Investment agency for Mombasa laudable

The county government of Mombasa has just gazetted the establishment a Mombasa Investment Corporation-the first by any county government. The gazette notice came complete with a list of newly appointed board of directors of the proposed corporation.

Initially I was inclined to dismiss this latest initiative by the Mombasa county government as yet another pipe dream.

But on further reflection I took the view that this is the experimentation with new ideas that we should expect from governors. The Mombasa Investment Corporation is a significant development because even though the 2010 constitution allowed county governments to establish their own parastatals and commercial state corporations, very few county governments have been prepared to experiment with such a fresh idea.

Let’s wait and see whether the Mombasa county government is indeed serious with this initiative and whether it is prepared to throw enough resources towards creating the first effective commercial corporation owned by a country government.

With the corporation in place, the county government now has the tool to vigorously pursue all those grand ideas we have been debating and talking about for many years for Mombasa.

We have for as long time been talking about special economic zones, free trade zones, logistics parks, business parks for Mombasa.

The county government must now start thinking seriously about how it can develop businesses that leverage on proximity to the Mombasa Port.

Mombasa must stop whining about the Standard Gauge Railway, the death of the container freight stations economy and how the Naivasha Inland Container station has affected business in the town.

Our ambition should be to have a high-performance port that connects to the standard gauge railway to inland container deports forming a fully integrated transportation chain and corridor running all the way to Kigali

What we should to be plotting is how to position Mombasa as the reference port along the Indian Ocean, making it possible for the port to out-compete, Djibouti, Maputo and Dar es salam

Today, the idea of a blue economy is all the rage. Will the Mombasa Investment Corporation be the vehicle to deliver blue economy investment to Mombasa.

What happened to proposals to create the Mombasa international regional headquarters service centre, targeting multinational with operations in Africa?

What happened to the bright proposal an Islamic international financial centre and to the idea of having Mombasa to partner with entities such as the Qatar International Financial Centre to help it create similar infrastructure in the town?

I believe that a proper and well-conceived Mombasa Investment Corporation will be the tool the Mombasa county government could use to negotiate with foreign investors with the means and experience in implementing blue economy investments such as the Japanese.

The reason our governors are not ready to experiment with new ideas is because we don’t have thinkers and visionaries.

Who among our 47 governors can you single out as a leader burning to experiment with some well thought-out ideas on how to restructure the economies of their counties ? Non.

Instead of thinkers, the governors we have are mere careerists. Political office in this country is all about getting a job for yourself, your cronies and your tribesmen.

More than ever before, this country needs governors who are ready to experiment with new ideas. Indeed, the main reason why devolution has not progressed much beyond merely paying salaries is because all we have are big-spending governors and members of country assemblies who just love to foreign countries at the expense of the taxpayer.

Our governors don’t give you the impression that they are leaders that passionate about taking the economies of their counties to the next level.

I support the Mombasa Investment Corporation idea because it project ambition and passion to experiment with new ideas.