Vision 2030 can birth county cities

The Council of Governors Chairman Josphat Nanok speaks to journalists on June 7, 2017 concerning the nurses' strike. The Vision 2030 thread should be running through development plans by governors. PHOTO | MARTIN MUKANGU | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Governors, urban development experts and consultants need to have three- to five-decade plans.
  • The upshot of a well-planned urban area is a working economic node with functional systems delivering services to residents.

Vision 2030 is the long-term development blueprint expected to transform Kenya into a newly industrialising middle-level income country providing a high quality of life to its citizens by 2030.

The three pillars of Vision 2030 — economic, social and political — have had measures of success and challenges in their implementation in the medium term ending 2017.

I will dwell on how the 47 county governments are making use of the vision in the overall development of the country.

COUNTIES

Are the County Integrated Development Plans (CIDPs) and Sectoral Plans in line with Vision 2030?

Is the Vision 2030 thread running through development plans by governors?

A look at urban areas within counties, their development and how the devolved units view their growth and overall contribution in transforming local economies and dovetailing into Vision 2030 begs several questions.

How do counties view urban development, taking cognisance of Article 184 of the Constitution?

To what extent have they given effect to the devolution framework contained in the 2011 Urban Areas and Cities Act?

URBANISATION
Put another way, what is ailing our urban areas and hindering them from becoming economic hubs?

Every two years since 1988, the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations has been issuing revised estimates and projections of the urban and rural populations of all countries and their major urban agglomerations.

The latest is the 2014 Revision of World Urbanisation Prospects.

The report shows Kenya as the fastest-growing country in urbanisation in Africa with Nakuru town recording an annual growth rate of four percent.

As we await release of the 2016 Urban Development Report, we have to plan ahead — particularly so the county governments.

ECONOMIC HUB
Nairobi County enjoys both capital and city status in the Constitution.

Handling and hosting over 60 percent of national economic activities, Nairobi needs to be miles ahead to becoming a New York, Cairo, Paris or Brussels.

I bet it is only Nairobi, of all our urban areas, which has had a plan worth implementation since Independence.

Governor Mike Mbuvi Sonko urgently needs a legal framework that will not only inject efficiency in urban management but further transform the city into an economic hub that creates jobs, diversifies growth, expands industrial growth and sees an upward swing in residents’ net incomes.

PLANNING
This will be possible by putting in place what Vision 2030 calls “enablers”.

These are frameworks, systems and mechanisms without which much would not be achieved, foremost of which is proper and long-term urban planning.

Governors, urban development experts and consultants need to have three- to five-decade plans, not short ones vulnerable to ever-changing political tides.

Actualisation of a well-structured urban development system throughout Kenya needs serious and focused implementation of the Urban Areas and Cities Act, where the three cities of Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu are to be conferred city status by the President.

DEVOLUTION
This will come with establishment of city management boards that will manage the three through a city manager with budgets from self-generated revenues and allocation from the respective county government.

We would have more efficiency in service delivery, less congestion — both traffic and human — as well as higher revenue collections if Nairobi had four boroughs as a further measure of taking benefits of devolution to residents.

Karen, Dandora, Westlands and Kasarani would be ideal centres for these boroughs.

SERVICES
Governors would confer towns with populations of over 250,000 in their counties with municipal status and municipal boards established.

Towns with populations of up to 75,000 would have town management committees that would plan, survey and zone areas, manage markets, collect revenue, approve buildings, collect garbage and organise on security, sewerage system, lighting and other social amenities to progressively uplift the town to municipal status.

Centres, markets and other areas with less than 10,000 residents are taken as urban areas that have to be planned now by county governments.

The upshot of a well-planned urban area is a working economic node with functional systems delivering services to residents.

Mr Burugu, a devolution and governance expert; was Nyandarua County’s first director of intergovernmental relations. [email protected].