President William Ruto endorsed his bottom-up economic initiative in his maiden address to the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Ruto maintained that the approach which seeks to solve multiple challenges by opening opportunities for ordinary Kenyans who are the majority in the society, is the solution to recover from the adverse effects of severe drought, environmental climate change, food crisis and human conflict.
According to the Head of State, the model combines four pillars; Ingenuity, Optimism, Resilience and Energy which makes up an hustler. He says that even beyond the reach of many public services, this hustlers utilize available scarce opportunities and frequently emerge great.
“Building back Better’ from the bottom upwards is essentially about including the marginalised working majority in the economic mainstream. The bottom millions relentlessly wage their daily battle for survival in a crowded arena characterised by scarcity of opportunity and generally precarious existence,” Ruto said.
“The ingenuity, optimism, resilience and energy in this ever bustling bottom, is at times called hustling. Invincibly to policy makers, this hustlers take nothing for granted. Surviving overwhelming odds and frequently succeeding great.” He added.
With the theme of the conference being “A watershed moment, transformative solutions to interlocking challenges” Ruto called for global finance institutions to extend pandemic- related debt relief to the developing countries and mostly to those affected by Covid-19 pandemic and Russia-Ukraine war.