By Billy Mijungu
Ecclesiastes 11:2
“Divide your portion to seven, yes to eight, for you do not know what disaster may come upon the land.”
The Bible teaches leaders, citizens, businesses and consumers a timeless principle of economic resilience. Do not put everything you have in one basket. Diversify your sources of production, income, investment, food, energy, water, transport and even public revenue because the future is uncertain and risks will always exist.
This verse is therefore not merely a lesson about investment. It is a principle of preparation, mitigation and sustainability. It teaches us to create hedging capacity against the unknown. If one source fails, another should sustain the household, the community, the economy or the nation.
If we are going to generate energy, can we generate it from multiple sources? Can we combine geothermal, hydro, wind, solar, bioenergy and other appropriate technologies so that a failure or shortage in one source does not paralyse the entire economy? Energy security is not simply about producing more electricity. It is about building a diversified system capable of absorbing shocks.
The same principle applies to food security. A country should not depend excessively on one crop, one region, one production system or one source of imported food. Farmers should be supported to diversify crops, livestock, irrigation, storage, processing and markets. Food security means having several baskets from which the nation can feed itself when drought, floods, disease, price shocks or disruptions in international markets occur.
Water must equally be diversified. A growing economy cannot depend on one river, one dam, one water tower or one rainfall pattern. We must develop multiple water sources through dams, reservoirs, groundwater management, rainwater harvesting, recycling and carefully managed water infrastructure. Water resilience means that when one source comes under pressure, another can provide a buffer.
Education must also be treated as an investment across the entire human-capital chain. If we invest in education, we should not concentrate only on basic education while leaving technical training, vocational education, universities, research, innovation and lifelong learning behind. A diversified education system gives citizens different pathways to skills, employment, entrepreneurship and productivity. It also allows the economy to develop the technicians, artisans, professionals, researchers, innovators and entrepreneurs required at different stages of development.
Healthcare requires the same philosophy. A resilient health system cannot depend on one financing mechanism, one level of care, one supplier, one category of facility or one form of treatment. Primary healthcare, preventive medicine, community health, county hospitals, referral facilities, specialist services, pharmaceuticals, diagnostics and health technologies must work as complementary layers. The objective should be a health system with sufficient financing and multiple points of resilience so that a disruption in one part does not bring the entire system to its knees.
Transport, too, must be diversified. Roads alone cannot carry the entire burden of a modern economy. We need functional roads, rail, public transport, maritime transport, aviation, logistics networks, non-motorised transport and emerging electric mobility working together. The movement of people and goods should not be held hostage to the failure of one corridor or one mode of transport.
The principle extends to our economic structure itself. An economy that depends excessively on a narrow number of industries, commodities, employers or markets remains vulnerable to external shocks. We must therefore diversify manufacturing, agriculture, services, technology, tourism, logistics, the creative economy, mining, construction and knowledge-based enterprises. Economic diversity creates several engines of growth rather than expecting one engine to pull the entire country.
Even taxation should follow the principle of diversification. A sustainable tax system should have a broad base rather than placing disproportionate pressure on a narrow group of formal employees and businesses.
Consumption, production, property, investment, trade and other appropriate economic activities can contribute within a fair, transparent and administratively efficient framework. The objective should be to spread responsibility across a sufficiently broad economic base while protecting essential goods and services and avoiding excessive burdens on those least able to carry them.
This is the deeper lesson of Ecclesiastes 11:2. Diversification is not necessarily about doing everything at once. It is about refusing to build a national economy so rigid that the failure of one component becomes the failure of everyone.
Economic rigidity creates vulnerability. Economic diversity creates options. Options create resilience. Resilience creates the capacity to survive shocks and continue growing.
If we diversify where we get our food, where we get our water, how we generate energy, how people and goods move, how we educate our people, how we finance healthcare, how businesses produce wealth and how government raises revenue, then we create an economy capable of absorbing uncertainty.
The question for us is therefore not whether risks will come. Ecclesiastes already assumes that they will. The question is whether, when they come, we will have divided our portion sufficiently to seven, and even to eight.
