In tray full for president’s long awaited Cabinet Secretaries

President Uhuru Kenyatta has finally unveiled his Cabinet and other top officials after perhaps the longest wait in Kenya’s history.

It is his final term in office, hence the men and women selected would be critical to his legacy as the fourth President. Changes made to the Cabinet are pointers to areas the President feels his government performed poorly in the first term, with expectations that the nominees would remedy the shortfalls.

 Top on Uhuru’s concerns as he constitutes his government is how the lives of ordinary Kenyans will be impacted positively by addressing issues already identified as the big four agenda.

Most Kenyans agree that unemployment, food security, accessible healthcare and affordable housing rank highly on their immediate needs. With a soaring population, special focus must be placed on employment creation with an estimated one million youth joining the labour market every year.

Such jobs can only be created with the leadership of the Industrialisation ministry to ensure more products are manufactured at home, rather than exporting jobs to other markets.

By providing job opportunities to our graduates, Kenya will have an inclusive growth with shared prosperity for all. It is also through industrialisation that we would embrace modern farming techniques to make agriculture a profitable venture, and by extension boost food security.

Solving the concern of healthcare is key to meeting the immediate needs of the people. After investing in revamping healthcare structure in the first term, the President must now ensure medicare is affordable partly by ensuring more Kenyans have health insurance.

Allocating more funds to acquisition of medical equipment should be a priority. On solving the housing crisis, several approaches should be sought including involvement of private capital in developing affordable homes – but that will need to be matched with incentives.

Much is awaited before the officials assume their new roles, including vetting, but it is unlikely that the legislators would be a hurdle.