Kenya Receives KES 5 billion from World Bank to Support SMEs
The World Bank has awarded Kenya Industry of Entrepreneurship Project (KIEP) with 5,000,000,000 KES to help scale innovation and productivity for Kenyan small scall medium enterprises through International Development Association (IDA). IDA is a branch of World Bank that helps third world countries by providing grants and low-interest rate loans for projects and programs that reduce poverty and leverage living standard of individuals. The sum is expected to benefit about 33,000 individual enterprise owners and 2,393 companies. KIEP’s mission is to support the development targets that the government of Kenya out listed and dubbed “Big Four Development Agenda”. The agendas include food security, housing, universal health covering, and enhanced manufacturing. KIEP’s mission will also involve working towards achieving Vision 2030.
Diarietou Gaye, World Bank Country Director for Kenya said in an interview;
We are committed to supporting Kenya in creating employment and business opportunities as part of the county’s wider strategy to fast-track economic growth. While Kenya remains a top innovation leader in Africa, it still ranks 80th out of 127 countries in the 2017 Global Innovation Index and we are partnering with Kenya as it works to improve its human capital, technology and knowledge outputs.
Kenya, being one of the most growing countries in Africa, there is a huge need for initiatives like IDA to even facilitate the faster growth by providing necessary help. The funds tend to fuel and propel the rate of innovation and creativity within the region. As a result, neighbouring countries learn from us and try to apply what they see Kenya doing to their own countries to pull up the state of the countries. This has been evident within East Africa.
