Kenya: Cabinet Secretary Ababu Namwamba presided over a breakfast meeting on November 15, 2023. Development partners, Sponsors and other Key Stakeholders within the Innovation ecosystem were present at the breakfast.
Kenya is getting ready to host 56 commonwealth nations in Nairobi for the Kenya Innovation Week 2023 Commonwealth edition. CS Namwamba hosted the people involved in the staging of the event for a get together meeting. The initiative is scheduled from November 27-December 1, 2023.
During the meeting, he acknowledged that uniting the efforts of every stakeholder within the sector amplifies the collective impact. This in turn leads to positive transformative change needed for Kenya to progress as a nation.
Afterwards, he called on the youth of Kenya to showcase creativity and innovation and how to monetize such.
“This is an incredible platform to imagine a better country, a better commonwealth and a better world and to unleash the full force of that imagination. I urge our partners to walk the innovation journey with the ministry as we prepare for the #KIW2023CommonwealthEdition,” he said.
The CS added that as a member of the ministry, he was delighted to take responsibility of hosting the Kenya Innovation Week. He added that the government had earmarked innovation as the driver of the economic agenda of the administration.
“I want to thank President William Ruto who has been a champion, unequivocally and with firm determination and leadership that innovation is the way to go for the country,” he said.
He called for an all hands-on-deck approach to preparing the event, lauding Kenya National Innovation Agency for the work done so far. “I want to applaud the work that Kenya National Innovation Agency has done in pipelining our institutions into the innovation discourse which is the way to go for our country.”
PS Ismail Maalim also accompanied CS Ababu Namwamba to the meeting. He noted that the Presidential Innovation Challenge and Award synced rightly with the #TalantaHela initiative that provided a platform for talent identification, development and monetisation.
“Talanta Hela is a platform for identifying, developing and monetizing talent. This is why as a ministry, we are glad that the Presidential Innovation Challenge and Awards dovetails perfectly into this initiative, because it is about challenging our young people to bring forth their innovative ideas, for us to nurture, move them to startups and unleash them as entrepreneurship that can offer job opportunities that anchor sustainable livelihoods.”