How Kenya Kwanza plans to tackle healthcare, housing and agriculture
Deputy President William Ruto during the launch of the Kenya Kwanza Manifesto, at Kasarani Stadium, Nairobi on June 30, 2022.
Agriculture
The Kenya Kwanza plans to invest Sh250 billion in agriculture to boost food production.
If it forms the next government, the coalition will set aside the funds from the 2023/24 financial year to 2027.
The proposed reforms are meant to ensure food security in the country and limit the cost of living.
Currently, agriculture is the largest sector of the economy, contributing half of Kenya’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a quarter directly and another quarter indirectly.
The proposal comes at a time when the price of maize flour, that is used to make Ugali, Kenya’s staple, has hit over Sh200 for a two-kilogramme packet.
Food accounts for 54 per cent of household expenditure.
The case for investing in agriculture as the sector that will lead the economic recovery is predicated on seven factors that include quick turnaround, cost of living, foreign exchange, jobs, incomes, ending poverty and industrialisation.
The reforms in the sector will help in the provision of adequate affordable working capital to farmers through well managed farmer organisations.
It also seeks to deploy modern agricultural risk management instruments that ensure farming is profitable and income is predictable, such as was provided for scheduled crops by the Guaranteed Minimum Returns (GMR) scheme in the 1970s.
The instruments include crop and livestock insurance schemes, commodity market instruments such as forward contracts, futures contracts and price stabilisation schemes.
Kenya Kwanza also seeks to transform two million poor farmers from food deficit to surplus producers, through input finance and intensive agricultural extension support, with a target to generate a minimum productivity target of Sh50,000 per acre.
There is further plan to raise productivity of key value food value chains – maize, eight to 15 bags per acre, dairy, 2.5kg-7.5kg per cow a day, and beef carcass weight from 110kg to 150kg.
If it wins, the coalition says that it will reduce dependence on basic food imports by 30 per cent, revamp underperforming or collapsed export crops while expanding emerging ones -- coffee, cashew nuts, pyrethrum, avocado and macadamia nuts.
The manifesto also promises to boost the tea value chain through blending and branding.
Housing
The manifesto promises to invest Sh250 billion for accessible and adequate housing in the 2023/24 financial year.
About Sh50 billion of the financing shall be in budget commitment from the national government with Sh200 billion to be financed by pension funds.
The requirement for new urban housing is estimated at 250,000 units per year, against a production of 50,000.
The cumulative deficit is estimated at two million units, which has forced more than 60 per cent of urban Kenyans to live in slums and other low-quality housing without adequate sanitation, undermining their dignity and exposing them to health hazards.
The project will be a continuation of President Kenyatta’s affordable housing scheme.
After the 2017 General Election, President Kenyatta promised to build 500, 000 affordable housing units by the time he leaves office. However, with budgetary constraints, it has been difficult to achieve this, with barely 50,000 units having been constructed so far.
The manifesto plans to increase supply of new housing to 250,000 every year and the percentage of affordable housing supply from the current two per cent to 50 per cent.
This is proposed to be achieved by structuring affordable long-term housing finance schemes, including a national housing fund and cooperative social housing schemes that will guarantee off take of houses from developers.
It also seeks to grow the number of mortgages from 30,000 to 1,000,000 by enabling low-cost mortgages of Sh10,000 and below, strengthen Jua Kali industry capacity to produce high quality construction productions and give developers incentives to build more affordable housing.
Kenya Kwanza also plans to extend the housing agenda to rural Kenya, even as it reckons that population pressure on land is manifested by land fragmentation, encroachment of forests and other ecologically sensitive areas and human-wildlife conflict.
This is notwithstanding that the country has a considerable amount of unused and underutilised agricultural land.
In the past, administrative solutions such as limits on land subdivision, as well as ceilings on land ownership and taxing of idle land have been mooted.
“Kenya Kwanza is persuaded that such measures should be a last resort and more friendly.”
Healthcare
Kenya Kwanza says it is committed and determined to realise the constitutional right to health in the shortest time possible by delivering a Universal Health Coverage (UHC) system built on three pillars.
They are fully publicly financed primary healthcare -- preventive, promotive, outpatient and basic diagnostic services, that give patients a choice between public, faith-based and private providers, based on a regulated tariff.
There is also the universal seamless health insurance system comprising a mandatory national insurance (National Health Insurance Fund - NHIF) and private insurance as complementary covers, with NHIF as the primary and private as secondary cover.
The national fund for chronic and catastrophic illness and injury costs not covered or those with very restrictive cover by insurance- cancer, diabetes, strokes and accident rehabilitation, pandemics.
They will be funded by a combination of insurance and government.
The three pillars will leverage on the proposed primary health funds as platforms for community based group schemes.
Part of changes in the sector to make it succeed shall include NHIF reforms that will see contributions rise to beyond Sh200 billion a year.
This means that those earning Sh100,000 a month will contribute 1.7 percent amounting to Sh1,700 a month.
