Partnerships

Wote Municipality is set for exponential growth with more devolved functions and resources to offer services.

In an introductory meeting between the Municipality Board and the new Governor H.E Mutula Kilonzo Jnr, Monday, a consensus was reached to transfer all the necessary functions from the County Government to the Municipality and the requisite resources to follow those functions.

Gazettement of the functions to be transferred to the Municipality is expected to be done within this month.

Governor Kilonzo Junior also met officials from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for a planning meeting on Digital Land Governance Programme.

The programme, funded by European Union and FAO is geared towards improved food and nutrition security, livelihoods and sustainable development through equitable and secure access and management of land.

This will be achieved through:

1. Enhanced efficient and effective land governance through the digitization and digitalization of land records and processes.
2. Improved conflicts and disputes resolution mechanisms on land and natural resources.
3. Improved and inclusive policy, legal and institutional frameworks

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Want to become involved?

Business, individuals and organizations have the opportunity to collaborate in the project, which is actively seeking partners to help with solutions. For more information, contact Joe Mullins at jmullins@ucmo.edu or Dr. Laurel Hogue at lhogue@ucmo.edu.

Components of the partnership

• Leveraging technology to enhance academic learning
• Developing career pathways with joint workforce programs for global markets
• Establishing UCM dual credit and concurrent programs with Makueni County-Kenya
• Providing students with opportunities to gain hands-on experiences in areas such as Internet of Things, virtual reality, telehealth and entrepreneurship while also working on industry-recognized certifications and accelerated degree programs
• Focusing on meaningful collaboration and project-based learning.

What the partners are saying

“The Makueni Innovation Centre will provide an avenue for young people within the County, the SEKEB Region and beyond to develop skills and innovations that are necessary in creating an economic ecosystem,” said said the governor of Makueni County, Hon. Professor Kivutha Kibwana. “Unemployment is a major challenge in Kenya, especially among the youth, and I believe the experience they will receive through this partnership will create employment opportunities for them.”

“Today is the result of a lot of work and collaboration, and we are really excited about the work ahead,” said Dr. Laurel Hogue, vice provost for UCM Extended Studies, during the virtual MOU signing.

“We talk about having borders, and we talk about creating opportunities and sometimes those two don’t go hand-in-hand,” said John Musau, founder and CEO of Global Classroom Exchange. “I feel this is one opportunity for us to make a difference.”

“This is an important engagement in workforce development that will provide career pathways in an area that is growing and emerging,” said Dr. Phil Bridgmon, UCM provost and vice president for Academic Affairs.

About the partners

• The University of Central Missouri operates campuses in Lee’s Summit and Warrensburg, offering undergraduate and graduate degrees as well as certificate programs, professional education courses and customized corporate curriculum. UCM and Summit Technology Academy have shared space and resources in the award-winning Missouri Innovation Campus facility since its opening in fall 2017.
• The South Eastern Kenya Economic Bloc includes three counties: Kitui, Machakos and Makueni with a combined estimated population of 4.7 million. The Bloc was created to provide social and economic development for its citizens.
• Global Classroom Exchange is the CSR arm of Digloso, a company focusing on providing emerging populations with technological infrastructure and modular applications platforms. Digloso’s founder and CEO John Musau is a native of Kenya with the company’s headquarters located in Machakos, Kenya.

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Makueni County has entered into a partnership agreement with GIGAWATT Global, a developer and supplier of renewable energy installations, to install solar power generators at agreed upon facilities.

The goal of this project, governor Kivutha Kibwana says, is to provide cheap, reliable and clean energy to power public installations and later markets and villages not connected to the national power grid.

Ultimately, the collaboration will lead to development of a 40MW solar project to bridge the energy supply gap in the county.

Governor Kibwana was upbeat that this will revamp the local economy and create great opportunities especially for young people.

Some of the institutions targeted for connectivity include: Makueni Fruit Processing Plant, Makindu Grain Processing Plant, health facilities, learning institutions as well as water distributions points.

The agreement was signed by Governor Kibwana and the Chief Executive Officer GIGAWATT GLOBAL Mr. Josef Abramowitz in Nairobi on Tuesday.

The three Ukambani governors; Kivutha Kibwana, Alfred Mutua and Charity Ngilu on Tuesday held the first ordinary summit meeting of the South-Eastern Kenya Economic Bloc (SEKEB) in Machakos.

Top on the agenda of the meeting was development of modalities to enhance Inter-county trade, identification of priority programs/projects of the bloc, marketing of the bloc as a key investment zone, infrastructure development to expand interconnectivity of the region for ease of doing business and movement of people.

The three leaders agreed to establish a technical committee comprising of trade CECs as well as create a cabinet portfolio from each county to drive the agenda of the bloc.

Governor Kibwana said the bloc is eyeing KES 4 billion grant from the Global Climate Fund which if approved will fund several mega dams in the region, besides funding climate smart agricultural projects.

Governor Mutua said the three of them have agreed to create the proper political environment that drives genuine development and rolling back of the poverty ravaging the region.

Ngilu on her part was upbeat that the region is rich in resources which if well tapped can create 60,000 jobs per year.

The Co-operative Bank of Kenya wants to support devolution locally by supporting Makueni towards realizing its general development agenda to the residents.

This was disclosed by the Bank’s Head of Government and Public Sector Banking Silvance Nono on Tuesday when he led a team of representatives from the bank for a breakfast meeting with Governor Kivutha Kibwana to discuss possible areas of partnership.

According to Nono, the bank fits into the key aspirations of Makueni county in the following areas;

Agriculture and Food Security; to provide wide range agribusiness support for major valued horticultural crops in the county;

Water and Irrigation; to support the various initiatives for water harvesting as well as revenue collection for Wote Water and Sewerage Company;

Youth and women support; to provide banking solutions geared towards economic empowerment;

Quality and Accessible Health services; to provide revenue collection solutions for the county’s health facilities;

Quality Education; through provision of cash management services for the ECDE centers and TVETs; and

Economic Empowerment; through integration of co-operatives to encourage cohesion and self-reliance through pooled savings and training on financial awareness through the Co-op Bank Consultancy arm.

The Bank is supporting the county in the scholarships program and has so far sponsored 30 bright students from needy backgrounds in the County.

A technical team drawn from the parties will meet next week to finalise on the specific joint framework of working together.

Makueni has enlisted Tangaza University College, a constituent of Catholic University of East Africa as a lead research and technical capacity building institute for its development programs and projects.

In the five-year deal signed Tuesday by Governor Kivutha Kibwana and Tangaza University College interim principal Tom Kearny, TUC will carry out research on various areas as agreed by the parties, and the research outcome will serve to facilitate informed decision making by the county government.

Essentially, the county government will identify key economic stimulus projects such as setting up of an abattoir, a leather processing project, a cotton ginnery or a honey processing factory site. Tangaza will then tour these sites and help the county in clearly defining functional business models for the sustainability of these projects.

Other areas of cooperation as per the deal include:

Building the capacity of individuals under the Access to Government Procurement Opportunities (AGPO);

Business and Entrepreneurship training; Civic and Development Education Training; Community capacity building for sustainable development; Servant Leadership and Transformation Managerial Training.

Governor Kibwana said the motivation behind this agreement is to improve service delivery by training people especially staff to implement development projects and programs focussing on people and to be facilitators of development as opposed to being ‘bosses’.

Makueni governor Kivutha Kibwana has asked institutions to adopt open contracting as one of the ways to curb rampant corruption in the country.

Kibwana said that open contracting ensures transparency and accountability in all government’s processes hence locking out any chance for corruption and ill practices.

“There are other ways of dealing with corruption apart from jailing and that is open contracting. Let us get into transparency systems,” Kibwana said.

Kibwana was speaking on Friday when he hosted the Hivos Foundation director Edwin Huizing during an open contracting debriefing on Makueni’s progress.

The county in partnership with Hivos embarked on open contracting in 2018, a move to ensure transparency, accountability and integrity in government processes.

In 2018/2019 financial year, the county government used open procurement for tendering processes.

Hivos East Africa regional director Mendi Njonjo disclosed that Makueni is the second world wide documented case to ever use observers during the evaluation stage in open contracting.

The county invited observers to take part in the evaluation stage during the construction of Wote green park and purchase of reconstitution line for Kalamba Fruit Processing plant tenders.

Makueni together with Hivos are in the final stages to launch the open contracting data standards, a platform that will enable the masses to interact with all the tendering information online.

Makueni County has been chosen as one of the core counties that will inform a study to be conducted by the World Bank jointly with the Government of Kenya on the impact of devolution on service delivery.

According to the World Bank Senior Urban Management Specialist Abdu Muwonge, the study seeks to assess the performance of devolution since its inception in 2013 adding that it will also document key successes, its challenges in the past six years as well as propose ways to improve it in accordance to the findings of the study.

“The main reason of our visit to Makueni today is to get an overview of a study that we intend to carry out to assess the impact of devolution since its inception six years ago, the successes, challenges and the way forward,” said Muwonge.

Muwonge congratulated Makueni for being among the core counties identified for joint in-depth data collection saying that it provides a remarkable devolution history that started with wrangles in 2013 but rose to become a hub for benchmarking by other counties and various development partners.

He spoke on Thursday when together with his team met the Makueni top officials led by Deputy Governor Adelina Mwau during the study overview meeting at Wote.

The DG welcomed the study saying that it will serve as an evaluation to the County and be able to learn from the challenges and make devolution work even better.

“This study is welcome in Makueni because it will act as mid-evaluation for us since we started in 2013. Through the findings, we will be able to make devolution even work better as we look forward to leaving a strong foundation after our exit in 2022,” Mwau stated.

The World bank team will work with County officers in thematic areas of water, health, education, agriculture and urban development. Other counties that will be part of the study include Nairobi, Garissa, Nyandarua and Kisumu.