Continue with the ongoing parastatal and university reforms in Kenya

There has been much hullabaloo on the recent reorganization of the University of Nairobi and other state owned enterprises. It should be remembered that in 2013, H.E President Uhuru Kenyatta, commissioned the parastatal reforms report, which highlighted the need to merge some state owned entities to make them more viable economically and functionally. The report was commissioned out of the realization that our state owned entities and companies have for the longest possible time been a burden to the tax payer. Majority of them have been on life support from the exchequer, which shouldn’t be the case for such entities. It was also because of the appreciation of the fact that most of them were duplicating others or were not living up to their mandates and functions. There were therefore many instances of mismanagement, misappropriation of funds and too much emphasis on ancillary services, which in the process made such entities to forget or pay lip service to their core mandates. 

These entities should be guided by good corporate governance, forward thinking leadership and also ensuring that they embrace Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s), which increases the ability to effectively offer public services and good societal outcomes, like innovation, creation of jobs and high contribution to GDP. We expect our state entities to be at the forefront in utilizing locally available resources, including finances and talents through strategic investments including adoption of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs).

We are all wondering how countries like China have been able to develop and advance us lots of loans. This has recently been revealed by several studies by the World Bank and PwC have shown that Chinese state owned entities contributes up to 60% of the Country’s GDP, they contribute up 70% of innovation, contribute to 80% urban employment opportunities and 90% contribution to creation of new jobs. This data is an indicator that such entities are influential growth sources, and hence are vital for future economic freedoms of any country. These studies have shown that Chinese presence and recognition in the Fortune Global 500 firms have grown from 9% in 2005 to 23% in 2014.

We expect the reforms to make universities be able to translate into more funds for them, we need more publishing entities for the huge volumes of research to be undertaken as they concentrate on their mandate. We expect young and upcoming universities to focus on research and education and then do all they can to excel in specific areas.