This Is Not a Goodbye, Kenya – Asante na Kwaheri ya Kuonana

• Opinion by Siddharth Chatterjee (nairobi, kenya)
• Monday, January 04, 2021
• Inter Press Service

I got here again in November 2004 to serve with UNICEF Somalia primarily based out of Nairobi, and in 2006 I acquired married in Kenya. My son who was three years previous in 2014, has had his youth rising up in Kenya, and considers himself Kenyan.

The next 12 months I left to serve in Iraq, and I puzzled if I’d get a possibility to return to Kenya. Seven years later, it occurred: in April 2014 I got here again because the United Nations Inhabitants Fund Consultant (UNFPA) Consultant and in August 2016, I used to be chosen to guide the UN Nation Crew in Kenya because the UN Resident Coordinator and the UNDP Resident Consultant.

Through the years, my bond with the nation has been cast by means of jubilation and the shared struggling of tragedy. I’ve rejoiced at enhancements in lots of well being indicators in counties similar to Mandera, Wajir, Garissa, Marsabit, Isiolo and Lamu the place an unconscionable variety of girls used to die in childbirth, however the place nice progress has been made. I’ve additionally mourned in horror on the variety of lives misplaced to terror assaults, the murder of 36 quarry workers by terrorists in Mandera county (I used to be in Mandera the identical day), the slaughter of harmless college students in Garissa College and the dastardly assault at Nairobi’s DusitD2 lodge.

The top of my tenure as UN Resident Coordinator to Kenya falls on 13 January 2021, with new experiences and challenges awaiting me as I put together to take up my subsequent place because the United Nations Resident Coordinator (designate) to China.

This isn’t the top of my relationship with Kenya, however reasonably a possibility to strengthen my ties with the nation, and for sharing my data and first hand insights about its nice potential. It is usually an opportunity to entrench South-South-Cooperation, a vital a part of the reply to Kenya’s, and extra broadly Africa’s, distinctive alternatives to speed up progress.

I understand that Kenya nonetheless faces formidable challenges, and the COVID-19 pandemic is prone to deepen this much more. Devolution has introduced appreciable assets and autonomy to counties, and but lack of capability, weak monetary and regulatory oversight, will proceed to hinder efforts to fight the asymmetry of wealth and human prosperity which shall be a significant impediment to Kenya’s rise.

I’m delighted with the nation’s progress in direction of its Imaginative and prescient 2030 aspirations and the SDGs targets. College enrolment charges are up; extra households are accessing maternal and little one well being providers; social, financial and political alternatives for girls have elevated; main inroads have been made in opposition to little one marriage and FGM, with President Kenyatta personally main on this.

My experiences because the UN Resident Coordinator in Kenya have reiterated that by prioritizing investments in girls and youth, Africa’s actual potential might be unleashed, and I’m pleased with the assist on this that we’ve got been capable of present by means of the whole UN Kenya Nation Crew.

By 2030 agri-business shall be US$ 1 trillion value in Africa. Nearly two-thirds of Kenya’s inhabitants is beneath the age of 30, and the way forward for meals manufacturing rests of their palms. Kenya’s economic system is anchored in agriculture, the place 70% of the inhabitants earns its livelihood.

In most components of the world, crop yields have grown forward of inhabitants will increase, serving to to free them from starvation and famine, however not in Africa. We regarded for inventive and sustainable methods to harness Kenya’s robust web penetration to use info expertise that provides worth and strengthens the financial enchantment of agri-business for younger folks and creates digital jobs as effectively.

President Kenyatta has famous that “the present technology of younger folks has the potential of increasing Africa’s productive workforce, selling entrepreneurship and changing into real devices of change to reverse the devastation brought on by local weather change.”

Africa’s demographic increase has been hailed as its largest promise for reworking the continent’s financial and social outcomes, however provided that the precise investments are made to arrange its youthful inhabitants for tomorrow’s world. Kenya launched the Generation Unlimited initiative spearheaded by the Head of State, and might function a blueprint to harness the demographic dividend that Africa’s youth characterize.

Ladies’s empowerment was our different key pursuit, with particular emphasis on entry to sexual and reproductive well being info and providers. With out this, Kenya’s inhabitants is prone to proceed its speedy improve, placing stress on land and water assets, threatening livelihoods, meals safety, and straining already weak well being methods. Good points made in girls’s sexual reproductive well being and rights took a number of steps backward within the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Reproductive rights must be a critical part of our arsenal to fight future pandemics.

It’s in Kenya additionally that I witnessed inventive methods of overcoming forms. Massive organisations are sometimes accused of responding too late or with too little in instances of disaster, and my tenure noticed many. Drought, floods and the worst locust invasion in 70 years, plus the Covid-19 pandemic, all upended a lot hard-earned progress. As a workforce nonetheless, we went past particular person UN company mandates in partnership with the Authorities of Kenya to rapidly set up speedy responses to those emergencies, lowering the socio-economic influence, incomes the arrogance of the Authorities and overturning the widespread notion of the UN as an unwieldy forms.

The Authorities’s management was meritorious on all counts and that’s the reason I have stated unequivocally why Kenya deserves an A+ for its response to the triple humanitarian crisis.

I’m proud to have been a part of many milestones within the partnership between each ranges of the Authorities of Kenya and the UN, and to depend on the unfailing assist of the management of Kenya in any respect ranges of Authorities. Kenya’s potential is boundless, and the nation now provides stronger platforms for brand spanking new shared-value investments than ever earlier than.

I additionally categorical my honest appreciation to the whole UN household in Kenya, the event companions, our donors and well-wishers and civil society companions and, most of all, the great folks of Kenya.

With a agency perception in a typical future, I intend to maintain telling the story of the rising powerhouse that’s Kenya.

My spouse, son and I carry Kenya in our hearts.

Thanks for the whole lot. Your generosity and friendship is nonpareil.

God Bless, Kenya.

Asante, Kenya, na kwaheri hadi tutakapo kutana tena!

Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya. Comply with him on twitter @sidchat1

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© Inter Press Service (2021) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service