those people that consider me arrogant miss the point. I can go back to my country. I want things to be different for you. You seem to be complacent. You seem to accept things as they are and not challenge or change them.

Why are you all prepared to stand in queues in banks for ages to get access to your own money? I'm not. Banks in Europe and America would not dare treat their customers that way, so why do they do it here? Why do you sit meekly when you are ripped-off in a restaurant? I create a fuss. You don't. I expect my elected representatives to run the country for the benefit of society in general. You don't seem to.

In Kenya, too few people actually make things happen. They are dragged along by events. In Kenya there is too little change for the better. Nobody seems to own the problems. It is what I term a ''blame' culture. People avoid responsibility by blaming someone else. I am always hearing "It's the government's fault?' Or ''It's the donors' fault", or ''It's's the other department's fault". The buck does not stop anywhere and things do not change.

I have become interested in semantics in the last few years. I used to think I understood the meaning of the word "infrastructure", but my understanding was very shallow until I experienced your roads, railway and telephone system. Equally, my understanding of the terms "good governance" and "rule of law" have been clarified by my experiences here.

I am also interested in your use of words. When an overloaded and defective bus is driven much too fast for the road conditions, and it crashes and kills people, then that is not an "accident". It is a certainty. You use democracy to mean that you vote for people to go to Parliament. The word democracy is meaningless unless those who represent you also exercise a high degree of personal accountability and spend the bulk of their energies moving society forward, helping people.

As an example of this, I find it difficult to accept your apparent lack of concern regarding the carnage on your roads. Year after year, people are dying in large numbers for reasons that are well within the control of the authorities. Why you allow the authorities to avoid the responsibilities for which you elected them is beyond me.

I do not understand why senior public servants and government ministers have not resigned in the past. To my mind, the years of criminal inaction followed by the recent substantial loss of life should have brought down the government. It would have, in a democratic country.

I have always been in favour of the richer countries providing emergency humanitarian aid. I also used to believe that my Government should increase the amounts we provide for development aid to poorer countries. Now, I question that. When I came to Africa, I expected the poverty, not the wealth. I know many more rich people in Kenya than I know in England.

In Kenya, it is difficult to see the benefit of development aid, but easy to find examples of the money being misused. Anyway, does providing help in this way only paper over the cracks and extend the time before you sort yourselves out? The flow of aid, and the much more valuable flow of investment funds, will not grow unless a more open, more representative government creates the confidence to attract them. If you choose not to do this, why should I give you money?

There are signs that you have become serious about overcoming corruption. I cannot overstate how important this is for your society. I sometimes hear, as a justification, that corruption exists everywhere in the world. That is probably true. It is a question of degree.

Here corruption oils the wheels of your society. It is endemic. I believe it is destroying aspects of your social order as quietly and as efficiently as Aids. If all the ingenuity and energy that is currently put into corruption and its bedfellows – nepotism, cronyism and tribalism – were instead directed into honest toil, then Kenya would be well on its way to achieving the status and wealth it is capable of.

Well, that is how I see things. What do you think? And, more importantly, what are you going to do about it?

*Mr McKenna is a British management consultant currently on assignment in Kenya.