For the longest time in this country, investment in state-run corporations was consistently preferred over private ventures. With a priority on providing cheap services over making profits and run by unqualified politically correct personnel, the result was lax which led to the eventual collapse of most of them.
Continuing the sins of the old, Vision 2030 Economic Blueprint has in its 1st Medium Term Plan (MTP) catastrophically preferred public expenditure on infrastructure by placing infrastructure amongst the foundations for national transformation.
Indeed, the implementation of the first MPT has already been a major catalyst for our increased external debt.
To implement the projects, we need a cheap source of funds. We can either do it by multiplying production and creating surplus thus improving our export revenues or we could just borrow and bank on returns from wise investment. The latter would be more attractive but for our love affair with corruption. At the basic level investing all our resources into infrastructure at the expense of what we are good at and what we already have is just a bad idea. We are left with nothing if our investment fails to bear fruit.
Focusing on the easy as a path toward the complex
Going forward then we must shift focus to adding value to what we already have, not only as a means of raising cash but also as a way of diversifying our economy. Investing in agriculture is one way to do it. When, as in our case, society is predominantly rural, the surplus necessary for industrialization must come from the rural sector. This means a heavy investment in agriculture. The commercialization of agriculture and the export of finished products as opposed to raw materials is something that has been frequently discussed yet never explored. It is perhaps time we recognized the centrality of agriculture to our economic development
On top of agriculture, the country should also consider expanding its investment in Small and Medium Enterprises. A lot has already been done in promoting Technical and vocational training institutions that are aimed at churning out skilled labor to galvanize SMEs, yet more should be done considering that, in a developing country such as ours which still suffers from an acute lack of technology, growth can be catapulted by focusing on creation rather than invention. Unlike the latter which needs many resources and a highly skilled labor force which we do not have, the former only requires an enabling environment. We may not be able to create Facebook but surely we should be able to produce our own padlocks.
we already have TVET institutions, what we lack is the motivation to train and be trained. People tend to produce more when they are guaranteed a stake in the outcome. The simple message, therefore, is that TVET Institutions should embrace Intellectual Property ownership as an incentive for innovation and creativity. This will encourage research in both learners and tutors as opposed to the current tendency where they are satisfied with base creations.
In this article, we draw a distinction between invention and innovation by emphasizing the latter’s importance in a typical developing, low-technology economy. We recommend the establishment of IP Management subsystems within all creation and innovation hubs. The government initially adopted IP within TVET institutions in 2005 intending to strengthen Kenya’s science, technology, and research capacity, as well as to reinforce the Vision 2030 development pillars across all sectors of the Kenyan economy, yet more should be done in terms of creating awareness and focusing some of our vocational training institutes to produce agricultural technologists. Let everyone understand the benefit of using what we have or what we can obtain easily to get what we want.
vocational education is market-focused, with the ultimate goal of producing entrepreneurs. Achieving this requires an educational strategy that is focused on developing analytical (rather than critical thinking) skills, as well as the presence of an IP management unit to plan, strategize, and manage the system from conception to fruition. With the motivation of ownership, we will be able to produce competitive products that enjoy global recognition or at the very least, produce enough for subsistence consumption and free up the resources we spend on procuring basic goods to solve a different problem.
Awareness is important because, even in universities with IP structures, faculty members are frequently unaware of the existence of IP policies due to a lack of dissemination of such information. Very few academicians copyright their work. There are others who, whilst aware, are convinced that intellectual property protection is not required to foster innovation and creativity, but rather acts as a barrier to free and open exchanges, technology, culture, and knowledge that form the foundation of innovative and creative modes. These polarized viewpoints persist because little is truly known about how intellectual property environments influence or could influence innovation and creativity as a means of advancement.
By Essendi Kenneth
