By Constant Munda
As Kenya marks the Africa Industrialization Day today, the focus will be on its credentials to revamp its limping manufacturing sector to capitalize on new opportunities on a wider seamless market for the continent.
President Uhuru Kenyatta’s plan to create in the upwards of 800,000 new decent jobs for Kenya’s growing skilled youth by enacting policies, which support modernization existing and development of new factories is yet to gain traction.
The manufacturing pillar under the Big Four socio-economic transformation plan is to create an additional 1,000 small and medium-sized (SMEs) factories in targeted sub-sectors such as agro-processing, leather, textiles and fish-processing.
Statistics and recent surveys, however, paint a picture of struggling manufacturers, with their contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) — national wealth — shrinking and recording the lowest growth in jobs among key sectors of the economy.
As a low middle-income country with sights on joining the league of highly-industrialised middle-income nations in just more than a decade, Kenya should be witnessing the movement of labour from low productivity sectors such as farming to the manufacturing sector.
Growth in new job opportunities in the sector has largely been flat, with an addition of 4,200 new jobs in the first full year of Mr Kenyatta’s Big Four agenda, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) data indicates.
The President’s target is based on the sector overcoming its struggles to contribute 15 percent share to the national wealth (GDP) from the decades-low levels posted in recent years…
