THE EXPLAINER: Tracking President Ruto’s promises one year in office

Today marks exactly 365 days since Dr. William Ruto took office as President of the Republic of Kenya.

He took the oath of office on September 13, 2022 at the Kasarani stadium. At exactly 12.44pm he uttered the words; ‘So help me God’ while taking the two oaths of office, that is the oath of allegiance of the President and the oath of due execution of the office.

He ascended to power on the basis of what he called ‘The Plan.’

On this day, and as part of our on-going coverage of Ruto in one year. Let me take you through ‘The Plan’ one more time.

It was based on 5 key pillars, that is Agriculture and Food Security, MSMEs and Financing, Housing, Health Access and ICT and Creative Economy.

Agriculture and Food Security

On agriculture and food security, he pledged to invest at least Ksh.250 billion in 5 years to boost the sector. He also pledged to transform two million poor farmers from food-deficit to surplus producers. This is because farmers are themselves net buyers from the market. The move was aimed at raising the productivity of key-value food chains and cutting basic food imports by 30 per cent

Let’s take a look at the second pillar which is MSMEs. He promised to provide Ksh.50 billion every year to provide reliable access to credit; what we now know as the Hustler Fund.

In addition, with respect to what they called the hustlers, the plan was to provide one street trading premises for every 50 urban residents, increase the daily income of informal traders by Ksh.200, as well as establish MSME business development centre in every ward.

Housing is another thing that has got the country talking over the last year. The plan aims to build 250,000 new affordable houses every year, and they proposed to do this through Public-Private Partnership arrangement.

They have since set up the housing levy at 1.5 per cent of gross salary to be matched by employers, in the Finance Act 2023.

The plan also included growing the number of mortgages to one million and the establishment of a settlement fund to acquire land and resettle up to one million landless families.

On the health pillar, the President promised a fully publicly funded primary healthcare system. The plan also proposed to establish new level 6 hospitals in six new sites and hiring an initial 20,000 health care workers.

Just last month the Cabinet set in motion the process to scrap the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) as we know it and in its place, set up 3 new funds; the Primary Healthcare Fund, Social Health Insurance Fund, and the Emergency, Chronic and Critical Illness Fund.

This will be done through the establishment of 4 Bills namely Primary Health care Bill, 2023, Digital Health Bill 2023, Facility Improvement Financing Bill 2023, and Social Health Insurance Bill 2023 that will now be transmitted to Parliament.

Now, let us take a look at the last pillar, the ICT and creative economy. Here, President Ruto promised to construct 100,000 kilometre fiber optic connectivity network, roll out fibre to counties, villages, schools, over 24,000 businesses and homes, and establish Africa regional hub and promote the development of software for exports.

So, how is he doing with those promises? Well, the folks over at Mzalendo have a promises tracker and this is what they have found.

President Ruto made 182 promises in total; 12 are completed, 54 are ongoing, 95 are yet to start, 1 has stalled, another one has been modified, 19 are broken.

Now, and it is important to put this into context, remember these promises are the total pledges over the 5-year period. That is why they have divided them into 4 categories; the first 100 days, short term goals, medium term and long-term goals.

For instance out of the pledges made, 35 were to be delivered in his first 100 days in office. Out of those, 8 are completed, among them is the promise to appoint the 6 judges of the Court of Appeal within 7 days, he did this the very same day he took oath of office. Another 12 promises are ongoing.

Now, for the short term goals, which were to be achieved within the first year in office. There were 71 promises. Out of those 47 have yet to start, 22 are ongoing, 1 is complete and 1 is broken.