KENYA VISION 2030:- INVESTING IN THE PEOPLE.
Posted September 5th, 2008 by Mwaura Kaara
After a disappointing performance in the 1990s, Kenya’s economy has now resumed the path of growth, having achieved a GDP annual growth rate of 6.1% in 2006 compared to 0.6% in 2002. It is now necessary to build on that momentum in order to sustain economic growth.
The Kenya Vision 2030 is the country’s new development blueprint covering the period 2008 to 2030. It aims to transform Kenya into a newly industrializing, “middle-income country providing a high quality life to all citizens by the year 2030”. Developed through an all-inclusive and participatory stakeholder consultative process, involving all Kenyans from all parts of the country, and also benefiting from suggestions by some local and international experts on how the newly industrializing countries around the world made the leap from poverty to widely shared prosperity and equity.
The adoption of the vision comes after a successful implementation of the Economic Recovery Strategy for Wealth and Employment Creation (ERS) which has bumped the country’s economy back to growth. The vision is based on three “pillars”: the economic, the social and the political.
The economic pillar aims to improve the prosperity of all Kenyans through an economic development programme, covering all regions of the country, and aiming to achieve an average gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate of 10% per annum beginning in 2012. The social pillar seeks to build a just and cohesive society with social equity in clean and secure environment. The political pillar aims to realize 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 Kenyan society.
The Kenya Vision 2030 is to be implemented in successive five year Medium-Term Plans, with the first such plan covering the period 2008-2012. While the ‘flagship’ projects are expected to take lead in generating rapid and widely-shared growth, they are by no means the only projects the country will be implementing, but the lead vessels in an array of multiple projects. At an appropriate stage, another five year plan will be produced covering the period 2012 to 2017, and so on till 2030.
As the country makes progress to middle-income status through these development plans, it is expected to have met its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) whose deadline is 2015. These goals, ranging from elimination of extreme poverty and hunger; universal primary education; gender equality; reduction in child mortality; improvement in maternal health; lower HIV/AIDS at the same time combating major diseases; environmental sustainability to enhancing better partnerships for global development, offer insights to the paradigm shift encompassing socio-economic development. Some of the goals have already been met. The Vision 2030 spells out action that will be taken to achieve the rest.
Kenyans hold to their leaders to exercise political will and maturity, to actualize the Vision, which will essence need to transform more into the Production economy, and less of the speculation, if the joys of its glory are to be manifested.
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