In my base classes, I always teach the likes of Austine Arnold that for a country to grow, you must deliberately work on microeconomics, while using macroeconomics to regulate and control the behaviour of microeconomic activities. I argue that for every macroeconomic factor in a country, multiple microeconomic realities are being affected, and that is where we must focus our attention. As we head towards the 2027 election, we must be keen to listen and observe which political divide speaks more to microeconomics as opposed to just shouting macroeconomic headlines. One area this government has sung about for a long time is inflation. But when you shout that inflation has stabilised, you are largely missing the point. According to the Central Bank of Kenya, as at March 2025 (end of the first quarter), inflation stood at 3.62%, with an annual average of 3.81%. These later closed at 4.49% and 4.07% respectively.But that is not the point.To truly understand these numbers, you must interrogate demand, and demand is best observed through retail sales data. When sales are low, businesses either lower prices to attract customers or prices naturally respond to the law of demand and supply. This means that talking about inflation purely as a figure does not always reflect the lived reality on the ground. Low inflation driven by suppressed demand is not economic success, it is economic distress.In the coming days, the government must shift gears and begin working on programs that actively enable consumption. Formal employment generation, opening up and protecting the private sector, expanding industrial capacity, and deliberately working on a framework that ensures credit availability to the people is the only sustainable way to unlock microeconomics. Without money in people’s pockets, macroeconomic indicators will remain cosmetic.