Kisumu Stakeholders Identify the City’s Top Development Priorities in Quest to Achieve the MDGs by 2015

In October 2012 the Millennium Cities Initiative (MCI) facilitated a successful stakeholder workshop in Kisumu, Kenya. More than 80 stakeholders – representing local government, civil society, community-based organizations, NGOs, academia and the private sector – joined the two-day workshop, to review, discuss and validate findings from MCI’s social sector needs assessments and investment publications and the new Kisumu Health Facility Survey and Multi-Sector Millennium Development Goal (MDG) Household Survey. The objective of the workshop was to provide stakeholders with MCI’s research findings so that they might use this information to prioritize MDG-focused interventions and key investment opportunities.

The first day opened with welcoming speeches by Dr. Belay Begashaw, Director of the East and Southern Africa Columbia Global Center, and Kisumu’s Mayor, His Worship Samuel Okello, who noted that findings from MCI research would be integrated in the city’s development strategy. Joy Morabu, MCI’s East and Southern Africa Regional Coordinator, followed with a brief presentation on MCI; and Beldina Opiyo-Omolo, MCI’s Public Health Specialist for Kisumu, walked participants through the program. Dr. Moumie Maoulidi, MCI Associate Director for Research, then presented the findings from MCI’s needs assessments regarding the city’s key education, health, water/ sanitation and gender challenges and the estimated costs of meeting these challenges. Participants then split into Technical Working Groups to review the findings and rank priority issues in each sector. Top priorities identified include addressing child malnutrition and under-five mortality rates, improving student-teacher ratios and transition rates to secondary school, enhancing access to improved water sources and extending the sewer system, as well as guaranteeing women’s and girls’ rights in the areas of sexual and reproductive health, property and inheritance.

On the second day of the workshop, Laban Mburu of KenInvest, the national investment authority, and MCI’s former investment specialist, gave a presentation on investment opportunities in Kisumu and highlighted the City Council of Kisumu’s progress with regard to the city’s preparations to promote investment. He noted some of the areas ripe for opportunity, including tourism, agriculture, wholesale and retail, manufacturing, financial services and sectors such as energy, transport and infrastructure. Beldina followed with a presentation about the Health Facility Survey, which, in response to a request from the Municipal Health Office, compiled data from 83 Kisumu-area health facilities on the services provided, infrastructure conditions, and available equipment and supplies, for the purposes of better government planning. Moumié then presented for the first time the findings from MCI’s poverty-related household survey, which MCI itself designed to collect data on MDG indicators and to examine Kisumu’s poverty at the household level within selected impoverished communities. MCI hopes the results of this survey will be used to design interventions that address the needs of people living in Kisumu’s informal settlements, particularly in those neighborhoods where the survey was carried out. (MCI’s Multi-Sector MDG Household Survey for Kisumu will be released later this month.)

The stakeholder workshop was a culminating event for MCI’s work in Kisumu, to be followed by the finalization of the city’s urban development strategy. Three Technical Working Groups, created to review MCI’s needs assessments and propose interventions prior to the workshop, will convene a follow-up forum on November 17, identifying immediate and mid-term priorities in the sectors under consideration, education, gender, health and water/sanitation. MCI has promised to assist in the identification of potential donors, investors and other partners with the capacity to fund and carry out interventions that can help the city advance its strategy and attain the MDGs.