President William Ruto has moved the Kenya National Innovation Agency (KeNIA) to be part of the Executive Office of the President.
Speaking during the Kenya Innovation Week on Wednesday, November 27, Ruto said the decision will allow the government to support the operations of the Agency.
“I therefore instruct that the Kenya Innovation Agency moved to the Office of the President,” he said.
He explained that the roles of the Agency cut across many fields including agriculture, health and education hence needs proper attention.
Ruto said the decision will allow the education intuitions and the government to support the Agency.
“Because of the crosscutting nature of innovation across different fields and the necessity to harness university education, TVET, colleges and all the education sectors into assisting and providing momentum for us to Innovate, scale up ideas and commercialize research from Universities and ideas from out innovators and take to the next level it becomes necessary that this agency moves to a central place where we can harness all these opportunities and assist in creating the momentum for job creation,” Ruto added.
Ruto said that the Agency can help in creating jobs through research, innovations and startups.
He stated that the government has put in place polices to create employment opportunities and the Agency is one of them.
“Because I have also seen how this can assist us in dealing with the challenge of unemployment. It is easy for us to glorify unemployment, but it takes concrete decisions and policy frameworks to create jobs,” he said.
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Funds to KeNIA
Ruto stated the government will expand opportunities in the Innovation space, so it is necessary for them to take two additional important steps to provide a sustainable budget for this institution.
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He pledged Ksh500 million for Kenya Innovation Agency and Ksh1 billion for Start Up Fund.
“Going into the future, we must have a clear and determinate budget. I’m going to propose to Parliament Ksh500 million for Kenya Innovation Agency and Ksh1 billion for Startup Fund,” Ruto said.
He said the move will avail the resources to derisk some of the venture capital that is coming into Kenya.
Additionally, he said this will allow the Agency to move more ideas into commercialization.
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Ruto Praises Kenyans Creativity
Further, Ruto said Kenyans have demonstrable ideas and innovations most of which have not been commercialized.
“At the moment we are unable to move as many ideas as possible into commercialization because of the limited resources that are available in that space,” he said.
“I know we are using the competition around the Presidential challenge to support startups, but I think we should be able to move more ideas into practical because they offer practical solutions to some of the challenges we have.”
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