When I watched and listened keenly President Uhuru Kenyatta’s eighth State of Nation Address, on Tuesday , November 30, 2021. The saying; “All roads lead to Rome,” cropped up in my mind especially when he talked of dead capital-reference of his injection of armed forces into state’s projects.
He praised the move to get the Kenya Defence Forces, who diligently turned around key parastatals into profitability, which he attributed to their “unity of command, military efficient and reasonable pricing”. Here he was referring to Kenya Meat Commission.
Well, digging into my high school history. Rome conquered the ancient world because her soldiers were better armed than their enemies. They fought bravely and obeyed their officers.
Towns, forts and roads were built. Roman roads were given good drainage and a hard surface so that the Army could march swiftly a feat Uhuru borrowed to lay over 10,000 kilometres of tarmacked roads, more than double what the previous administration including the colonial governments had been able to achieve.
Also, like Roman Empire-Byzantine-through the big push, his administration was able to build, again through borrowing, the first post-independence railway [Standard Gauge Railway] and sea port [Lamu Port]
In brief, the Empire was linked together by trade, enabled by its splendid roads so carefully surveyed and laid down by the soldiers were not only military roads along which troops could march at speed, but they were the routes used by Imperial messengers hurrying with orders from the capital, and along which trundled most of the world’s wealth and trade. For Uhuru, he envisage East Africa, Africa and world at large.