Kenya’s Vision 2030 Analysis!

uzaco | Business | April 17, 2012

By Thomas


1.1 Background
Since attaining independence Kenya had two long term policies and several 5 years development plans that have guided planning and investment. The first was sessional paper No 10 0f 1965: African Socialism and its Application to Planning in Kenya, and the second sessional paper No 1 of 1986: Economic Management for Renewed Growth.
Immediately after taking office in 2003, the new NARC Government commenced the process of preparing an Economic Recovery Programme, focusing on the main strategy for reviving the economy and creating jobs. The Strategy took into account existing government policy documents particularly; The Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper that was issued in 2001. This led to the development of a five year plan known as Economic Recovery Strategy for Employment and Wealth creation (ERS).The Strategy identified key policy measures and programmes to be pursued over the five year term and was anchored on four pillars i.e. Macroeconomic stability, strengthening of institutions of governance, rehabilitation and expansion of physical infrastructure and investment in the human capital of the poor. On conclusion of the five year term of successful implementation of the ERS which saw the country’s economy back on the path to rapid growth since 2002, when GDP grew at 0.6% to 6.1 in 2006 the Government came up with a new strategy Kenya Vision 2030 the country’s development blueprint covering the period 2008 to 2030.

1.2 Kenya vision 2030 the concept
Kenya’s Vision 2030 is the country’s new development plan covering the period 2008 to 2030. It is a far-sighted national development plan to transform Kenya into a rapidly industrializing middle-income nation by the year 2030.
The economic pillar aims at providing prosperity of all Kenyans through an Economic development programme aimed at achieving an average Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate of 10% per annum in the next 25 years. To achieve this objective the pillar targeted six priority sectors namely Tourism, Agriculture and Livestock, Wholesale and retail trade, Manufacturing, Business Process Outsourcing and Financial services.
The social pillar seeks to build “a just and cohesive society with social equity in a clean and secure environment”. To achieve this objectives the pillar targeted five priority sectors namely Education and Training, Health, Water and Sanitation, Environment and Housing and Urbanization
The political pillar aims at realizing a democratic political system founded on issue-based politics that respects the rule of law, and protects the rights and freedoms of every individual in the Kenyan society. Under this pillar the pillar targeted Rule of Law and Electoral and Political Processes.


1.3 Milestones achieved in the implementation of Vision 2030
i) Economic Pillar— accelerating annual GDP growth to 10 percent on a sustained Basis
International arrivals (proxy for tourist arrivals) peaked at 1.8 million in 2007. Since 2008, the sector has been on a steady recovery with 1.6 million arrivals in 2010. Data for the first half of 2011 compared to a similar period in 2010 shows continued improvement in the tourism sector with arrivals data higher by 13.6%. On the other hand, the agriculture sector has recorded a positive growth of 6.3% in 2010.
The financial services sector has grown steadily to record 8.8% growth in 2010. Progress has been achieved in development of the BPO sector 5,000 acres of land For the Konza Technology City (a key Vision 2030 Flagship Project) has been Secured, the Master Plan for the city has been completed and Tender for the Master Builder and market sounding activities are on-going.

ii) Social Pillar—achieving cohesive society enjoying equitable social development
Pupil enrollment in Early Childhood Development Centers increased from 1,691,093 in 2007 to 2,193,071 in 2010. Between 2007 and 2010, the number of pupils enrolled in primary school increased from 8.25 million to 9.38 million. The transition rate from primary to secondary education increased from 60% to 75% by 2012.
The Net Enrollment Ratio in the ASALs increased from 27 in 2007 to 42.5 in 2010/2011.
With regard to health indicators, between 2007 and 2010/11 the HIV Prevalence rate declined from 7.4 % to 6.3 %; under 5 mortality rate fell from 92 per 1,000 in 2007 to 74 in 2010/11; Immunization coverage for children under 1 year increased from 73% to 83 %; and proportion of in-patients with malaria fell from 19 % in 2007/08 to 14 % in 2010/11. A total of 251 health centers and dispensaries have been rehabilitated and improvement of infrastructure for 72 hospitals is on-going (region?). In addition, between 2007 and 2010 the following have been achieved: (i) increase in health institutions in the country from 5,589 to 7,111 (ii) registered health personnel from 95,390 to 100,301 and (iii) enrollment of middle level trainees in public medical training colleges from 5,932 to 6,699.
Over the FY 2007/2008 and FY 2010/11 urban households with access to safe water increased from 60% to 70.5% while that for rural households increased from 40% to 49.2%.

iii) Political Pillar— building issues-based, accountable democratic political system
The promulgation of the Constitution on 27th August 2010—a Flagship project under the MTP political pillar—is a significant achievement in the implementation of the political pillar of Vision 2030. Since its promulgation, a framework of oversight committees for implementing the Constitution has been established as follows: (i) the Cabinet Committee on implementation of the Constitution (ii) a Parliamentary Committee – the Constitutional Implementation Oversight Committee, established to oversee implementation of the constitution, and (iii) the Commission for Implementation of the Constitution. As provided for in the Constitution, a number of institutions and offices have been established and operationalised. These include: (i) the Commission for Implementation of the Constitution (CIC); (ii) the Judicial Service Commission (JSC); (iii) the Commission for Revenue Allocation (CRA); (iv) the Supreme Court (SC); and (v), the Vetting of Judges and Magistrates Board (VJM).
Progress has also been made in regard to all the legislations that were required under the Constitution to be enacted within a period of one year. As at 27th August 2011, all the legislations due for enactment were all enacted into law and now their operationalization and enforcement are on-going.

2.0 CHALLENGES

2.1 ECONOMIC PILLAR
2.1.1 Tourism The sector is faced by a number of challenges which include: inadequate bed capacity, especially in the new tourism circuits of Western Kenya and North Eastern regions due to poor and inefficient infrastructure; lack of financial resources particularly for tourism marketing; and stiff competition from other tourism destination areas in Africa such as South Africa, Egypt and Morocco.
2.1.2 Agriculture The main challenges facing the sector and thereby constraining its productivity and competitiveness include low and declining soil fertility; high cost, adulteration and low application of key inputs; slow adsorption of modern and appropriate technology; and poor disaster preparedness and response. Other challenges include limited capital and inadequate access to affordable credit, pre and post harvest losses, inadequate markets and poor marketing infrastructure, weak quality control systems, inappropriate legal and regulatory framework, and low budgetary allocations. In the cooperative sub-sector, the following factors are responsible for slow growth and development; inadequacies in policy, legislative and regulatory framework, poor governance and mismanagement of the cooperative societies, weak internal capacity for marketing of cooperative products, undercapitalization of the societies and imprudent investment decisions.
2.1.3 Wholesale and retail trade Several challenges have led to the slow implementation of MTP interventions. These include low financing in the areas of focus, perennial shortage of technical staff to spearhead sector activities particularly at the district, provincial and Kenya missions abroad.
2.1.4 Manufacturing The key challenges facing manufacturing sector include: inadequate funding; shortage of skilled manpower; weak PPP; and lackluster collaboration from other implementing agencies. Other challenges include delay in procurement and logistics particularly in the construction and equipping of the CIDCs, poor infrastructure and infiltration of the local market with counterfeit, contraband and substandard goods.
2.1.5 Business process outsourcing (BPO) The key challenges facing the BPO sector include: poor telecommunication infrastructure; high cost and unreliable energy and inadequate dedicated BPO facilities. Other challenges include supply of BPO software and hardware, weak BPO incentive structure, low uptake of the BPO initiative and inadequate manpower. The constraints have led to high cost of transmitting data locally and internationally and low effectiveness of a country as a primary BPO destination contrary to aspirations in Vision 2030 and MTP (2008-2012).
2.1.6 Finance The main challenges facing financial sector include low penetration, and limited supply of long term finance and low availability of ICT infrastructure especially in rural areas e.g ATM machines. Other challenges include overcapacity and price competition, corruption and fraud, poor corporate governance, negative public perception, and limited skilled manpower particularly in actuarial science (actuarial finance?).


2.2 SOCIAL PILLAR
2.2.1 Education and training Despite the efforts and progress achieved, a number of challenges were experienced. Increased enrolment in primary and secondary schools overstretched existing facilities and negatively impacted on the Ministry’s efforts to achieve high transition rates to secondary education. Lack of adequate infrastructure at all levels of education undermined efforts to enhance access and equity to education. Despite all initiatives aimed at addressing regional and gender disparities at various levels of education, regional and gender balances were not achieved. There remained a problem of shortage for both teaching and non-teaching staff across the country. In the learning institutions across the sub-sectors, teacher shortages hindered delivery of quality education. The sector was also unable to deliver services to reach children due to weak implementation structures and inadequate funding. This led to low access to education in disadvantaged areas such as North Eastern Province as evidenced by low net enrolment rate (NER).

2.2.2 Health sector The challenges that were experienced during the period under review included:
inadequate funding to support planned and initiated activities; addressing preventable diseases e.g. HIV, TB especially the multi drug resistance strain; malaria and non-communicable diseases which were on the increase; failure to meet targets e.g. low rate of maternal deliveries at health facilities despite high antenatal care coverage; high poverty levels which were a major factor affecting affordability of health services and health seeking behavior of the population; inadequate and uneven distribution of health personnel which hampered service delivery; and inadequate health infrastructure. The sector also experienced limited process indicators-rehabilitation of health facilities, number of cadres of employed trained etc to monitor HRH; the inability to conduct surveys to capture data that monitor indicators annually; there was no harmony in the sources of data (methodology and objectives), targets or the reporting of the outputs with Health Sector Plan implementation Matrix; inconsistencies of targets set for the sector continues to constrain the analysis of the performance indicators of health leadership.

2.2.3 Water and sanitation During the period under review, several challenges have been
experienced in implementing projects in the Water and Sanitation Sector. The country’s water, sanitation and irrigation infrastructure is old and poorly maintained and needs major repairs or replacement. On going reforms to de-link staff absorbed in the water sector institutions and capacity building strengthening of water institutions requires funds for harmonization and for equipments and tools. Water Services Boards (WSBs), which were established as part of reforms and expected to be self sustaining after the first 5 years still depend on the Government due to poor cost recovery from poor communities unable to pay for water services. The quality of Water Service Providers (WSPs), which reflects on the performance of the whole Water Sector, is poor, partly due to poor water supplies infrastructure. Persistent droughts and other natural disasters result in water scarcity which leads to loss of life and livelihoods because of lack of early warning systems and mitigation measures. Lack of policy and guidelines coupled with inadequate infrastructure has resulted in poor irrigation and drainage support services (access roads, cooling centres, markets, market information, research, extension, training, credit etc) and high production costs

2.2.4 Environment Inadequate policy and legal framework to guide data and information sharing, partnership, intellectual property rights, and inadequate specialized equipment for data collection. Inadequate institutional capacities, like inadequate or lack of specialized equipment for technical departments and human resource was also a constraint. Financial constraints resulted from delays in disbursements, low budgets and undermine implementation. Heavy rains in the year under review hampered field work especially mineral exploration and mapping. Inadequate technical staff and high rate of turnover and limited awareness by public and policy makers on the various environmental products and services. Another major challenge relates to the low enforcement of the provisions of the Environmental Management and Coordination Act (EMCA) due to inadequate institutional capacity to oversee its implementation and low level of environmental education and the low stakeholder involvement.
2.2.5 Gender, youth and vulnerable groups A number of UGIs established in ministries and parastatals are ineffective or non functional due to lack of adequate capacity and resources. Women entrepreneurs lack adequate business skills and management competences to effectively utilize funds to operate macro enterprises insufficient disaggregated data on the different categories of the vulnerable groups in the country. The benefits intended by the Youth Development Fund have not been fully exploited by the Youth. This is because the majority of the youth lack collateral that would enable them secure bank loans and other financial services. Further, the youth generally lack business experience and expertise. There is also generally lack of training in entrepreneurship and mentoring in business, resulting in failed business start-ups.

2.2.6 Housing and urbanization The crucial and common shortcomings in the housing sector include inadequate human resource capacity; lack of comprehensive housing sector legislation (legal framework) that limit the Ministry’s effectiveness in providing leadership for the housing sector; inadequate public and private partnerships in housing due to lack of PPP framework; high cost of building materials among others; inadequate construction of low cost housing particularly for the Private Sector; under-collection of rent from government houses leading to low levels of maintenance of government houses; low level of government funding to housing development and slow implementation of the housing incentives; lack of guidelines to harmonize leasing of government offices and residential accommodation leading to payment for unused and under-used space. The 2007 post election violence depressed investor confidence and had adverse effects on the whole economy with houses destroyed leaving many Kenyans without shelter, especially within slums and the informal sector.

2.2.7 Social equity and poverty reduction The challenges in this area are low annual incomes, gross disparities in rewarding talent and investment risks in a socially just manner, poverty reduction, and differences in income opportunities and access to social services across the geographical regions and lack of economic empowerment through devolved funds in favour of disadvantaged communities.

2.3 POLITICAL PILLAR
2.3.1 Rule of law The challenges are:-
• Inculcating a culture of compliance with laws,
• streamlining of the functional organisation of legal and judicial institutions,
• Increasing service availability and access to justice (I don’t think the challenge stands out)
2.3.2 Electoral and political process The constraints are:-
• Inability to enforce the legal and regulatory framework covering the electoral process
• Lack of civic education programmes.
• Inadequate enforcement of non discrimination laws to promote inclusion of women and disadvantaged groups in the electoral and political process.
2.3.3 Democracy and public participation
• Lack of open engagement between Government and civil society as well as flow of information through the media.
2.3.4 Transparency and accountability
• Inadequate muscle to strengthen the legal framework for ethics, integrity and Parliament’s oversight capacity.
• Promotion of results based management within the public service.
• Introduction of civilian oversight around key justice, and security institutions.
2.3.5 Public administration and service delivery
• Absence of citizen and service charters as accountability tools.
• Strengthening of economic governance for better macroeconomic management.
2.3.6 Security, peace building and conflict management
• Lack of co-operation and involvement between private and public sector
• Inadequate national and inter community dialogue to build harmony among ethnic, racial and other interest groups
• Inculcating a culture of respect for human life that restrains people from resorting to violence to resolve personal and community issues.

3.0 COMPARISON OF KENYA’S VISION 2030 AND OTHER EAST AFRICAN STATES
It has been noted that the world has become one global village whereby strategies and actions in one country directly and indirectly influence another country in one way or the other. This is to imply that for the Kenya’s vision 2030 to be more effective, there is need to compare it with the neighboring states’ visions. This is basically for benchmarking purposes and having a positive comparison since the business environment in neighboring states sometimes may be almost the same with the differences being insignificant. In our comparison, we have chosen Tanzania’s and Rwanda’s visions to compare with Kenya’s.
Comparison with Rwanda’s Vision 2020: Many of what Rwanda’s vision 2020 objectives have already been achieved by Kenya way before the Kenya’s vision was created. For instance, reconstruction of the Nations and its social Capital anchored in good governance and underpinned by good governance. Kenya has been a capable state for a long time unlike Rwanda, Kenya’s private sector has been strong, competitive and entrepreneurial, in most cases competing even with some of the government parastatals. For instance, Safaricom Kenya has been a big challenge to Telecom Kenya forcing it to reengineer its structures. Uchumi Supermarkets have had a hard time to deal with the likes of Nakumatt Supermarkets and others.
In Kenya we already have comprehensive human resources who are well educated and highly experienced. In fact, the human resources supply has always been higher than the demand. This factor brings an opposite challenge to Rwanda’s vision which requires more Human resources while Kenya requires more job creations.
A reduction of aid dependency is an objective which has already been achieved by Kenya. The huge public debt experienced by Rwanda is not a big challenge in Kenya basically because of not relying foreign aid and being domestically depended.
However, Kenya and Rwanda are facing the same challenge of management of public resources and poverty. Malnutrition, HIV/AIDS and malaria are also common diseases by the two countries and common strategies to counter them can work.

Comparison with Tanzania Vision 2025 Tanzania’s objectives are more like the Kenya’s in that both the countries require: food security and sufficiency, gender equality, and absence of poverty. Another similarity is that both the states need to address the challenge of corruption, which for years has been imminent.
Eradication of illiteracy and training that is commensurate with a critical mass of high quality human resources is almost achieved by Kenya because of the introduction of free primary school education and the current restructuring of the 8-4-4 education system to 6-6-3 system, which is aimed at reducing the workload of education requirements of education to young children. Moreover, a growth rate of 8% per annum without strategies to maintain it may be difficult and unrealistic within the period up to 2025. Just like Rwanda, Tanzania is still depended on donors which leads to erosion of confidence and dignity or other external depended.

Conclusion The success the three visions is important for regional business activities and improvement of standards of living in general as the countries rely on each other.

4.0 STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT RECOMMENDATION
Agriculture: First, Kenya will need to reduce its high reliance on agricultural outputs to limit its vulnerability to climate hazards by diversifying the economy. The public should be sensitized on the importance of embracing the use of ICT. This will enable them to change their perceptions of ICT as a threat to the security of their jobs.
The new Constitution assigns the functions of Agriculture and trade development and regulation to the county governments. Since these sectors are among the drivers of the economy, it is imperative to observe the principle of funds follow functions to ensure that counties have adequate resources to carry out the functions assigned to them.
There is need to review the procurement procedures to ensure the timely implementation of the flagship projects.
Financial: Lack of funds has been identified as one as the challenges in the implementation of the MTP therefore it is important for the government to develop proper PPP framework
The government should put in place a law and policy for allocation of schools to avoid political interference in school allocation. The government should explore other methods of financing secondary education.
Health: The government should consider providing a basic cover especially for the chronic diseases and vulnerable groups such as children, the poor and over 65 years and leave the private sector to provide comprehensive cover.

REFERENCES

Mid-term Review – February 2012- 1st medium term plan 2008 – 2012 vision 2030
Kenya Vision 2030, 2007. A Globally competitive and prosperous Kenya, Government Printer
First Medium Term Plan Government of the Republic of Kenya, 2008 Government Printer

1993 Central Bureau of Statistics, Demographic and Health Survey, Nairobi, Government Printer

1996. Welfare Monitoring Survey. /I, 1994: Basic Report, Nairobi,
Government Printer

1997a. Economic Survey. 1997, Nairobi, Government Printer

1997b. National Development Plan 1997-2001, Nairobi,
Government Printer

1997c. The Second Participatory Poverty Assessment Study: Kenya,
Vol. 1,Nairobi, Government Printer, June

1998a. First Report on Poverty in Kenya Vol.1: Incidence and Depth of Poverty, Nairobi, Government Printer, June

1998b. First Report on Poverty in Kenya, Vol.IJ: Poverty and Social Indicators, Nairobi, Government Printer, July

1998c. First Report on Poverty in Kenya, Vol.lJ[: Welfare Indicators
Atlas, Nairobi, Government Printer, August

1998d. Statistical Abstract, Nairobi, Government Printer

1999. National Poverty Eradication Plan 1999-2015, Nairobi,
Government Printer, February

2007 Ministry of Agriculture Kenya Vision 2030 – A globally competitive & prosperous Kenya. PDF format. Retrieved from www.kilimo.go.ke/kilimo-docs/pdf/Kenya_VISION_2030.