Kenya's growth slows down, report reveals

Kenya's pace of economic growth has significantly reduced compared to the previous year despite the country's income having gone up by 32.5 per cent between 2010 and 2013, a new report has revealed.

According to the Human Development report, 2014 Kenya has slowed down in human development growth over the past one year being ranked 147 out of 187 countries in Human Development indicators of education, health and social welfare.

The current Human Development Index (HDI) value for 2013 is 0.535, an improvement from 0.531 in 2012 although the country is ranked same position.
The country's life expectancy at birth has increased to 61.7 years in 2013 compared to 51.3 years in 1990, the report shows.

However, mean years of schooling has dropped from 7.0 in 2010 to 6.3 in 2013 mainly due to transition issues. Speaking during the launch of the report, Economic Secretary in the Ministry of Devolution and planning Stephen Wainaina said even though the economy is improving, it is not doing so fast enough.

"Kenya's HDI has been improving although at a slower rate than would be necessary to move the country to a medium human development country," he said.

He said the fact that transition levels in school have not improved implies the social sector is lagging behind.

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"Education transition levels have not improved despite the introduction of free education and thus the need to invest in and improve education facilities to meet the expected 11 years of schooling," he said.

Wainaina said food security is still a problem as the country is still not self-sufficient in food production.

"We have challenges in food distribution with pockets of the country not having sufficient food as drought is becoming more frequent and the recent rains were not adequate therefore we expect that we will have challenges this year," he added.

He said there is need to put in place efforts to ensure the country improves its irrigation systems and stop the reliance on rain fed agriculture.
United Nations Development Programme Resident Representative Nardos Bekele-Thomas said it is critical to understand vulnerability like poverty, conflict and droughts to secure gains and sustain progress.

"About 19.2 million Kenyans live below the poverty line according to the 2005/06 Kenya Household Budget Survey, 12.7 per cent suffer from open unemployment with 21 per cent under-employed,' she said.