Last Wednesday, I was privileged to be among the youth leaders invited to the conversation on Kenya's future Beyond Vision 2030 held at KICC in Nairobi. It brought together government, civil service, academia, religious leaders and young people as the opening act of a public participation exercise that will culminate in a new developmental blueprint to guide the country into a prosperous future.
As I listened to the panel discussions and submissions from the different groups present, it became clear that the conversation was, to a large extent, about how Kenya can leapfrog from developing to developed status within a single generation and what that would actually mean for ordinary Kenyans.
Ideas were floated, comments made and hard questions asked about why some of Vision 2030's economic targets were never met. But President William Ruto turned the conversation into a genuinely people-driven one, prompting everyone present and the country at large to reflect on the past and articulate their individual and collective aspirations for the future.
He reminded the room that one reason Vision 2030 fell short was that it was never anchored in law, so successive governments were never legally accountable for implementing it. Public participation wasn't a requirement either: the vision was drafted by a handful of experts behind closed doors and handed down to Kenyans, which is part of why so few could relate to it. "This time round, though, we are having this conversation in the context of a new constitution that doesn't merely permit us to consult the people, it mandates us to," the President said.
As with any multistakeholder engagement, there was skepticism in the room and on social media, with some dismissing the exercise as overly ambitious or as political theatre. Public participation requires that every view gets a fair hearing, and they all did. But an engagement of this scale also demands that we set aside political differences, personal biases and petty prejudices to focus on the bigger picture: the future of our children and grandchildren, long after the current crop of politicians and today's headlines have faded from memory.
No nation develops without a plan to guide it: much as it's difficult to drive at night without headlights, fly a plane without instruments, or steer a ship without a rudder. A developmental blueprint is that guiding light: a true north that rallies a country's collective ambitions, dreams and hopes behind one overarching vision, so that everyone knows where the nation is headed, how it intends to get there and how to participate.
Development is both a destination and a journey: an outcome and a process. A country doesn't have to reach the destination to benefit from the journey; sustained investment in the economy and infrastructure steadily raises citizen’s living standards along the way.
South Korea is a case in point. In the early 1960s, its income per capita was roughly comparable to Kenya's today. What changed its trajectory was a 30-year vision delivered through successive five-year plans. They focused on light industry and agriculture, heavy industry, steel and shipbuilding, automobiles, electronics, and household goods, LG and Samsung televisions, refrigerators and microwaves found in many Kenyan homes. Crucially, Koreans didn't wait until they were rich to invest in infrastructure, housing, healthcare and education. As the economy grew, so did the state's fiscal capacity and subsequent investments in social welfare.
Singapore tells a similar story. A small fishing village with no natural resources, it identified a maritime gap in the region, positioned itself as a shipping and later a manufacturing hub, and grew into one of the world's largest economies. Today it exports refined petroleum products despite having no oil deposits of its own.
Kenya's moment
We were left behind by our peers in the past; this time, we cannot afford to miss the opportunity in front of us. The global economy is shifting in ways that, for the first time in history, favour Africa. Capital is searching for new frontiers of growth as Western markets slow under shrinking, ageing populations. The renewable energy and strategic minerals that power the ongoing AI revolution are abundant on this continent. And as AI increasingly handles two of the traditional factors of production: capital and labor, our comparative advantages in vast arable land and a large, youthful and entrepreneurial population become more valuable.
Taken together, these shifts point to an agro-industrial revolution as Kenya's most promising path to prosperity. The task now is for all of us — youth included, to come together as stakeholders in this great nation and contribute to making Kenya a first-world nation within this generation.
The writer is a tech entrepreneur and founder of M-Taji
