Kenya seems dead serious about its stated desire to “go to Singapore” in the next generation. The country recently unveiled, for public discussion, the Beyond 2030 – dubbed Vision 2060.
The blueprint is a new long-term national development vision designed to succeed Vision 2030, whose final implementation cycle comes to an end in three years. The blueprint establishes a 35-year development charter aimed at transitioning Kenya into an industrialised, globally competitive and prosperous high-income first-world economy.
The overriding purpose of this plan is to serve as a binding development compact between the state and citizens that transcends political regimes and electoral cycles. To achieve the envisioned development, the government has undertaken to modernise and leverage infrastructure to create economic productivity hubs, accelerate technology sovereignty and green industrialisation.
Ultimately, the government targets a highly diversified economy that ensures elevated GDP growth rate on a sustainable basis, enhanced dominance in intra-African trade, universal healthcare, high digital connectivity, and an increase in citizens’ dignity, opportunity, security and quality of life.
Two realities motivated the shift from Vision 2030. First, the government needed a proactive successor framework to seamlessly take over from Vision 2030. Second, given that Vision 2030 was unveiled in 2008 before the promulgation of the current Constitution, there was a need to structurally align the new blueprint with modern constitutional goals, like devolution, the Bill of Rights and public participation.
Vision 2030 faced implementational pitfalls that made it struggle to achieve its objectives – such as sustained 10 percent annual GDP growth – primarily due to funding shortfalls, governance challenges and exogenous factors. The economic pillar relied on manufacturing to drive the envisaged growth rate.
Instead, manufacturing contribution to GDP actually shrunk from 10.4 to 7.3 per cent. The shrinkage was a consequence of policy missteps that provided consumption subsidies instead of supporting production. Huge debt servicing costs, occasioned by aggressive investments in physical infrastructure, suffocated productive sectors like agriculture, tourism, manufacturing, mining and the digital economy, of the resources for generating wealth.
Equally noteworthy is that the end of President Mwai Kibaki’s regime saw a shift of priorities to the “Big Four Agenda” and “Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda”, spearheaded by Presidents Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, respectively, disrupting the long-term continuity of the original Vision 2030.
The situation was not made any better by the rollout in 2013 of devolved governments, which created administrative friction, overlapping tax regimes, financial constraints and policy contests between national ministries and counties.
Recurring droughts, global financial crises and domestic political shocks – such as prolonged post-election political contestations and violence – derailed economic projections, forcing the diversion of funds to emergency situations.
The pitfalls notwithstanding, scorecards indicate that approximately 66.1 per cent of the overall Vision 2030 targets were achieved. However, industrialisation and growth metrics are still below targets due to low investments in the productive sectors.
To avoid a repeat of the failures, the new blueprint is anchored on five pillars to be refined by a multi-sectoral panel and grassroots debate. These are universal healthcare; technical and digital literacy-driven education; infrastructure (green industrialisation, renewable energy, smart agriculture and clean water access); enhanced national security driven by data privacy, tech-governance systems, and ensuring regional geopolitical stability; and job creation through the blue economy, manufacturing value-addition, and expanded access to credit.
These pillars are buttressed by structural strengths. Unlike the Vision 2030 that started on a clean slate, this one benefits from decades of state investments in mobile money, mature digital infrastructure and inter-connected highway and energy grids.
The Beyond 2030 vision will have the advantage of a history of successes and failures to inform its implementation. Equally significant is the envisaged citizens' buy-in once the document goes through public participation before it is taken to Parliament.
Finally, the charter has been billed as a bipartisan document, guided by independent academic and economic experts. However, implementing Beyond 2030 is likely to encounter structural and financial challenges.
To begin with, there is a mixed implementation record inherited from the Vision 2030, which leaves a highly uneven legacy. While most counties in Central Kenya and parts of Rift Valley are way ahead in terms of implementation of the vision’s projects, the same cannot be said of the rest of the country.
This infuses scepticism. To ordinary citizens struggling with baseline economic pressures, the 35-year leap to “First World” seems too long and risks feeling abstract, thus denying the blueprint the much-needed support and legitimacy.
Another challenge is how to ensure loyalty to the plan long after its vision-bearers have left office. It must not be lost on the government that the debt distress will constrict the fiscal space required to underwrite this Sh5 trillion vision.
This calls for the pursuit of the fiscal consolidation objectives. Moreover, the government must brace for climate shocks and external volatility. The vision being heavily reliant on climate-smart agriculture and the blue economy means unpredictable weather and geo-economic shocks pose systemic threats.
Unless challenges such as corruption and other forms of financial leakages are curtailed, investors could be discouraged, slowing down capital formation. Without additional capital injection into the economy to create tangible (not digital) industries, the country may not generate adequate financial resources to underwrite the cost of this ambitious agenda.
Beyond 2030 vision is an idea whose time has come. Kenya is endowed with abundant natural and human resources that, if properly harnessed, could catapult the country to the next level of development within one generation.
Unfortunately, the country keeps lagging behind some of its peers due mainly to a lack of focused leadership. It is high time Kenya’s leaders engaged the forward gear to leapfrog it to its rightful place among industrialised societies.
All eyes are on President William Ruto and his government to see how well the Beyond 2030 vision will be firmly grounded into an immutable legislation, with the requisite in-built mechanisms to facilitate it to navigate economic, political and climatic shocks.
Prof Ongore is a Public Finance and Corporate Governance Scholar based at the Technical University of Kenya. [email protected]
