Agenda Kenya

President William Ruto’s historic State Visit to the US last week has elevated Kenya’s international standing, marking a significant moment for the country’s diplomatic relations.
The visit highlighted Kenya as an important investment destination, its crucial role in regional security and stability and fast-rising status as a digital hub in the continent. Kenya without doubt won big during the visit after bagging various multibillion shillings deals that span across various sectors, including healthcare, education, road and transport, digital technology, security, agriculture and climate mitigation.

Government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) have stepped up efforts to plant trees across the country, sustaining the tempo set by President William Ruto on May 10 during the National Tree Planting Day. All MDAs have been allocated sites to plant trees and targets to achieve in a six-month drive that kicked off during the May 10 tree planting holiday. The institutions have taken up the challenge guns blazing, according to the Ministry of Environment, Climate Change and Forestry.

Millions of trees were planted during the recent National Tree Planting Day as part of measures being spearheaded by the government in efforts to mitigate climate change effects. The government had set a target of the country planting 200 million trees during the day. President William Ruto led the nation in the tree planting exercise that was also used to honour the about 270 people killed by floods following the recent heavy rains. The growing of trees is part of the efforts to reverse the effects of climate change, which include frequent droughts and destructive floods. Read more on how trees would help Kenya mitigate the effects of climate change

Kenya rallied the continent to fast-track digital connectivity and transformation as the country held Connected Africa Summit 2024 last week in Nairobi. The Summit, which was attended by over 5,000 delegates from 49 countries from across the world as well as 16 digital and technology ministers from the continent, saw the coming up of the “Nairobi Declaration on Fostering a Connected and Empowered Africa”.

The government has taken concrete steps to mitigate the impact of floods caused by the ongoing heavy rains. The indefinite postponement of schools, issuance of timely alerts on the weather
situation, closure and reopening of affected roads, deployment of the Kenya Defence Forces in affected areas and provision of humanitarian assistance to flood victims, measures taken by the government, have helped alleviate the situation as rains intensify.

As farmers scramble to get the right farm inputs as well as plant on time, one of the major worries during this season has been the availability of quality, subsidised fertiliser. The government has assured that there is enough quality planting fertiliser under the National Fertiliser Subsidy Programme (NFSP). Read more to find out how you can access quality government fertiliser and what you can do to avoid the fakes.

The bottom-up economic transformation agenda is gaining momentum across the counties as the devolved units seek to boost investments in their
regions.

One of the highlights of last week’s Eldoret ASK Show for farmer Simon Korir was learning how to produce his own livestock feeds using black soldier flies, an insect he had not heard about.