Business Ecosystem Looking Up

As the CEO of a large listed company, you have to constantly appease shareholders and satisfy NSEs insatiable hunger for short-term results. The pressure for immediate measurable results is very high, and you find yourself absorbed with quarterly earnings and product launches.

When I met Miano last week, the first thing I wanted to ask her was her views on the recently published opinion polls that gave her very low marks in terms of performance as a, CS. Had her new appointment abruptly thrust her into unfamiliar territory, where she was finding difficulty in trying to repeat the success she had achieved in the corporate boardroom?

Her response was cryptic: Opinion polls are useful checks on claims we, people in policy-making, tout as having achieved. But I wish they could be giving marks on performance that can be quantified.

I asked her: What is the Karibu Business Centre? What does it offer that the existing programmes dont? Considering that all government agencies which support enterprise development provide support services to entrepreneurs, doesnt this amount to duplication? She, however, explained that her ministry is correcting an unco-ordinated flow of information from government departments and agencies to budding investors.

This is a one-stop place to help investors to navigate the complex web of business regulations and procedures that are required to set up shop in Kenya. You walk into the centre and you get all the information you need.

But where has this experiment worked? I made a mental note that, although they are slow to admit it, it is more or less a copy-and-paste of the famous Tokyo One Stop Business Establishment Centre (Tosbec), which provides a single point of contact for all business registration and licensing needs to both local and foreign investors. Tosbec is credited with making Japan one of the most attractive countries in terms of ease of doing business. Still, whether what has worked in Tokyo will work here remains an open-ended question.

Back to our debate and discussions on the broader issues. What strikes you as you debate with the minister is her extraordinary grasp of the contemporary issues in her docket. We debated the opportunities that have recently opened up for Kenya by economic partnership agreements with parties like the European Union and the UK and under the African Free Trade Agreement (AfFTA).

Mianos regret was that Kenya did not take full advantage of the expired Agoa trade deal with the US. She opined that one of the challenges she has to grapple with in the medium term was to urgently introduce measures that will ensure the new Agoa programme with Kenya will deliver preferential market access to markets in the US beyond textile and apparel.

She argued that, despite the fact that the expired Agoa gave us preferential access to almost 6,500 items, we hardly went beyond textiles and apparel. On manufacturing, she lamented the fact that the sectors contribution to GDP had plummeted to single-digit figures. That her challenge in the medium term will be to introduce tangible and measurable steps to restore the manufacturing sectors contribution to national income back to double digits.

Will Ms Miano manage to successfully introduce the boardroom culture of quick and measurable results in delivering the ambitious targets for the sector and docket? The jury is still out. However, my take is that her corporate background and the mindset about performance that can be quantified has not died. She has sharply defined and carefully limited the things she wants to achieve. Lets wait and see.

Its free!