Perhaps the irony will be lost on policy makers and politicians who have so far maintained that we are on course to become an industrialised nation in the next 20 years. The counter-argument has never been that it is an impossible feat, it has been that we don't have what it takes, and we have not done what we must, in order to realise such a bold ambition.

The Kenya Human Development Report, launched on Friday by Planning Minister Gideon Ndambuki is blunt. "It is highly ambitious and premature to dream of industrialising by the year 2020," it says. If this was coming from the pundits or Opposition politicians, it would be said that this is yet another attempt to pour cold water on the government's efforts enthusiasm for economic development.

Unlike God who made things come into being by ordering them to do so, we cannot order the economy to grow. neither can we wish industrial development into being. The message of the report is that there are critical pre-requisites to the kind of massive take-off the 2020 plan envisages.

At what point do we count ourselves industrialised? When industry contributes 50 per cent of the GDP or more? If that is the case, then we have some way to go. Today, as the report points out, industry contributes a mere 13 per cent of the GDP. Can its contribution grow by 37 per cent in 20 years and two months?

The answer is, of course, yes. But if only the next 20 years are, among other things, dedicated to toil, sweat and first-class management and governance. As the report points out, for any meaningful economic change to take place, there must be a ground-swell of popular participation. , not merely in the reform current process, but also in the economy.

The 50 per cent or so of the Kenyan population that lives on or below the poverty line cannot participate, in their present state, in the economy other than as consumers. The millions of unemployed can not put in their proper share unless they are first provided with the means to make themselves useful.

The government is known for producing excellent reports and policy papers which it then forgets before the ink dries. If the 2020 dream is to come true, that has to change. It also will need to convince Kenyans that it can provide the leadership, the vision, the discipline and the energy to get a disillusioned, skecptical and apathetic nation going again. Question is, will it?

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