Kenyans have the capacity to play a bigger role in promoting industrialisation.
Industrialisation Principal Secretary Francis Owino said local industries will take longer to grow if Kenyans don’t change their preference for foreign products to locally produced goods.
“Sometimes we pretend to love what comes from outside than what is our own. If we want to industrialise as a country, we must promote local products,” he said.
“Let us love our own products. Can we commit that we will promote our own products because we will be giving market to our people? Promote local products. Industrialisation will be realised from the grassroots.”
Owino spoke on Friday at Ang’urai market during his tour of Teso North. He said the government is committed to seeing the development of local enterprises because domestic entrepreneurship is among primary engines of Kenya’s development.
The PS officially launched the Teso North Constituency Industrial Development Centre at Ang’urai market. He said as a way of reviving local industries which collapsed more than a decade ago, the government has injected Sh650 million towards the revitalisation of Rivatex East Africa in Eldoret to support the cotton industry.
“When we were closing 2019, the president directed the reorganisation of the budget so we focus on the Big Four. Money was redirected from other sectors deemed not very vital to fund the Big Four Agenda and we succeeded because we received Sh650 million, which will be injected into Rivatex to promote cotton production,” he said.
“This is money that will come before the end of January. The only responsibility that I will leave here with is to go to Rivatex and tell them that Teso is a region that grows cotton and their contribution is big.”
The PS spoke six months after Busia Woman Representative Florence Mutua called on Kenyans to embrace the purchase of local products to grow domestic industries.
“We have been hearing about the presence of plastic rice in our shops,” she said.
“We constantly consume goods whose origin and safety we do not understand. The only answer lies in the promotion of the consumption of what we locally produce.”
Mutua spoke in Amukura, Teso South, where she helped women's groups to raise funds for the establishment of small businesses.
