A boy put his hand into a pitcher full of filberts. He grasped as many as he could possibly hold, but when he tried to pull out his hand, he was prevented from doing so by the neck of the pitcher.
Unwilling to lose his filberts, and yet unable to withdraw his hand, he burst into tears and bitterly lamented his disappointment. A bystander said to him, “Be satisfied with half the quantity, and you will readily draw out your hand.”
Last week, Cabinet considered and approved the Kenya Kwanza administration’s inaugural budget for transmittal to Parliament. This budget will be key to setting President William Ruto’s pace in driving his government’s agenda having inherited the current budget from the previous administration.
Of key interest for many Kenyans is the government taking a value chain approach to budgeting. The government has committed Sh267.7 billion to nine value chains that will mainstream the Kenya Kwanza bottom-up transformation agenda.
The value chain approach allows mapping the production process throughout the value chain to the final market transaction. The resource allocation in the value chain approach to budgeting ensures efficiency by eliminating gaps and duplications.
The first value chain is cotton to textile and apparel. Businesses along the value chain, from cotton farmers to young fashion designers, would benefit from the sudden demand from Kenyans looking for local products.
In the 1980s, the Kenyan textile industry was the second largest employer after the public service but the same cannot be said today. The many textile firms in the country would employ more than 500,000 people at once.
The second is the edible oil crop production value chain. The Kenya Kwanza manifesto emphasises the promotion of domestic production of edible oil crops as one of the ways to achieve food security and economic growth in Kenya.
If we reduce dependency on imports and promote local production, Kenya can save valuable foreign exchange. Additionally, we would create jobs for farmers and other players in the value chain.
The third one is the dairy value chain, which aims at ensuring that farmers get more value from dairy farming. State-owned New KCC has been mismanaged in the past and it doesn’t seem to be profitable or to be supporting farmers significantly.
Over the years, middlemen have taken advantage of the ambiguous policies in the milk industry to gain from the farmers’ investment and sweat. Most of them buy milk from farmers at Sh17 per litre and then sell it to milk processors at a profit.
This latest move is set to change this to the advantage of the farmers and the country, at large.
The fourth value chain relates to leather and leather products. The leather industry has been growing but there is need to do more to ensure that it benefits the economy.
We must also agree to stop leather imports as growth in this industry helps a lot of farmers keeping animals for skins. Investing in the industry as planned will help the country become more dependent on local leather.
Rice production is the fifth value chain that the government has identified. Kenyan farmers produce some of the best rice but the market is skewed against them due to the importation of cheaper varieties.
The sixth value chain relates to tea. We have already seen some benefits of the ongoing reforms with Pakistan saying that it would import more from Kenya and pay in local currency.
We also need to diversify further and produce more purple teas, which are becoming more popular across the world as this would open up new markets for Kenyan farmers.
The other value chains identified are blue economy and fisheries, minerals and tree planting, and construction and building materials.
Identifying these nine value chains and allocating the money needed will definitely lay the building blocks necessary for the full implementation of the Kenya Kwanza administration’s transformative plan.
It will now be up to Kenyans to take advantage of these plans and ensure that they benefit from them. Each of us has a role to play as the government can come up with good policies but they are nothing if not well implemented.
