What are we missing in the current manifestoes that are being developed

The Kenya vision 2030, under the political pillar, envisages issue based politics to be at the centre of every political condensation. The implication is that such contestations should be pegged on addressing the needs of the citizenry, including crating an enabling environment for achievement of individual and national objectives in a harmonious manner. The manifestoes being launched should be viewed alongside four major considerations: First, they should be developed after effective interactions and feedback from citizens who are expected to express their desired development needs. The implication of this is that many meetings should be held with focused groups, which will ultimately satisfy the constitutional demands for public participation and consultation which has been lacking in such political activities.

Secondly, there should be clear implementation frameworks showing how the propositions will be achieved, and their operationalability. The manifesto should show “the how to” achieve this or that idea, in addition to institutionalizing ways of domesticating what works in other areas. Thirdly, they should demonstrate the power of internal, external partnerships and collaborations in order to accelerate developments. Many a times, we have ignored what has already been done and have the tendency to start imagining new things when it’s possible to build onto earlier revolutionary ideas. Fourthly, they should also be informed by the needs of various demographics like youth, females, males and regions.

There should be greater engagement and participation of youths because ¾ of the African population, and 68% in Kenya, is aged below 35 years. Issues relating to effective education, talents and skills development, more funding for entrepreneurship, provision of adequate health, operationalizing governance and accountability and leadership development initiatives for immediate and future engagements in national development should be key. It is for example emerging from KUCCPs admissions into higher education that there is greater demand for technical and vocational training in the country; party programmes should demonstrate for example how to leverage on the over 1311 technical and vocational training institutes in Kenya. Such a consultative process will make the country to come up with citizen driven manifestoes and programme of activities which increases the ownership and also enables effective monitoring and evaluation of the projects even without government day to day supervision. Leaders that come into office are supposed to implement such commonly drawn programmes, which makes it easier to grade their performance. This article is drawn from my studies on management of urban political affairs in my Urban Management studies degrees.