Drawing other people's thinking

I'm on a mission to get humans to stretch beyond lists and linear documents and think more in systems and pictures. This often means sketching my picture of someone else's brilliant work.

This summer during Kenya’s political crisis, Professor Ken Opalo wrote a series of brilliant, rapid, analytical blogs, dissecting the causes of the crisis and proposing actions to help tackle the mess.

As well as the quality of this work, Ken Opalo’s pace of production was awe inspiring. He really skewered the tendency in some policy research institutes to regard ‘urgent’ analysis and policy engagement as a thing for months, not days.

I have to admit to being something of a Ken Opalo superfan.

Here are the three blogs (there are more since - he is super prolific!):

Kenyan Protests, Part One: The political education of President William Ruto

Kenyan Protests, Part Two: How not to clean up a fiscal mess

I also find Ken’s propositional advice very impressive - he is not one of those political economy types who tells you why things are broken, but does not get round to telling you what to do next to make things better. Blog number three is subtitled: “The case for why Ruto should stop scheming and instead focus on a narrow set of achievable goals to restore the fiscal pact, improve service delivery, and boost growth”. Ken Opalo is a ‘maker’ (propositional advice) as well as a ‘breaker’ (critical analysis).

Kenyan Protests, Part Three: Thoughts on potential pathways forward

I used Ken’s Kenya blogs a lot in my work - and I know they are widely influential.

But also a lot to chew on for the non specialist

Fiscal systems…. numbers by painting

For my own benefit, and in case it helped anyone else interested, I took Ken’s three blogs and tried to sketch out parts of the fiscal system, and the political capture of this system, that had escalated the crisis and that Ken had described so well.

These are system challenges, and so a systems diagram might lend itself to explaining what happened, why? and what can be done about this - both in terms of technical efforts, and politically.

My sketch was pretty rubbish, so as usual I got my ‘inhouse lockdown artist’ (@hamsiiidris - who actually lives hundreds of miles away now) to improve my pencil scribbles.

In case it helps - here is the picture, with an emphasis on how impunity fuelled this crisis, and where to focus attention to try and rein in bad system outcomes - like spiralling debt and infrastructure that has no connection to growth.

The emphasis (spiky lines) here is debt that ran ahead of actually having a shelf of projects to invest in; bad projects that had no clear relationship with improved economic growth; and borrowing to fund recurrent expenditures.

Information from and inspired by Ken Opalo’s blogs. Drawn by Hamsiiidris

In some ways this is a picture of the inside of my brain as I read Ken’s blogs. If you are like me and not an economist or fiscal expert, I suggest you read Ken’s blogs and perhaps run your finger over this diagram as you do. Or draw your own.

Fiscal Fan Fiction

I’m not sure if this counts as fiscal fan fiction or an homage, but thought that I would share it anyway. I also draw some pictures of my own thinking, but occasionally read a paper or Blog and just see it as a picture.