NAIROBI: The East African nation of Kenya has seen an average economic growth of five percent for the past decade. But it has bigger goals: it wants ten percent growth by 2017, which means a population which is currently 75 percent dependent on farming, needs to expand, diversify, and industrialise.
The economy is expected to expand 6.5 percent on average over the next three years. This makes Kenya one of the fastest-growing economies in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to the World Bank.
But the poverty index is high, and Kenya still has the the highest number of slums in Africa and 42 percent of the population, or almost 20 million people, are living on less than a dollar a day.
So beyond the great economic numbers that would be the envy of many developed nations, there is a real need for Kenya’s government to take the lead.
Catherine Soi looks at how expansion and change will impact the country’s growing informal economy; and Adan Mohammed, Kenya’s cabinet secretary for industrialisation and enterprise, joins the show to talk about Kenya’s economic future.
