President Ruto: How new economic blueprint will be designed

This story has significance for readers across Kenya and beyond.

President William Ruto has made the case that Kenya cannot afford to wait until Vision 2030 expires before deciding what comes next.

In an exclusive interview with Sunday Nation at State House, Nairobi, on Friday, August 21, the Head of State argued that the country risks entering its next five-year development cycle without a long-term destination.

The President argues that Kenya is already planning beyond 2030, even if it has not yet agreed on what that future should look like.

With the next Medium-Term Plan expected to run from 2027 to 2032, President Ruto says it would be irresponsible to begin implementing a five-year development programme whose final two years would fall outside the lifespan of the country's existing long-term development blueprint.

That timing, he argues, is the fundamental reason the national conversation on Kenya's future must begin now.

He says the existing blueprint achieved substantial progress, but lacked strong legal anchoring and suffered from financing and implementation challenges.

How the successor framework will be ring-fenced should be achieved either through legislation or constitutional provisions, however, should itself be determined through public participation, he said.

Opposition leaders have been critical of the timing of the program, terming it a 2027 campaign tool.

But president Ruto rejects this notion, defending his timing for the program.

“Medium-Term Plan Five will hang,” Dr Ruto said. “It’s a five-year cycle plan. It will go up to 2032 when Vision 2030 ends at 2030.”

“Kenyans must answer the question about what kind of country they want to have after Vision 2030.”

Vision 2030 was launched in 2008 under former President Mwai Kibaki as Kenya's long-term development blueprint.

It was designed to transform Kenya into a newly industrialising, middle-income country providing a high quality of life to all its citizens by 2030.

Its implementation has been organised through successive five-year Medium-Term Plans.

The President's argument also draws from the Constitution, which requires county development plans to be anchored in national long-term planning.

The Constitution, he says, already anticipates that Kenya should have a long-term national development direction.

This, he says, makes the proposed Beyond Vision 2030 conversation not merely a presidential initiative, but an exercise he believes is demanded by the country's constitutional and planning framework.

The President says experts should explain the options and trade-offs, but Kenyans should ultimately determine the destination.

There is no expert proposal that will be the final position, he said.

Experts, he argued, can tell citizens what each choice would mean, but the people must decide what they want.

That also explains why Dr Ruto says the exercise should not be run as a conventional government programme. A multi-stakeholder steering committee is expected to bring together civil society, religious organisations, professional bodies, private-sector representatives and other groups.

The committee, the President noted, would determine how the public engagement should be conducted.

Government's role, according to Dr Ruto, would be to facilitate the process.

But the question that inevitably arises is why the conversation could not simply be held after Vision 2030 expires.

Dr Ruto's answer is that doing so would be too late.

“Long-term planning cannot begin when the previous plan has already ended, particularly when government is required to prepare and implement five-year development programmes,” he argues.

The President estimates that between 65 and 80 per cent of the various pillars of Vision 2030 have been implemented.

“We could have done better,” he said, pointing to weaknesses in financing and the absence of a clear legal foundation.

The challenge now is to avoid repeating those mistakes, he added.

His insistence that the conversation must start now comes against the backdrop of the 2027 election, making the initiative politically sensitive.

The President repeatedly rejected the suggestion that the exercise is intended to shape the 2027 contest or lock in his administration's agenda.

“Elections will come and go. Kenyans will make their decision and the country will move on,” he said.

“Vision 2030 was not about Mwai Kibaki. It wasn't about an administration. Beyond Vision 2030 is not about William Ruto and it's not about my administration.”

That distinction is central to his pitch.

The country is being asked to establish a development destination that will remain relevant whether he is in State House or not.

A long-term national framework, Dr Ruto says, should instead establish the destination while leaving individual administrations to determine the means of getting there.

His preferred model is that which would represent a significant change from the current political culture, where administrations frequently use development programmes to distinguish themselves from their predecessors.

The national conversation he envisions, he says, should go beyond projects such as roads, dams, housing or railways, but the debate should focus on the kind of society Kenya wants to become.

He offered life expectancy as an example.

“Kenya's current life expectancy is about 65 years. The country could decide that it wants to reach 85 or even 90 years. That target would then require the country to work backwards on what kind of healthcare system would be required, what food systems would Kenya need, how would nutrition, housing, sanitation, clean water and environmental sustainability have to change and what kind of economy would generate the resources necessary to support such a population.”

This is the type of conversation, he told Sunday Nation, Kenyans should have.

Rather than beginning with government projects, the process should begin with national aspiration, he said.

The Head of State believes much of the foundation for this discussion already exists in the 2010 Constitution.

Article 43 provides for economic and social rights, including healthcare, housing, food and social security.

Article 10 establishes values such as equity, inclusiveness, sustainable development, democracy, human rights and protection of marginalised groups.

The President argues that the next long-term development framework should convert those constitutional aspirations into measurable national objectives.

That would give the conversation a broader foundation than simply economic growth.

“The question would become not only how big Kenya's economy should be, but what that growth should mean for ordinary citizens.”

But the president’s own answer to the question of where Kenya should go is deliberately ambitious.

He wants the country to aspire to become one of the world's top 10 developing economies on the road towards first-world status.

He cited South Korea and Singapore as examples of countries that moved from developing economies into the ranks of globally competitive nations.

His argument is that Kenya should not be content with its current position somewhere in the middle of the developing world.

“It is not a question of failure,” Dr Ruto said. “My argument is our ambition.”

He believes Kenya has the human capital, entrepreneurial culture and technological capacity to make the leap.

He pointed to the country's strong use of digital technology and artificial intelligence as evidence of an underlying capacity that has not yet been fully exploited.

President Ruto has linked the long-term conversation to a fundamental rethink of how Kenya finances development.

He says the country cannot continue relying heavily on taxes and borrowing to fund infrastructure.

Instead, he is promoting instruments such as the National Infrastructure Fund, which he says is designed to mobilise capital from existing assets and leverage it to finance commercially viable infrastructure.

The President said about $2.4 billion had been raised from mature assets, including Safaricom and Kenya Pipeline, and that the fund could potentially leverage those resources several times over.

His broader argument is that Kenya must learn to finance its future without continually increasing the burden of sovereign debt.

Another piece of the long-term financing strategy, he mentioned, is increasing domestic savings.

He said national savings through National Social Security Fund (NSSF) and pension funds had increased substantially and could reach Sh1 trillion by June next year.

The ambition is to create a large domestic pool of capital that can be invested in infrastructure and other productive sectors.

That would reduce Kenya's dependence on foreign borrowing and make long-term development less vulnerable to external financing conditions.

The President sees this as an essential component of the country he wants to build beyond 2030.

President Ruto also believes the future Kenya will need a radically more productive public service.

His argument is that technology can enable government to deliver more services without necessarily expanding the public payroll.

He cited the digitisation of government services and the transition from National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) to the Social Health Authority as examples of how technology can reduce bureaucracy and increase efficiency.

Reporting originally appeared via Nation Africa. Read the full source for additional context.