Success Story: Creating Right Conditions for Emerging Urban Centres

Creating Right Conditions for Emerging Urban Centres through Strong Urban Economic Planning

SUED’s Deputy Team Leader Ms. Monicah Motshegwe hands over the UEP to the Bungoma Team marking the completion of all the UEPs in SUED Supported Municipalities

The UK Government funded the Sustainable Urban Economic Development Programme (SUED) to work with 12 municipalities to develop Urban Economic Plans (UEPs) that position them to favourably attract investors to implement critical climate resilient infrastructure and value chain projects. Over the past three years, SUED has worked closely with 121 municipalities to develop their UEPs. The UEP is an advisory

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Kitui, Malindi, Isiolo, Kathwana, Iten, Kisii, Eldoret, Kerugoya, Mandera, Lamu, Bungoma and Wote

document that builds on existing county priorities and helps to provide a focused urban and economic development strategy for the municipalities. The UEP has been co-developed by the county, municipal, public, and private sector stakeholders in respective municipalities.

“One of the things we have appreciated in our UEP is that it includes all voices of the local stakeholders. The SUED team really took the time to listen to our vision for the municipality and have articulated it well. We are proud of our UEP, and we will use it in Iten’s our future investor engagement.” – H.E. Alex Tolgos – Elgeyo Marakwet Governor.

Our work is geared towards supporting growth and sustainable economic development by unlocking private and public investment in the urban sector. “When we have previously developed our development plans, we have done so without thinking through how we could fund the projects beyond the public funds. Our approach has primarily been identifying projects that we can implement as the government without seeing where we can partner with the private sector to drive economic development. The UEP has helped us merge the two.”- Halake Dadacha Isiolo Municipal Manager. What sets the UEPs apart from other strategy documents is that they introduce a multi-sectoral approach to planning for economic growth and advocate for the most sustainable and inclusive development approach.

The programme has helped the municipalities to identify climate resilient infrastructure and value chain projects that have strong value addition potential and harness linkages within the municipalities to leverage on their existing economic potential. “What the UEPs have helped us with is to narrow our economic offering, we had defined sectors in our County Integrated Development Plan (CIDP), however, the UEPs have shown us how to bring them to life and how to pitch them to investors to make them implementable.” – Jamil Shamji – Kisii Board Chair.

SUED used four phased approach in developing the UEPs. Initially the programme held kick-off meetings with the municipalities to ensure alignment on the development approach as well as to gain better understanding of their economic priorities. This was followed by an indepth diagnostic phase that looked into the municipality’s demographics, economy, infrastructure, environment, and climatic conditions. In doing so, the programme was able to gain a better understanding of how to strengthen the sectors for economic development. This was then followed by a technical briefing (outline) phase

that entailed re-looking at the findings of the diagnostic phase and beginning to visualise the economic vision of the municipality and highlight which value chain and infrastructure projects to prioritise. This culminated in the final UEP phase that identified the key anchor projects and how they would diversify their economic offering to attract a wide range of investors.

The four step-approach enabled the programme to support the technical teams at the county and municipal level to see the value in integrating economic offerings and development outcomes. The programme’s work in the 12 municipalities has better positioned the country to synergise economic opportunities across regions helping municipalities to be viewed as high potential economic urban centres that contribute to the national economic offering to investors. “With the completion of all UEPs, the programme can now promote similar value chain opportunities within the supported municipalities to advance the national economic agenda.” Urbanus Mbindyo- Wote Municipal Manager. The completion of all the UEPs means that the programme has improved the economic planning of 12 intermediary cities and has strengthen their capacity to have public-private dialogue that will result in climate resilient infrastructure and value chain investments made. By increasing the economic development of the municipalities, SUED is strengthening Kenya’s urban resilience while promoting prosperity in Kenya to spur wider economic growth.