Revive Mumias sugar company and others in Kenya through PPPs

There is need for re-thinking of better revitalization strategy for Mumias sugar and others and privatization is not the best method under the current situation. The revival of the company relies on the goodwill and cooperation between all stakeholders in order to avail the much needed renewal strategies that will require to be sustainably financed and implemented. There is need for continuous government involvement and enforcement of the revitalization strategy process; this should be done through setting the required standards, policies, programmes, rules and regulations, in addition to the monitoring and evaluation of the agreed outputs towards its revival. The government will be required to provide some part financing and the necessary enabling infrastructure, including power and energy mixes to enable the final products to be affordable and also at prices that can make the company profitable. Farmers can be put in effective cooperatives that are well managed to secure their livelihoods by government encouragement.

The revitalization strategy must make the products more innovative and sustainable and the company management must be result oriented personalities. Mumias requires support of local leadership and farmers, who should support the best agreed method of its revival. It will also need strong financial, technological, effective, innovative and managerial expertise from private sector. This is because these have been lacking in the management of this company hence its underperformance over the years. Sugar production technologies, the management of sugar companies and global competitiveness of the entire sugar industry has been changing with time. There has been greater need to incentivize farmers on one hand to keep growing and supplying the sugar cane to the companies and also the need to ensure that growing the crop makes it possible for farmers to improve their living conditions. Privatization completely removes government involvement in revival strategy which may face socio-political backlash. Mumias sugar company should be revived through increased application of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) that is able to bring together the government, the farmers, the private entities and also the leadership in addressing the missing gaps in its management. PPPs will create a mutual cycle of benefits between all players from the farmer (competitive cane prices), private sector (good rate of return on investments) to the government (welfare of citizens/ taxes); we need Mumias sugar in our shops!