The sight of a farmer steering a pair of reluctant, weather-beaten oxen across Ukambani in 2026, the year of our lord, is undeniably romantic only if you are a tourist taking photos from a safari van.

It is medieval, native, even feudal. If you are a farmer, however, it is an anachronistic badge of shame in an era defined by AI, devolution and rapid technological progress.

As the short rains begin pounding in the next few days, relying on bovine-powered agriculture is not just inefficient; it is a direct threat to our national food security.

We live in a country that boasts Silicon Savannah, where you can buy a goat via M-Pesa while riding on a train, and order food via Uber while riding on an electric bus.

The country holds the record for running one of the cleanest electricity grids on the entire planet. Very few countries can hold a candle to us when it comes to renewable energy.

Globally, our young people are ruling the internet; rated highly for overall social media daily time spent under the sun.

Yet, when it comes to breaking ground, we still summon the shame to revert to technology that the Pharaohs would have found familiar thousands of years ago. It is a spectacular irony.

In 2010, we successfully devolved power and resources to 47 county governments, complete with flashy offices, flag-flying governors, and hefty budgets meant to transform local agriculture.

Yet, the most reliable "tractor" in many villages remains a pair of bulls aptly named after their colour, character and prowess, whose morning startup routine entails a round of whipping and yelling from their keepers.

This relies on an increasingly fragile bet: that the oncoming short rains will wait for these cows to finish their slow-motion dance.

Climate change has turned our weather patterns into a game of roulette. In the last few weeks, the sun has been raining on our hapless villages.

When the real rains finally arrive, small-scale farmers will need to plant immediately to maximise the fleeting moisture.

An ox plough takes days to clear a single acre, leaving the soil dry and the planting window missed. A tractor does it in an hour.

By sticking to the old ways, we are effectively choosing lower yields and predictable hunger, repackaged as "tradition".

The real shame, however, lies in the broken promises of devolution. Agriculture was devolved so that local leadership could solve local problems.

Counties should be flooded with shared mechanical tractor pools, accessible via simple mobile apps. The issue by now would be the tractors raring for fresh fields to plough.

Instead, the only things that seem to have been mechanised at the county level are the official convoys. The poorer the county, the longer the governor's convoy, the grander the governor’s office.

While county officials debate budget allocations in air-conditioned boardrooms, the small-scale farmer is left negotiating with a stubborn ox that has decided to take a nap in the middle of the furrow.

Growing up, one of the most traumatic experiences was witnessing a collapsed ox being woken up to its task. It entailed a combination of torture tactics, including smothering them and twisting their tails.

I always suspect this is where the next-generation village bullies, wife batterers and rogue politicians were trained.

Dark humour aside, the stakes are devastatingly high. Small-scale farmers produce the vast majority of what Kenyans eat. Leaving them to plough with animals ensures they remain locked in subsistence farming—perpetually one poor season away from needing food aid.

Mechanisation is no longer a luxury; it is the baseline for survival in this age.

It is time to retire the yoke and embrace the ignition key. If devolution is to mean anything to the rural taxpayer, it must be felt in the speed at which their fields are tilled.

We cannot march confidently into the future while dragged backwards by a pair of oxen. Let this upcoming short rain season be the last one where our food security depends on the stamina of livestock, rather than the political will of our leadership to modernise the farm.

If you are a governor and your people are still using oxen to plough in this age, resign!

Musau, an Advocate of the High Court, is a Senior Project Manager with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation. The views expressed here are his own