Devolution can change northern Kenya

A street in Mandera town. For the first time, floodlights have been installed in the town. FILE PHOTO |

What you need to know:

  • For the first time since independence, we have an opportunity to develop the region.
  • Devolution brings hope that the difficulties bedeviling the region will be tackled with visionary leadership.

For the first time since independence, we have an opportunity to develop northern Kenya, a region that has remained marginalised over the past 50 years.

Very few people in the region can access basic needs. Lack of proper health care and poor nutrition have made life expectancy in the region 10 years below the national average.

Devolution brings hope that the difficulties bedeviling the region will be tackled with visionary leadership. Devolution will channel about Sh25 billion annually to Garissa, Wajir and Mandera counties, and an estimated Sh300 billion in 10 years cumulatively. This is a massive amount of resources that should be invested wisely.

Past and present regimes have attempted to mitigate poverty in the region by distributing relief supplies and sinking boreholes. These stop-gap measures have done very little to eliminate poverty. Besides, they have created a culture of dependency among the local communities.

PATHETIC PRICES

The county governments should formulate ways that encourage residents to fend for themselves.

The governors should take stock of the available resources in the region and harness them by adding value. For instance, northern Kenya is home to about 60 per cent of the indigenous livestock population in Kenya. It supplies more than half of the beef industry’s demand, and 60 per cent of the chevon and mutton requirement. However, due to non-existent marketing structures, the farmers throw away their animals at pathetic prices.

County governments should set up disease-free zones, modern slaughterhouses and internationally certified laboratories for disease control. This will ease access to the lucrative markets of the European Union and the Middle East.

Currently, we cannot export our meat products to high-value markets due to lack of a disease-control programme and the drug residues found in meat. Sudan has achieved this standard and is the biggest exporter of mutton and small live ruminants to the Gulf market.

Meat products supplied to major consumer counties should also be streamlined, and efficient systems employed to cut transport costs that currently consume 20 per cent of the sale value. Transportation of live animals should be stopped and refrigerated trucks introduced to ferry the carcasses to Nairobi and other major towns. This would reduce transport cost by 75 per cent because a refrigerated lorry can load five times more (slaughtered) animals than is achieved with the live animals.

There is also the added opportunity of tapping into the leather industry.

The other area the county governments should focus on for value addition is crop cultivation. The banks of River Tana in Garissa and River Daua in Mandera have attracted small-scale farming since the early 1980s. Locals are able to successfully cultivate cash crops that do well in the region. Bananas, pawpaws, mangos, melons, oranges, tomatoes and onions are some of the crops grown in the area and there is always a surplus that can be sold in other parts of the country.

Mr Barre is a Garissa-based businessman.