A Newly-Developed Kenya by 2030!

"Vision 2030 is a call to all Kenyans to make it possible for us to wipe out from our land absolute poverty, famine, mass unemployment, and preventable deaths such as malaria and water borne diseases"-Kibaki

An abridged version of a speech delivered by President Mwai Kibaki on the occasion to launch the vision 2030 at Kenyatta International Conference Centre, Nairobi on 30th October, 2006

IT is my great pleasure and honour to preside over the launch of the Kenya Vision 2030 process. As you are all aware, our current development blueprint, the Economic Recovery Strategy for Wealth and Employment Creation (ERS) is ending next year. It has served our country well. Our economy has now recovered and is well on the path to sustained growth.

The leading economic sectors such as agriculture and livestock, manufacturing, tourism, trade, transport and communications, and building and construction all show a healthy upward trend. Our people continue to gain from free primary education and secondary school bursaries provided by the Government. They now enjoy better health care, and improved provision of clean water. Our farmers are earning better incomes from the sale of maize, milk, and livestock.

We are channeling more funds into road maintenance and construction throughout the country. We are dealing firmly with insecurity and lawlessness. In the arid and semi-arid areas, we are implementing special programmes to assist communities. For instance, the Government has spent more than 9 billion shillings in North Eastern Province, the Upper Eastern districts of Moyale, Marsabit, and Isiolo; and the Upper Rift Valley districts of Turkana, Pokot, Samburu, Marakwet, and Baringo. A similar programme is being developed for the Coast Province.

Just as we cannot afford to allow certain areas of our country to lag behind in development, we must also ensure that all sections of our society participate fully in the development of our country. It is for this reason that the Government has decided to apply affirmative action for women on new employment in the public service. We have further embarked on the development of modern hawkers’ markets, support for micro and small enterprises, and establishment of a Youth Enterprise Development Fund (YEDF). All these efforts are geared towards integrating the bulk of our population into the growth sectors of the economy.

Although we have made significant progress so far, we have a long way to go in transforming this country into a fast growing and diversified economy. The strategy for the Kenya Vision 2030 is to identify the best options for fulfilling Kenya’s enormous potential. Under the strategy, we see ourselves becoming a middle income, prosperous country, providing a high quality of life for all our people.

In order to realize this goal, we must build on the competitive advantages in the key sectors of the economy to substantially expand our share of the global market. The Vision therefore singles out three pillars on which to realize our goal.

The first pillar is to ensure that we achieve and sustain an average economic growth of over 10 percent per annum over the next twenty-five years. The second pillar seeks to build a just and cohesive society, with equitable social development, and a clean and secure environment. The third pillar aims at producing a democratic political system that nurtures issue-based politics, the rule of law, and protects all the rights and freedoms of every individual and society.

As we prepare ourselves, it is important to appreciate the fact that what we do in the first five years will determine the success of the implementation of the successive phases. We need to come up with a clear strategy detailing what we want to achieve for each of the three pillars in the first five years.

For example, under the economic pillar, the performance of our agricultural and livestock sectors will be critical, since they form the economic foundation for the majority of our people. We will need strategies to expand and diversify high value agricultural and livestock production. For instance, over the years, we have seen the decline of coffee production from over 120,000 tonnes a year to less than 50,000 tonnes currently. This downturn has had a devastating effect on farmers’ incomes and employment.

In the area of livestock, successive droughts have wiped out up to half of livestock herds among our pastoral communities, leaving the majority of the people impoverished and destitute. Similarly, cotton, pyrethrum, and cashewnut growing were almost entirely abandoned, while our extensive marine fisheries have not been sufficiently exploited to benefit our people.

These downturns did not happen because there was no market globally. They happened because the policy choices made in past decades were not right. We need to make sure that under Vision 2030, the strategies that will be developed will not repeat the mistakes of the past and avoid imposing a costly burden on the people of this country.

In the manufacturing sector, our experience has also been painful because we were too inward looking. The sector has barely grown in the last twenty years.

For instance, the textile industry which was vibrant in the 1970s and early 1980s has virtually been wiped out, while the EPZ-based enterprises are experiencing serious competition in the global market. Further, the leather industry and other livestock-related industries have not made significant breakthroughs into the global market. This is despite the fact that these are the sectors where this country could have achieved competitive advantage and growth opportunities, if the right strategies and policies were to be applied. We must become outward looking, investing in new and efficient technologies, and aggressively capturing new markets.

I challenge the experts who are developing the Vision 2030 strategies to pay special attention to these sectors for the next five years, because they have the greatest potential for delivering widely shared economic and social benefits to the Kenyan people.

Kenya enjoys a unique geographical advantage that makes it a natural regional hub for services. This is greatly enhanced by the abundance of skilled and hardworking human resource that this country has developed over the years. But natural geographical advantage is not enough to make our country globally competitive in the services sector.

We must identify the services that we are best placed to provide and invest in them so as to become globally competitive. For example, tourism has been a major strength in our economy. Our tourist attractions are diverse and extensive. However, the number of tourists coming to Kenya and the financial turnover of the sector is far below that of smaller European countries, the Caribbean, and North Africa.

With proper planning and investment, this country should be able to attract and accommodate 5 million tourists by 2012. Among other things this requires substantial investments in the hotel industry, our transport infrastructure, security, high standards of hospitality and cleanliness, and aggressive marketing of Kenya as a tourist destination.

With regard to the financial sector, this is the fuel for the economy. The strength of this sector determines the rhythm of economic activities in any country. Over the last four years, we have achieved predictability of the exchange rate, moderation of interest rates, and manageable inflation.

It is extremely important to ensure that the stability of the financial markets is sustained and improved to the level that is attractive to both local and international investors. Moreover, a rapidly transforming Kenya needs a vibrant and innovative financial sector that will meet its developmental requirements from time to time.

For instance, we should develop strategies that will allow the financial sector to play an important role in the financing of the infrastructure that Kenya would require to achieve Vision 2030. The strategies you are preparing must therefore include appropriate instruments that will allow us to mobilize resources to support the rapid expansion of roads, power, water supply, railways, airports and seaports.

The Information Communications Technology (ICT) sector is one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy, with highest potential for Kenya’s prospects in tapping global markets. This follows the total liberalization of this sector in Kenya. We will soon have a second national operator, which will bring greater dynamism to the telecommunications sector.

More importantly, we are investing in fibre optic connectivity nationally and internationally to leverage our global competitiveness in this sector, which offers our educated youth extensive opportunities for employment.

Therefore, the strategies that you are developing for the next five years should leverage this competitive advantage, especially with regard to business process outsourcing, which is the world’s fastest growing global market. The economic performance of any country is closely tied to the application of science and technology. This is why Kenya is investing considerably in higher education, research institutions, and universities.

However, there still remain serious limitations in application of technology between research, industry, and agriculture. This is a serious weakness in our development strategy, which requires urgent attention. We have recently created the Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST), which is developing a national policy for science, technology, and innovation. It is important that the Vision Strategy that is being developed is geared towards enhancing Kenya’s scientific and technological capacity, inculcating a scientific culture, and integrating science and technology into our production and service sectors.

Much has been said of Kenya’s inequalities. We all want our lives to be free from absolute poverty, hunger, and unnecessary pain and death from preventable diseases. All Kenyans want to have equitable opportunities to build their homes in security, educate their children, hold meaningful employment and own property in any part of the country.

I am confident that our efforts in providing free primary education, the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) and other such devolved funds, water availability, rural electrification, roads, and affordable and effective health care, are laying the necessary foundations that will be required to attain social justice.

In the health sector, for instance, we have rehabilitated hospitals and health centers, restored and improved services that had broken down. We now have adequate drugs, medical staff, and equipment available in virtually every health facility. The challenge is to expand, upgrade, and sustain these services, while ensuring that they remain accessible and affordable to all Kenyans.

In the area of education, we have achieved universal free primary education in almost all areas of the country. Primary education, however, is merely a foundation and does not empower our youth with sufficient knowledge and skills for them to participate fully as productive members of society.

The strategy we are developing should therefore come up with a comprehensive set of measures that enable us to ensure that all the youth graduating from primary schools, advance to secondary schools at affordable cost to the parents and the country within the next five years. We need to have this critical mass of educated youth to enhance the productivity of our economy and social mobility and cohesion in our society.

Last month, we hosted the 3rd Africities Conference in Nairobi, to deliberate on the challenges facing our cities and major towns. One of our major challenges is the rapid urbanization of our population, which will soon result in the majority of Kenyans living in urban areas.

As a consequence, we are faced with growing slums, serious unemployment and proliferation of hawking. Indeed, rapid urban population growth is causing a severe strain on the provision of services such as maintenance of law and order, water supply, sewerage and sanitation, schools and health facilities. Effective planning and ability to enforce compliance for the proper administration of our cities and major towns, requires to be accorded high priority in the strategies that will be developed to meet the challenges of rapid urbanization. In this regard, measures to wipe out slums and replace them with well-planned, low-cost housing in all our cities and towns should be implemented without delay.

Let me hasten to add that in the political sphere, we have also made enormous progress in the past four years and laid the foundations required for an issue-based, people-centered, results-oriented, and accountable-democratic-political system.

The peaceful transition of power from one Government to another at the end of 2002, the truly participative constitution-making process and the peaceful referendum that sent us back to the drawing boards, the freedom of speech and of the media, the multiple levels of oversight and accountability that those in Government face today, are all examples of what we must build on to achieve the political goals of Vision 2030.

I am, therefore, confident that Kenya will be a mature and stable democracy, even as we continue to build on achievements made and develop the necessary institutions and political culture to nurture and protect them.

I want to commend the National Economic and Social Council (NESC) for having nurtured the idea from its birth earlier this year to the point where it is ready to be shared with all Kenyans. After all, this is not a Government project. Vision 2030 goes beyond any single Government, party, political persuasion, or region. It is a call to all Kenyans to make it possible for us to wipe out from our land absolute poverty, famine, mass unemployment, and preventable deaths such as malaria and water borne diseases.

Ends…