My father’s elder brother worked at the Kenya Port Authority about 40 years ago. He was known to be one of the most prominent personalities from Kombani Kwale.
His Mombasa sizable home in Likoni was a place to seek refuge for relatives, neighbours and even those who barely knew him visiting Mombasa. He had a relatively comfortable livelihood, and was envied by many, and a source of what could be for many. He was employed as a stevedore at the dockside.
This is what the Kenya Port Authority could do for its employees.
However, a recent contested policy change directed to transfer logistics to Naivasha and Mediterranean Shipping Line to manage the port has been disastrous and caused further decline to the port city. This is equivalent to transferring all the tea factories in Nyeri county to Isiolo.
Devolution the greatest gain of the 2010 Constitution was intended to create upward movement for the citizens of a county across board. It can be simply described as the transfer of resources, manpower and expertise, finance and equipment, and self-governance to the counties.
Every county needs entrepreneurs to grow its economy and employment opportunities. An entrepreneur is a person who is willing to bear the risk of creating a new and innovative business by marshalling resources required to put to the market a product or a service to make profit.
The creation of investment opportunities and environment conducive for business is the responsibility of the county governments. These incentives may include private public partnership projects, encouraging unsolicited proposals, tax rebates and efficiency in administrative processes.
In Kwale county, the governor has prioritised education by providing full scholarships to bright students, thus improving the transition rate from 45 per cent in 2010 to 95 per cent in 2020.This creates a new generation of well-educated citizenry, a vital ingredient to developing an entrepreneurial class.
In Makueni county, there are approximately 28,700 farmers growing mangoes on 4,300,000 trees whom with the county government now have a value addition plant stopping waste of 30 per centof their produce valued at Sh800 million annually. The earnings from mangoes have quadrupled to the farmer with minimum post-harvest loss.
Mombasa county is 80 per cent urban, and its economic sectors of advantage are maritime commerce, fisheries, tourism, and industry has registered a massive decline in investment, employment, and growth in all of the four sectors.
The urban character gives the advantage of wide access to technology and information, and ease of formation of business pools. Business groups resources can thus be marshalled and managed to rival or partner with established corporations. What has been absent to achieve success is a county leadership acting as the arbitrator and facilitator and not as an invisible beneficiary.
Investing pooled resources to venture in logistics — road and waterway cargo transportation and storage facilities — is also possible as Mombasa remains the busiest regional port serving a population of approximately 150 million people. Lobbying for granting of duty free status to the now idle container freight stations would increase trade and logistics activities in Mombasa by over 400 per cent. These container freight stations collectively represent moribund investment of over 25 billion.
Organising the beach management units for fish product supply investments from capture to value addition processes and finally to marketing and sales. The country's shortfall in demand for fish is approximatelly 80,000 tons annually.
What Mombasa county lacks that Kwale and Makueni have is focused, innovative leadership in administrative governance and legislative oversight capacity.
The lack of urgency to remedy the endemic failures of the administration is premised on the popularity and loyalty of and to the political party, in this case ODM, and sustained support from the party leader, who has placed a greater value on a visionless misdirected leadership at the expense of the residents.
With the impending exit of the incumbent governor, passion for change and transformation of the port city may just be lost due to unclear priorities, crippling compromises with the incumbent, systemic euphoria and political party machinations.
Mombasa cannot afford another disastrous leadership vacuum as it has in the last 40 years, except for the tragically short Karisa Maitha stint, nor entertain the enablers of this through prioritizing party politics over the interest of the city.
The writer is a Mombasa politician and socioeconomic agitator
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