As you mention, manufacturing has been identified as a priority over the years, and within Vision 2030, which is the government's development plan. The ambition is to see the sector contribute to job creation in the country, growing at 10% every year, so that eventually we’re contributing about 15% of the GDP of the country.

In terms of competitive advantage, I think first of all there is our location, which gives us an opportunity to undertake a lot of agricultural activities and then provide the resources that can be utilized for the sector. We are also privileged to have a port that's quite developed for this region. The port gives us access to raw material, to imports, value addition and the ability to also utilize it to export the goods that we manufacture.

Another competitive advantage is, of course, the fact that a customs union and the common market in the East African Community moves the population from the 55 million people in Kenya to nearly 180 million in the region as a market.

The other one is, of course, our educated workforce and population in the context of the region. Also, we are an aviation hub in the EAC, which makes it easy for business to come in and go out.

We have the National Export Development and Promotion Strategy (KEPSA) that was laid out about three years ago. It delves into sectors. For manufacturing, it’s going to look at the products that have competitive or comparative advantages and then consider how we can get them to work better in the strategic markets.

One of the keys to the African market is the fact that we are in the African Continental Free Trade Area and our manufacturing goods can do well within the countries in the continent. And we’ve also prioritized, through chain agreements, the US market. There is an opportunity for us to export a number of products other than just tea, textile or apparels to the United States. If you look at the separate agreements with the EU and the UK, they also offer access to key markets where we have a competitive advantage in certain products like tea and some other manufacturing products.

I think it's not just about the niche markets; it’s a broader policy to study competitive challenges in the manufacturing sector that we need to address so as to unlock our ability to export. Therefore, KEPSA also mentions some of the constraints that are limiting our exports and proposes a strategy for us to improve.

You're right that FDI continues to contribute to the manufacturing sector. A number of our members have a multinational focus that brings them together to address unique issues. What we’ve seen from the statistics is a decline between 2019-2020 in terms of FDI, and that becomes a concern because as you say multinationals are stimulating the local manufacturing sector.

They also bring global practices standards and know-how, so a big opportunity for technology to transform. In the work with multinationals, one of the biggest challenges is to identify the issue around the stability and predictability of policies because when you're coming to invest, you’re doing that based on certain policies and laws that exist in the country. And you do it for a long time, as manufacturing is an intense sector. Therefore, one of the biggest issues becomes how to ensure that we provide predictability and policy stability, so that when you invest the VAT does not change the following year.

UNIDO’s competitive industrial performance index of 2020 ranks Kenya 115 out of 152 countries in the list. If you look at the region, some of our key competitors like Egypt and South Africa will be number 64 and 52 respectively. That is the area the multinationals are telling us to look at, and we continue to work on that: our competitiveness and our cost of doing business. Specifically, some countries offer industrial parks and all the infrastructure, and it’s something for us to keep developing.

Land is a major factor of production, at least for manufacturing and other business. You do put your feet on the ground for factories, machinery and other things. And in Kenya, historically, the elephant in the room that needs to be addressed is land tenure. What we’re pushing at the government level is to use land for industrial purposes, and the industrial parks have been set up.

Take the energy park of KenGen at Olkaria-Naivasha. The main thing is the ability to link the businesses for industrial symbiosis so that what one company wastes another uses. This can be critical to provide affordable resources. KenGen would be able to provide power, and then you can target investors for whom power is a large component to locate there. Those who need to be close to the port for quick production and export can put their factory near raw materials. Also, we can develop ports relevant to raw materials close to the source. The industrial parks in the country have been planned that way so far.

Out of the manufacturing employees in Kenya, less than 17% are women. That's a concern. We started a program called Women in Manufacturing in collaboration with the International Center for Research on Women.

To get more women interested in the manufacturing sector, we must create a workplace that is friendly to them. A lot of the time certain sectors remain male-dominant because of the kind of workplace they offer. So, what can we do from our policy and collaborating with our members to make a more welcoming workplace? And also, what can we do to not just have women at the shops but you also in management, women on boards? Eventually, that translates into better policies at the organizational level.

What we have also identified is that within the manufacturing sector women are in specific sectors. How do we get them into male-dominated sectors? How do we move them from just being small businesses to becoming medium and large and multinational businesses?

Basically, what the program is trying to do is to identify what issues women will face. We work to understand what the numbers and challenges are and what recommendations we can communicate to the government. Since last year, after we launched the report, we've been meeting the government to see what we can do, but at organizational levels in our programs we’re providing opportunities for mentorship for more businesses to grow within the sector. We’re also providing opportunities for financial linkages, business advisory services, linking the work of our Women in Manufacturing program with other work we do. So we have programs for the members, they’re able to identify where to engage in business, identify where they're struggling, and then you get them mentors or experts to support their businesses. That’s what we’re trying to do to accelerate the speed in the diversity of employees in the sector.

I’ve got to say one of our competitive advantages is of course the technology. We’re an ICT hub in the region, and I think the government's commitment towards ICT has been quite clear. We see the interplay between the work we do as a manufacturing sector and the relevance of ICT. An example is e-commerce. So the ability of ICT to provide platforms for selling goods for the manufacturing sector, Fintech, and the paying platforms is crucial.

There’s a lot of opportunities to upgrade production within manufacturing using technology. We’ve seen it happening already in the production of hardware. A lot of our companies, especially the multinationals, use the technology that drives up their efficiency and their ability to become a big hub. Sixty percent of what they produce and export to the region happens because technology has made them very cost competitive.

We have been primarily exporting products through our agricultural output. For example, tea. We’re globally known for it, and we’re the second largest exporter of tea, but only 3% of that is value-added within the country. That is one of the things we are trying to change, firstly by having policies that make the value addition affordable and cost competitive. The issue of cost of production is one of the main reasons companies choose to value-add elsewhere. We work on increasing the awareness in the sector about opportunities and on government incentives that can accelerate some of this value addition in the country, so we have more agro-processing happening here.

The other issue is finding markets. Because traditionally, if you’re not known for certain products, one of the ways to brand yourself is by finding a market or attracting a large multinational. So we also look at how to attract FDI in the sector.

The US is one of those markets that has been quite crucial in growing some of our sectors like the apparel sector. Over the years, the US has continued to be a strategic trading partner. Nearly 85% of our exports there have been from the textile or apparel sector. The US continues to be an important market for the size of the population, the ability to spend and it being a source of investments.

A good number of multinationals in the country is also from the US. It’s a good opportunity for us to have an agreement that promotes both trade and investment so that we see the companies investing here and enabling us to create more jobs, helping us benchmark from global best practices and technologies.

Yes, we do participate and try to upscale and improve the quality of the local workforce. We’ve done it in a partnership with Germany’s GIZ. First of all, we started to identify what’s the need of the industry in terms of technical skills. We do an analysis, and then we’re able to work backwards with a technical institution and academia to say: These are some of the actual needs of industries, so you need to lean on this area, which is more relevant.

We also work to identify some gaps in the curricula through our Skills Advisory Committees. We provide technical graduates with opportunities for internships and make sure they come out with actual skills. Then we also train the trainers. So the trainers of the college-level technical institutes have actual practical industry skills, not just theoretical knowledge.

Lastly, we provide a list on the job website of graduates who have attended these programs so employers are able to find someone who has not only gone through the technical institute but also had practical experience at industry level.

I think what COVID demonstrated is that we must have local production within the country for strategic goods especially. Last year we did see the sector quickly jump into production of goods that weren’t traditionally made within the country. This has pointed out the need for policies to enable us to expand into manufacturing areas of strategic importance.

Some development partners look at strategic sectors like manufacturing, agro-processing, where we have a competitive advantage, and need us to build these local industries. So in the future I think we’re going to see a lot more manufacturing companies in Africa. We are going to see more trade between African countries. Once we finalize the discussions around actual implementation and trade, I think that will drive our ability to manufacture locally.

Manufacturing is also going to become the sector that enables us to employ within the continent and grow the technology, ICT, and financial sectors. I see a bright future.