By Gloria Andonya
Kenya is not poor. It’s just badly behaved. And the worst part is, the problem isn’t only the leaders — it’s the citizens too. Compare Nairobi to Cape Town, and you’ll understand how deeply broken we are.
I’m starting to feel embarrassed about Kenya as a country. Not because of our GDP, passport ranking, or any of that superficial stuff, but because of how we behave as a society. From top leaders to ordinary citizens, we look like people who don’t want development, even though we keep crying that we do.
Everyone keeps shouting that government is corrupt, which is true, but when you look closely, the citizens behave just like the government. It’s the same mentality at a smaller scale: exploit, shortcut, disorganize, survive today, and forget about tomorrow.
Nairobi: A City Built on Impulse, Not Planning
Nairobi doesn’t lack investment, it lacks standards, discipline, structure, and shame. It’s a free-for-all city where everyone grabs, builds, dumps, screams, bribes, and blocks space. It’s a city built on impulse, not planning.
Compare that with Cape Town, where strict zoning protects order and dignity. Tourist zones remain tourist zones, slums don’t sit beside luxury hotels, and beauty is preserved through rules. Cape Town isn’t perfect, but at least it tries to look civilized. In Kenya, we destroy whatever we build as fast as we build it.
Let’s be honest. Nairobi is chaotic, dusty, and painful to look at. Westlands, supposedly upmarket, looks like an unfinished project: kiosks crammed beside five-star hotels, potholes beside skyscrapers, matatus blasting horns, and pedestrians dodging obstacles like landmines. That’s not urban life, that’s urban survival.
And we still ask why investors don’t take us seriously. Even the sky looks dirty.
The Culture of Shortcuts
This disorder is not an accident, it’s a reflection of how Kenyans think: short-termism, survival mentality, and zero civic responsibility. We talk about corruption like it’s a government disease, but citizens mirror the same behaviour the moment they get power over someone.
Landlords extort tenants. Employers underpay workers. Youth steal from online clients. Hawkers block pavements and then complain when city officers clear them. Drivers insult everyone. Pedestrians ignore rules. Everyone competes to inconvenience everyone else. We are permanently in “me first, country never” mode.
We say politicians ruined the country, but many Kenyans behave exactly like politicians, just without the budget.
Global Reputation: A Mirror of Behaviour
Internationally, Kenyans are earning a worrying reputation as unreliable freelancers and online scammers. It’s gotten so bad that some have to use VPNs to hide their Kenyan IPs, and still get banned after a few days. The shortcut mentality always exposes itself eventually.
We cry about unemployment, but most youth are not thinking about building, they’re thinking about eating fast. Instead of creating businesses, skills, or exports, we chase quick salaries and easy exits. That’s why the government now proudly exports labour like livestock, shipping citizens abroad instead of bringing jobs home.
That is not development. That’s outsourcing dignity.
The Leadership Illusion
Our leaders have no incentive to fix Kenya because their children don’t live here. They study, work, and settle abroad, far from the chaos they helped create. They’ve secured their exits while their voters choke on dust and frustration.
We keep saying, “2027 we will remove him,” but remove him and replace him with who? The same recycled class? The same mentality? You can change the face, but if the culture stays the same, the results will too.
Kenya doesn’t just have corrupt leadership, it has corrupt citizenship. And that’s far more dangerous, because you can’t vote out the mentality of 50 million people.
Poverty Isn’t the Problem — Behaviour Is
Kenya isn’t suffering from poverty, it’s suffering from behaviour.
We want New York skylines without New York discipline.
We want Dubai aesthetics without Dubai order.
We want Singapore outcomes with shortcut attitudes.
We want Scandinavian lifestyles with zero civic duty.
We say we want development, but everything about how we live shows we prefer convenience over civilisation. Until Kenyans change how they think, not how they complain, this country will remain a construction site that got abandoned halfway.
You cannot build a beautiful nation on selfishness, shortcuts, and lawlessness.
The government is corrupt because citizens are corrupt-minded.
The economy is collapsing because productivity is collapsing.
Cities are ugly because citizens treat them like dumping grounds, not shared spaces.
And the saddest part?
The same people who break Kenya are the ones asking, “Why can’t Kenya look like Cape Town?”
The real answer is simple:
Kenya could look like Cape Town, but Kenyans would destroy it within a year.
A Final Thought
We don’t need new slogans, committees, or conferences.
We need self-discipline, civic sense, and shame for disorder.
Development is not imported; it’s cultured, protected, and lived.
If we fix our behaviour, the rest will follow.