My 7-year achievements have outlived all what the previous 4 regimes achieved in 135 years - President Uhuru

President Uhuru Kenyatta on Madaraka Day said that in the last 7 years, his administration has outdone development achievements of all the previous administrations combined in three major areas; infrastructure, electricity and health.

Infrastructure

“At independence, we had only 1,800 kilometres of tarmacked roads. This is what the colonisers built in 78 years of their occupation between 1885 and 1963. This means every year they only managed to tarmac a total of 23 kilometres,” said the president.

He added that after independence, our Founding Fathers built an extra 11,200 kilometres of tarmacked roads in a period of 50 years by President Jomo Kenyatta, President Moi and President Kibaki, at an average of 224 kilometres per year.

“This was 10 times what the colonizers had done. But with better technology, planning and efficiencies, my Administration has built 1,000 kilometres of tarmacked roads every year. This is 44 times more than what the colonial administration built, and more than 4 times what the first three Administrations built collectively per year,” he said.

Regarding ports, President Uluru said that apart from the Port of Lamu, which will change regional trade dynamically, the other project is the Port of Kisumu.

“This port was built by the colonizers, but it collapsed at some point. We have since revived it for strategic purposes. Lake Victoria serves both the northern and the southern corridors. And with this port, Kenya can service the region from Mwanza and Bukoba in Tanzania, to Jinja and Entebbe in Uganda; and Muhoma Bay in Rwanda at affordable costs and decent timing,” the president noted.

On rail transport, the president said that apart from the SGR, his administration was reviving the defunct Nairobi-Nanyuki railway line, traversing six counties and was about to commence the rehabilitation of the Naivasha to Malaba metre gauge line.

“The rehabilitation of the central railway line is part of a bigger development strategy to link the hinterlands with the Lamu Port and the Southern Sudan Ethiopia Transport Corridor. When this happens then Kenyans can expect new markets to emerge along the railway line, and the cities to blossom, in response,” he noted.

Education/ Electrification

“My Administration has carried out extensive reforms in the education sector. We have secured the place of pride in the continent as the home to the highest transition from primary to secondary education in Africa. Additionally, the technical and vocational training is taking root as we seek to reposition our human resource for the ever evolving world economy. But the human side of these reforms has also focused on electrification,” he said.

They took pride in the 99% electricity connection to schools to electricity and the Last Mile connecting homes to power in the realisation that a substantial part of learning happens at home, even in better days.

“For the record, it is worth noting that after 78 years of colonial rule and 50 years of the independence administrations, a total of 4.5 million households were connected to electricity. But from 2013, and in only 7 years of my presidency, we have connected close to 3.5 million households, bringing the number of households connected close to 8 million,” President Uhuru said.

“This means that we have done 15 times more than the previous administrations, to connect our people to electricity. We take pride in this, not because we are better, but because we have to finish the business of our founding fathers in order to envision a new dream,” he added.

Health

“We have not only dispatched sophisticated machinery to hospitals across counties in order to localize treatment. We have also made this treatment almost free through the NHIF. And we have done this because poor health has a way of indignifying people,” he said.

Land

“My third example is about land. A critical motivation for waging the war of liberation against colonial rule was land. After 50 years of independence, 6 million title deeds were issued by 2013 when I assumed Presidency of our nation.  But in only seven years, an additional 4.5 million title deeds have been issued under my Administration,” said the president.

This, he said, was done to keep the promise of our Founding Fathers alive, among many other programmes and projects aimed at realizing the dream of our forefathers.

He however noted that a lot was yet to be done and his focus was now on what remains to be done.