Many Kenyans refusing basic income experiment

I've actually lived and worked in Africa for much of my life. I'm married to a Congolese and have been surrounded for a dozen years by that culture. My family has worked and works in Africa. I've spent years working for organizations that ran projects across Africa. My questions and cynicism doesn't fall out of the air.

If you take issue with points I've raised, good manners dictate that you reply to those points without trying to punish me for raising them, as some of you did, which is cool.

That's not to say that system of checks works. Places like Florida have enacted mandatory drug testing for welfare recipients, so there's obviously some political will to punish and regulate the poor.

Giving people money for a limited time doesn't give them the notion, that they can rely on the money supply for the rest of their lives. They still have to earn an equivalent sum once the supply stops and make their decisions accordingly.

I'm not sure how representative this project is. I mean, if someone tried a pilot project in San Antonio, would the results of that project be taken as a representative outcome for Texas or the United States? Remember, this "sampling," such as it is, is different from the kind of sampling they do on opinion polls, why they query a small but representative sample of the population.

My guess as to why they're failing is that they're not clearly elucidating their purposes and intentions. For instance, I can confirm to you that if you came to Kenya where you gave, say, high milk-production breeds of cows to dairy farmers, or any other similar thing with a clear quid (if not pro quo), then the uptake would probably overwhelm you.

But with free basic income, it's a very counter-intuitive idea. What do you mean you're giving me free money? Where is it coming from? What's your intention? What do I have to do for it?

If they were to explain that they're conducting an experiment (I bet they're not clear on that point) where they want to see what people would do with their lives if they had a certain basic income guaranteed by someone (say, government), then Kenyans would take you up on the offer, I'm sure. After all, many Kenyans expect and often call upon the government to help in all kinds of areas, so if you took that basic-income-provided-by-government angle as your ultimate goal, I think people would listen.

That lack of clarity is what is most likely causing people to shun the money.

It's not that Kenyans don't want free money. We probably do. After all,we seem to be very keen, for example, on these churches where you "plant a seed" (give money to the church in exchange for "blessings"), and money given out during political campaign seasons (we have one coming up next year) always seems to be taken up very well. But in these cases, the financial logic is not clear.

Where is the logic with free basic income? If you don't clearly and understandably explain that to people, you're going to fail. Especially if when they ask you to explain and your response is something along the lines of "Why do you care? It's free money, you sucker living below the poverty line." (I'm not saying that's what happened. But I wouldn't be surprised if it was).

PS: Just because I'm Kenyan doesn't make me an expert, or even basic informed, on Kenya. Just because you live in a country doesn't necessarily mean you understand it. Exhibit A: Trump supporters. Exhibit B: Brexit.

Edit: typo.