By Munene Kahiro
A cursory review of most of Kenya’s countryside will readily reveal how raw produce leaves farms in sacks to oftentimes return as packaged goods bearing foreign labels. The annoying reality is that Kenya exports what it grows and imports what it could make. That arrangement has served others well, but it has left our own workshops idle and our young people searching for the ever elusive gainful employment.
The Kenya Reform Party (KRP) believes that this pattern can be broken, and broken deliberately. At the centre of its industrial agenda are two instruments designed to reach the places where production actually happens. These are Ward Production Hub and the Kazi Mashinani Fund.
The logic is straightforward. Kenya has 1,450 wards. Each possesses a comparative advantage, whether in agro-processing, light manufacturing or the value addition of minerals. A Ward Production Hub would be mapped and funded according to that advantage, providing shared machinery, sheds, water and power connections for cooperatives of youth and women. Rather than expecting every entrepreneur to assemble a workshop from nothing, the hub offers the infrastructure that makes small-scale production viable from the outset.
Finance is the second pillar. The Kazi Mashinani Fund would allocate Ksh. 50 million per ward each year as industrial seed capital, disbursed to cooperatives rather than individuals. The intention is not consumption lending but productive investment, say in sewing machines for a tailoring group, a maize mill for a farmers’ collective, or a welding set for a youth workshop. Alongside this, the County Industrial Parks will offer shared facilities at Ksh. 500,000 monthly, and a Ksh. 150 billion market-led Mass Production Fund will provide credit at half of the prevailing commercial rate to innovative micro and small manufacturing businesses, women, youth and persons with disabilities.
Kenya’s manufacturing contribution to GDP has fallen from 11.5 per cent in 2009 to 7.1 per cent in 2025, the most significant compositional decline in the economy over that period. Meanwhile, youth unemployment stands at 15.25 per cent. Every imported item on a supermarket shelf represents a job that could have been created here. The hubs and the fund are designed to reverse that logic by enabling production at the ward level, where capital is scarce and ambition is plentiful.
Critics may ask whether such decentralised production can compete. The answer lies in the broader policy framework. A Buy Kenya Build Kenya law would require 70 per cent of government procurement to be sourced locally, guaranteeing a market for goods produced in the hubs. Industrial power tariffs would be reduced from eighteen shillings per unit to nine, addressing a cost that currently makes local production uncompetitive. The export of raw hides, macadamia, avocado and minerals would be banned, ensuring that value addition occurs at source.
The Ward Production Hub is a practical response to a practical problem. Kenya produces too little and processes even less. By placing machinery, finance and markets within reach of ordinary citizens, the party hopes to transform the ward from a unit of administration into a unit of production. That is how a consuming nation becomes a working one, one ward at a time.
Kahiro is the Kenya Reform Party (KRP) Chairman