Lead image for Large-scale irrigation key to Kenya transformation.
As Kenya begins the national conversation on what should come beyond Vision 2030, the fundamental question to guide us is: what resources do we own today that can transform Kenya into the country we aspire to be?
History offers good lessons. Successful economies identified strategic advantages and organised around converting them into productivity. Singapore for example had almost no natural resource base and only about 728 km² of land, so it leveraged its location, port, trade, manufacturing and human capital.
China’s transformation began, in part, with agricultural reforms after 1978, raising rural productivity and incomes while releasing labour for industrialisation. Vietnam similarly used farming to move from food shortages to becoming one of the world’s largest rice exporters.
The lesson is that nations transform by making available resources productive.
Kenya has three major assets: extensive agricultural land, a large and youthful population, and abundant renewable energy in geothermal, hydro, wind and solar.
Agriculture contributes about 24 percent of GDP, while about 72 percent of the population derives its livelihood directly or indirectly from the sector. Yet much of our agriculture remains dependent on rainfall.
Kenya has an estimated 3.5 million acres of irrigation potential, but only about 747,000 acres (just 21.3 percent of our irrigation potential) are under irrigation. This leaves more than 2.7 million of untapped potential. That is not simply an agricultural statistic; it is an economic transformation opportunity. Commercial large-scale irrigation should, therefore, be treated as strategic national infrastructure.
For decades, transformational infrastructure has meant roads, railways and power systems; all these are equally important, but a strategically located multipurpose dam can make land productive, provide municipal and industrial water, control floods, support irrigation and, where feasible, generate electricity. That is productive infrastructure.