Is economic growth the panacea to our ills?

An analogy to start with. You are in Nai earning Ksh110k per month and are able to save/invest 10k of that. Your pay rise goes up by between 5/6% pa (assumption is that you are a performer). However due to a mixture of prices of the goods you consume and your increased spending you find that total expenditure has gone up by 5%/6%. Thus you are unable to save more. Being ambitious, you want your own home and nice car-probably a compressor and obviously current spending and investing/saving rate doesn't allow that. So you borrow to finance both and pay using your salary.  The house is not new and neither is the car so both require running repairs. Pretty soon Kamau finds that he has having to run after pyramid schemes and mitumba loans to make ends meet. Our economy i s growing at 5/6% which equivalent to the above salary increase and we have enormous problems that need to be resolved. 60% of Nairobians live in makeshift housing with no social amenities to speak of. This is a microcosm of the rest of the nation with probably a lower % with piped water-one of the key indicators of raised standards of living. Yet what are we doing with increased tax revenues? Increasing salaries for public servants without real concomitant performance gains. MPs-here you go a blank cheque for you to fill in required amount. KACC and other associated and equally inept anti-corruption bodies- here you go a blank cheque for you. A house for the veep-here is a blank cheque for a construction of your choice. Police cars-here is a blank cheque. Etc etc. Until the important and critical cornerstones of our economic growth get forgotten. A focused road building programme is actually cheaper (you create a pool of qualified experienced engineers, project managers, public finance accountants,  you create a pool of experienced road builders, source the material cheaply). This will employ some of these idle young bloods who will in turn go and spend keeping the likes of Uchumi in business and thus its employs more Kenyans who then go and spend. Its the multiplier effect. Its not difficult, but unless difficult choices are made, economic growth will just be a number...