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Deputy President William Ruto’s right-hand woman Kandara MP Alice Wahome has become the subject of online banter after fumbling her interview on Citizen TV.
Wahome was a guest on Citizen Tv’s Daybreak show where she was hosted by Sam Gituku who questioned her about the DP’s proposed economic model.
Biting her tongue, the vocal Mt Kenya MP struggled to explain Ruto’s ‘bottom up’ strategy, triggering criticism that she did not understand what it meant.
Below is a breakdown of the conversation that has now gone viral on social media.
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Sam Gituku: What is trickle-down and bottom-up in simpler terms?
Wahome: By working from the bottom down
Sam Gituku: Top-down?
Wahome: Yeah...from up to...you know from top to bottom.
The confusing explanation turned into the mother of online jokes from Kenyans who transformed the short clip into a sharable meme.
This comes just hours after Jubilee Secretary General Raphael Tuju rubbished the bottom-up slogan by explicitly translating it into Swahili.
Trickle-down vs Bottom-Up economy models
According to economics experts, the two approaches to economic policies differ in the fact that one prioritises resource allocation to macro players who are then expected to pass down the benefits down the ladder while the other is the complete opposite.
In the Trickle-down model, capital is given to entrepreneurs who then creates jobs resulting in economic growth, and, ultimately, improved governance.
On the other hand, the Bottom-Up model advocates that small scale trade builds regional economies up to the macro level.
“Consider the difference between giving Sh54 billion in aid to the Government of Kenya versus buying apparel from Kenya that allows 500 different entrepreneurs to make profits of Sh100 million each,” explains former Harvard Business Review senior editor Gardiner Morse.
“While building identical foreign-exchange reserves, the latter creates many more jobs, produces bigger economic ripple effects, aligns the government’s interests with the country’s prosperity through taxation, and disperses power to a large number of businesses—all of which promotes democracy and growth,” he adds.