President Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta made his last address to the nation as the fourth President of the republic of Kenya ahead of William Ruto swearing-in.
Speaking live from State House where the two (President and President elect) met for consultations before the big day, Uhuru congratulated his successor for the first time wishing him success as he takes over the leadership mantle.
Uhuru outlined what might be the legacy of his administration saying he lives behind A country with; a better infrastructure, a more advanced education system, a better economy, a more healthier with better access to medical care, a more secure and digital country and one that has a better relationship status with its international partners.
“My administration together we’ve fostered and intergrated devolution as a way of life in a country. We’ve reinforced our educational and technical excellence and we’ve also successfully led the nation through the worse global health crisis in over a century. We also turned a number of challenges that we inherited and those emerged during our 10 year into areas of opportunity for a better Kenya.” He said.
He took a great pride in the upgraded infrastructure in terms of roads, ports, bridges, fibre optics, power generation and transmission which as a result Kenya now stands out as an investment destination of choice, a continental as well as a global hub.
Under his leadership, the President mentioned the introduction of a new education curriculum system and expansion of high education space. Similarly, his government oversaw the establishment of Huduma centers enhancing service delivery across different departments in the country which was enabled by the Ksh 2.5 trillion allocated to the counties.
The President featured prominently the successful transition from analog to digital television, radio and the digitazition of the section of government through online application of birth cerficates, marriage certificate, business registration, driver’s licenses many others thus reducing paper traffic in the working areas.
On the economy, he gave statistics of the significant growth from 2013 to current . “From my predecessor Mwai Kibaki we picked up a country that was 12 largest economy in Africa to it’s current position as Africa 6th largest economy. We’ve almost tripled the wealth of our nation from a GDP of 4.5 trillion in 2013 to close to 13 trillion. Consequently the income per capita rose sharply from 127, 000 to 245,000 per person at current.”
As the President bid Kenyans farewell he said,
“In every presidential decision I made and in every executive action have taken, in every deal have proposed and ascended to I have been guided by the dream of our fore- fathers and that is the dream to eliminate poverty, ignorance and disease and to improve the quality of life of all Kenyans and to create conditions for everyone to achieve their dream.”