NAIROBI, Kenya, Feb 1-The Vision 2030 Delivery Secretariat has initiated efforts to work in synergy with different government Ministries, Department and Agencies (MDAs), and the Public for the seamless delivery of the development blueprint.
The agency in charge of driving Kenya’s plan to become a middle-income country in the next six years is geared towards prioritizing the most pressing issues in all the focal pillars facing Kenyans.
The Secretariat Director General Kenneth Mwige emphasized the initiative is aimed at bridging the gap between government and implementers as well as citizens.
“We don’t want academic discussion because right now we have pressing problems. We are discussing the state of the economy and how we can translate the efforts of the government into money in our pockets,” he said.
The transformative discussions which are set to run between one to two years monthly are taunted to crack pivotal issues facing the countries through the engagements, especially the economic ones.
“We are missing the voice of the consumers in an organized way. We need to challenge all the paradigms, let’s fix this country because it’s ours,” Mwige said.
While progress has been made towards achievement of Vision 2030, the real gross domestic product (GDP) has averaged 4.8 percent between 2008 and 2023. This is far below the target annual 10 percent GDP growth rate.
In the economic pillar, Vision 2030 settled for six priority sectors -tourism, agriculture and livestock, wholesale & retail, trade, manufacturing, financial services, business process offshoring and IT-enabled services- were deemed to be central.
Under agriculture, the key strategic interventions include fertiliser cost reduction to address issues of access and affordability of the input. Additionally, substantial acreage in arid and semi-arid areas such as Turkana and Tana Delta were also supposed to be put under irrigation.
The Vision 2030 Delivery Secretariat now mulls doing away with monopolistic nature of government service delivery by encouraging the citizenry who are primary stakeholders to input their voices.
“This is a challenge to Gen Z, don’t sit complaining on Twitter and Tiktok come with your ideas and plans on the actualization in the different ministries. Stand up and take your space,” the Secretariat Director General.
Ahead of the World Wetlands Day celebrations slated for tomorrow in Uasin Gishu County, Water Sector Fund CEO Willis Ombai assured significant achievements have been made in the Water sector in line with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
“As a sector we are doing very well in terms of movement towards achieving our target. Where they are gaps am sure in 6 years time the available government approach will ensure we realize our goals,” Ombai stated.
Intense investment in sustainable irrigation will help address the food crisis in the country. President William Ruto has said the Government has prioritized the construction and expansion of dams to rebuild agriculture.
The Government plans to build 100 large and 1,000 small dams, thereby increasing the acreage under irrigation from the current 670,000 to 3 million.
“We are looking into local and international investors to look into which investement are they willing to invest into.We need to get more resources because the need is quite high,”Ombai said.
The late President Mwai Kibaki launched Vision 2030 in 2008 as a vehicle to guide the country grow into a rapidly industrializing middle income nation by 2030.
His think tanks who came up with the plan envisioned a country that would provide a high quality of life to its citizens in a clean and secure environment.
The plan was broken down into three key pillars – economic, social and political – which were to be supported by a list of enablers.
