Kenya Vision 2030: Key achievements so far

This is a summary and comments on Kenya Vision 2030 Newsletter showing progress on various projects towards the realization of vision 2030.

Future Kenyan Nuclear Scientists Commence Training In Korea

As part of the plan to have Kenya produce Nuclear Power in the next three decades a group of six students drawn from Kenya Power, the Kenya Nuclear Electricity Board, and Kenya’s Radiation Protection Board started training in Nuclear Power generation in Korea last year. As they near the end of their studies, another group of eleven postgraduate students enrolled this year to pursue a comprehensive two-year Masters Degree programme in Nuclear Engineering. Upon graduation, the Nuclear Scientists will play a key role in laying the groundwork for Kenya’s nuclear electricity generation plans over the next two decades as envisaged in the Vision 2030 National Development policy.

Although the Nuclear Power has been seen as one of the most effective means of providing electricity to the masses, as a Kenyan willing to learn from our history I am very skeptical about our ability to manage a situation like the one that occurred in Japan. A simple fire almost burned our airport down (what a shame). We have not been able to effectively deal with other fires in down town Nairobi and surrounding slums. Japan, a well organized and better prepared country in disaster management has decided to shut down its Nuclear Stations, are we ready to erect Nuclear Power Plants and face the consequences or we’ll leave our fate to “God”?

Dream To Unveil The First Coast Region Based University Comes True

Vision 2030 team are proud for the transformation of Mombasa Polytechnic into Technical University of Mombasa.Together with Pwani University based in Kilifi that was formerly a constituent college of Kenyatta University as the Kilifi Institute of Agriculture make the coat region boast of two fully fledged universities.

There are several other technical colleges that were upgraded to university status by the immediate former president. Some of these upgrades have been questionable as there are minimum requirements in terms of land size and basic infrastructures that a learning institute must meet before being upgraded to a university status. My problem is not with the minimum requirements but the eradication of technical institutes that should cater for technical courses. To be an all round country, we need skills at all levels of labour and it would be prudent to establish polytechnics and colleges that replace those that have been upgraded to universities.

For instance if in a county you upgrade their only renowned high school into a college, how would you expect the county to provide secondary education? Upgrading the only high school into a college means that a number of high schools have sprung up or you have created two to three high schools that will give the feed to the new college. I don’t see this happening with colleges being upgraded to university status.

The promotion of polytechnics and colleges into university, if not done prior to establishment of institutions that will replace their positions, may lead to the derailment of achieving vision 2030. The important role played by these learning institutions cannot be overlooked otherwise we’ll end up with a country full of managers without labour force to manage.

Engages Private Sector Stakeholders

Vision 2030 only mentions KEPSA’s The Kenya Private Sector Association push for the realization of vision 2030 but fails to talk about the Public Private Partnership (PPP) Framework for key projects developments. An issue I have here is the failure of the Information and Communication Technology ministry to take advantage of the PPP Act for the rolling out of important ICT projects like the LTE and Fibre connectivity in all counties. Last time I heard about these projects the ICT board was saying that they intend to engage the private sector in the rolling out of the project but there wasn’t a framework for engaging the private players despite the existence of KEPSA and PPP Act 2013.

The Vision 2030 secretariat should be in the forefront in engaging both KEPSA and Key public institutions like the ICT Board in accelerating the deployment of key projects such as LTE rollout for the sole purpose of ensuring that Vision 2030 remains within the set timeline.

The other progresses made so far by the Vision 2030 team as reported in the newsletter are ok, and hopefully we can retain the dwindling hope in the Kenya’s bold dream to become a middle income country in the next 17 years. To ensure that our hopes are kept high, we need to read from future newsletters of major infrastructural developments already achieved, policy frameworks establishments, and overall progress report on the percentage of the entire vision so far achieved. Otherwise I’m not sure if we have achieve the 23% of projects so far as we have covered, in years, 23% of the timeline…time left = 77%.

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