Kiambu politics: Nyoro’s solution

Deputy Governor Kiambu County James Nyoro: Nyoro and Waititu are locked in a power tussle at the county. [Jonah Onyango, Standard]

A few years ago, Tegemeo Institute, hosted by the agriculture-aligned Egerton University, almost become a household name.

However, this did not happen. One of the reasons is that its then Executive Director, Dr James Nyoro, left to take up an international position, becoming the Managing Director of Rockefeller Foundation Africa region. Now, the presumptive Governor of Kiambu County, Dr. Nyoro says l he has been denied a chance to apply his leadership skills to the management of Kiambu County by his indicted boss, Ferdinand Waititu, now facing corruption charges. He says he believes in results but not talking.

“Many people have been taking to the rooftops to shout what they will deliver, but end up doing nothing. At this stage, I want to say nothing and do things that will be seen,” said Dr Nyoro in a telephone interview with Mt. Kenya Star on Thursday.

“In terms of what I am going to do, that is a manifesto. People are tired of manifestos. They want to see the actualisation of those ideas. So, for me, I have a phobia of telling people what I am going to do. Why don’t you do it and then people are going to see?” he said.

Back to Tegemeo Institute of Agricultural Policy and Development, as it is officially known, Dr Nyoro succeeded in positioning the Think-Tank as the premier reference point of agriculture policy development.

That feat not only earned him regular media appearances as a resource for reporters but also an informal agriculture policy advisory position in retired President Mwai Kibaki’s administration, before President Uhuru Kenyatta picked him to a similar but now official position, working under Deputy President William Ruto.

But even before that, Dr Nyoro worked for retired President Daniel Arap Moi administration’s tail end years as part of the team that prepared the Agricultural Sector Review Paper and the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), the latter being central in World Bank/IMF negotiations with the Kenya government then.

In reviewing reporting agriculture in the press in 2000s, the name Tegemeo Institute and Dr. Nyoro feature prominently, overshadowing other prominent Think-Tanks such as the State-run Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA) staffed with some of the best economists in Kenya.

A testing time

Although agriculture is just one of the many areas of focus in the county, it will form a core performance barometer for the new governor considering his background and skills.

But his deeper knowledge in agriculture is at conflict for it is the Kiambu County that takes the top position in the wave of converting agriculture land into real estate. 

Data shows Kiambu has an estimated population of 1.6 million, a fact which has created a growing demand for food amid dwindling farmland.

According to the Economic Survey of 2019, agriculture remains the top economic activity in Kiambu, generating income of Sh132.4 billion in the year 2018, ahead of construction which generated Sh55.1 billion and manufacturing being third at Sh49.9 billion.

Agriculture still presents the biggest opportunity for Kiambu because of it’s bordering the capital Nairobi, where demand for food is all-time high with less spend on the cost of transport which us a major cost for farmers in faraway counties.

The expectations are that Dr Nyoro will create structures for the private sector to play a bigger role in the agriculture value chain as he said has said before.

In earlier interviews with this writer, Dr Nyoro came out as a believer in the private sector playing a central role in the agriculture value chain, a similar belief held by the celebrated late Kenyan Harvard scholar Prof Calestous Juma.

“Kenya should have an agriculture marketing policy that will enable the private sector to mop food crop harvests from farmers, store it and negotiate a future price to protect farmers from rock-bottom prices that are paid during the harvest season,” Dr Nyoro said earlier.

He said policies that empower the private sector to buy produce, store and negotiate prices with farmers for future sale will prevent a scenario common in Kenya when prices of commodities hit rock-bottom at a time of harvest because of high supply.

“The reverse happens when the country is in the middle or near the next harvest season when brokers resell the same commodity at a very high price. A policy that would set up a commodity exchange managed by the private sector will mean the farmer will be paid the most likely future price when the supply is low,” he said.

“The current policy on storage and marketing is not predictable. Sometimes, unregulated imports of maize food the market, distorting prices. This is not good for private investors. Kenya should have a private-sector controlled commodity exchange like that of South Africa.”

So far, eff orts to set up a commodity exchange are yet to materialise despite the debate on it persisting for the last 15 years. Last year, the Cabinet Secretary for Trade Peter Munya visited several countries on a benchmarking mission on commodity exchange but no tangible progress has been made.

One of the platforms Dr Nyoro could easily use to implement such an idea is the Central Region Economic Bloc (CEREB), which is seeking the private sector to play a major role in its planned investments according to its current chairman Nyandarua Governor Francis Kimemia.

Although dwarfed by the Rift Valley region in production of grains, Kenya’s staple food, Mt. Kenya remains a major producer of the same including the second Kenya staple food of potatoes, rice, and bananas that are ? nding space in the dining rooms regularly.

Still, on food, Dr Nyoro said Kenya entered a structural food de?cit in the 1990s when production was outpaced by demand and the gap has been growing.

“There has been no serious attempt to address this gap. Kenya’s food de?cit cycle will not end until the supply gap is covered through increased production and improving storage facilities,” he said in an earlier interview.

“We already know that drought happens every four years based on historical trends in the last two decades. Our planners should not ignore these facts. We should have no problem in preventing drought from becoming a famine.”

He is also a believer in growing of traditional crops that can withstand harsh weather conditions, arising from the now known changing climate pattern.

While he served as the Managing Director for Rockefeller Foundation in Africa, he pioneered the development of weather index insurance as a climate change adaptation measure which today compensates farmers if their harvest is affected by extreme weather changes.