LIVE! President Ruto Presides over National Productivity and Performance Conference in Nairobi

[00:00:02]Another round of applause for the chair.

[00:00:05]>> [applause] >> And your Excellency, talking of productivity, I don't know what you meant by productivity at home, but I'm sure the weather has something to contribute towards being very productive at home.

[00:00:16]It is now my honor, your Excellency, to invite the Prime Cabinet Secretary, Honorable Dr. Musalia Mudavadi, to come and make his remarks and in turn invite His Excellency the President. Why don't we welcome him with a clap? Welcome, sir.

[00:00:28]>> [applause] >> Your Excellency, the President of the Republic of Kenya, Honorable William Samoei Ruto, the chair of the Salaries and Remuneration Commission, and the entire team that has been participating in this process, chair of the Council of Governors, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, and my colleagues.

[00:00:52]Um Your Excellency, I'll just go straight into the issues because the resolutions are very explicit, very solid, and very thorough.

[00:01:08]I just want to remind you of one statement that you normally make.

[00:01:14]Let us not make peace with mediocrity.

[00:01:20]This is one persistent statement you have been making repeatedly.

[00:01:28]Now, that is a loaded statement.

[00:01:36]The question is, have we as Kenyans made peace with laziness?

[00:01:49]Have we as Kenyans made peace with low productivity?

[00:01:59]Have we as Kenyans been rewarding non-performers?

[00:02:09]So, what culture have we built?

[00:02:14]What we hope to achieve with this, Mr. President, is a situation where the public can make sense of the performance of the entire public service.

[00:02:32]We must break away the notion that is sometimes carried that a promotion has been parachuted to a particular individual.

[00:02:44]Is that promotion truly earned?

[00:02:49]Your Excellency, on one of the issues that we'll do towards the end is to present the results of performance contracting that are due.

[00:03:05]However, I'm a little bit nervous on this one, Your Excellency, because in these very premises, we had talked of bringing the legislation to entrench and give legal foundation to performance contracting.

[00:03:28]Our process of public participation has taken forever.

[00:03:35]This law is now about ready to go to Parliament.

[00:03:40]So, the next thing I hope, Mr. President, we can bring to you will not be the results of performance contracting, but we'll bring to you the legal instrument, the legislation, that will have been approved by Kenyans to entrench performance contracting and indeed now the issue of productivity so that it is one law that can be an instrument that obligates all of us to do what is right for the Kenyan and to do what is right for our country.

[00:04:20]This Mr. President is the commitment that I would want to make so that I can be more productive at that time.

[00:04:30]As opposed to just giving you the results of performance contracting.

[00:04:35]I think we need to go a notch higher.

[00:04:37]So with those remarks ladies and gentlemen it is my singular honor to bring to the podium His Excellency the President of the Republic of Kenya to address us.

[00:04:52]Thank you.

[00:04:56]>> [applause] >> Thank you very much honorable PS. Please let's take our seats and good morning.

[00:05:02]Hamjambo.

[00:05:04]Thank you very much.

[00:05:11]Distinguished guests ladies and gentlemen I am delighted to be part of our first ever national productivity and performance conference.

[00:05:24]We meet at a very defining moment. We are advancing the bottom-up economic transformation agenda in a challenging period characterized by fiscal constraints rising expectations rapid technological change and fierce global competition.

[00:05:47]In such times, business as usual is no option.

[00:05:54]That is why the theme productivity for fiscal sustainability and service excellence is more than a statement. It is our growth charter.

[00:06:08]For 3 days, national and county governments, industry, labor, academia, and international experts have sat together around the conviction that Kenya must build a public service that does not merely function, but one that also performs and delivers.

[00:06:33]For too long, we have focused the wrong metrics.

[00:06:40]We counted hours at the desk instead of value at the door.

[00:06:45]We rewarded the officer who stayed late, not the office that delivered.

[00:06:52]We mistook motion for progress and presence for performance.

[00:06:59]That era must get behind us.

[00:07:04]The public service The public service of Kenya should reward results, not routine.

[00:07:14]Impact, not attendance.

[00:07:19]We must stop measuring time spent and start measuring value created.

[00:07:26]What matters is not how long a public servant sits at the desk, but how much difference that public servant make in the life of a citizen.

[00:07:39]Let Let raise the bar of our ambition.

[00:07:44]And as Musalia said, I have consistently said that for us to make progress, we must not continue to make peace with mediocrity.

[00:07:59]It is our greatest undoing.

[00:08:06]Let us measure ourselves against the very best in the world.

[00:08:17]The world's most productive economies are not those with the biggest budgets or the most resources.

[00:08:28]They are those that derive the greatest value from every hour.

[00:08:35]Data from the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, and their representative is right here with us, puts the average worker in advanced economies at about US dollars 59 or 7,600 Kenya shillings of output per hour.

[00:08:59]In Norway, for example, and I was there a few um days ago, and in Ireland, it exceeds 100 dollars. That is 13,000 shillings per hour.

[00:09:16]In Singapore, a nation with no oil, no gold, and scarcely any land to speak of, productivity now runs higher than that of the United States.

[00:09:31]The lesson is simple.

[00:09:34]Prosperity is not what you possess.

[00:09:38]It is what you produce.

[00:09:43]I hope somebody is listening.

[00:09:47]And prosperity history teaches us can be built within a single generation.

[00:09:58]In the late 1950s the nations of Africa and the nations of East Asia stood at the similar stand starting point.

[00:10:08]Ghana then, the richest country in sub-Saharan Africa had an income nearly identical to a war scarred South Korea.

[00:10:21]One lifetime later Korea's output has grown tenfold.

[00:10:29]It transformed itself from one of the world's poorest and most aid dependent nations into a donor nation becoming the first country in history to move from aid recipient to aid donor in one generation.

[00:10:51]What separated them was not resources.

[00:10:56]Ghana and indeed Africa had more gold cocoa and fertile land.

[00:11:03]What separated them was human capital and productivity.

[00:11:09]Korea invested relentlessly in its people and converted that investment into value.

[00:11:19]I have been to Korea twice in my presidency.

[00:11:23]So, I know what I'm talking about.

[00:11:27]And two days ago, I had a long chat with the president of Korea.

[00:11:35]The Korea story is not merely a lesson from history.

[00:11:40]It is a mirror held up to every developing nation, including ours.

[00:11:47]Across Africa, productivity grows at barely 1% maybe at best 1.5% a year.

[00:11:56]While Asia grows at 3% to 4%.

[00:12:01]12 million young Africans enter the labor market every year with barely 3 million formal jobs awaiting them.

[00:12:13]No continent can shoulder that weight on stagnant output.

[00:12:21]Africa will not be lifted by the abundance of its resources.

[00:12:26]And we have huge resources.

[00:12:30]We have the largest reserves of natural resources.

[00:12:35]We have vast reserves of energy resources, including renewable energy.

[00:12:42]We have huge opportunities for value addition, value creation.

[00:12:54]But this continent of ours will be lifted by the productivity of its people.

[00:13:04]Nowhere is this challenge more urgent than here at home.

[00:13:12]A Kenyan worker's productivity today averages US dollars 7,750 or 1 million shillings a year.

[00:13:25]Placing us at number 142 out of 189 nations.

[00:13:38]Think about that.

[00:13:41]Think about it for a moment.

[00:13:45]We rank in the bottom quarter globally in terms of productivity.

[00:13:54]The challenge becomes even clearer when we look within our own borders.

[00:14:00]A private sector worker produces more than three times what the public sector counterpart produces.

[00:14:11]That tells you how much work we have to do to meet our aspirations.

[00:14:19]And for the record, I juggled with um delegating my uh attendance of this meeting because I I had so many competing um uh interests for my time.

[00:14:44]But I said I will not delegate this one because I needed to come here.

[00:14:51]>> [applause] >> Because what we are discussing here is so consequential, so important to us as a nation. And we need to speak to one another candidly as a as a nation.

[00:15:09]And this is not an indictment on ourselves.

[00:15:14]Kenyans are among the most enterprising, ingenious, and hard-working people anywhere in the world.

[00:15:25]It is the problem of our systems.

[00:15:30]And the systems, unlike faith, are within our power to change.

[00:15:38]Yes.

[00:15:40]We we are not condemned to be this way.

[00:15:42]We can change.

[00:15:44]And we will change. And we must change.

[00:15:50]>> [applause] >> Because on that truth rests our future.

[00:15:57]I have declared that Kenya will become a first world economy in our lifetime.

[00:16:01]And I believe it.

[00:16:04]I say it again here without an iota of doubt.

[00:16:10]Kenya will become a first world country in our lifetime.

[00:16:15]>> [applause] >> It is inevitable.

[00:16:20]It is unstoppable.

[00:16:22]It is irreversible.

[00:16:24]It will happen.

[00:16:28]But let's be honest about what that promise demands.

[00:16:33]You cannot reach a first world destination on a third rate productivity.

[00:16:40]A first world economy is built by first rate output per worker, per hour, and per shilling.

[00:16:52]Productivity is not one chapter of that dream.

[00:16:56]It is the book.

[00:17:00]If productivity is the destination, then in my assessment and opinion, there are five levers we must pull without hesitation.

[00:17:14]Our human capital, centralized merit, on board technology bring our counties on board and have a national everybody involved mobilization.

[00:17:34]If our people are the source of our productivity then our first investment must be in the people.

[00:17:44]The development of our human capital must be our first and most urgent priority.

[00:17:53]Korea's roadmap is ours.

[00:17:56]A nation rises no higher than the skill, the discipline and the diligence of its workforce.

[00:18:07]And it is the reason why we have invested so heavily in our human capital in the last 3 years.

[00:18:22]When I asked the presidential working party to look at our education we we were very clear that there were four gaps.

[00:18:35]We didn't have enough teachers, we didn't have enough classrooms, we had a faulty a a a funding model and we needed to do more research.

[00:18:51]I see the CEO of uh TSC is here.

[00:18:56]She will tell you we have hired 100,000 teachers in the last 3 years, the highest in Kenya's history.

[00:19:03]And it was not by accident, it was deliberate.

[00:19:11]We have increased our funding to education from 500 billion Kenya shillings 3 years ago.

[00:19:19]In this budget, it is 784 billion.

[00:19:25]Again, it is not by accident, it is deliberate.

[00:19:30]We have built 23,000 new classrooms.

[00:19:35]And we are now on course building 1,600 laboratories for our schools.

[00:19:42]We have increased the budget for our higher education loans board to enable more students stay in our colleges and in our universities from 15 billion in 2022 to 56 billion this year.

[00:20:03]So, and I have recently started a new state department under the Prime Cabinet Secretary's office on research, innovation, science, because we need to develop the highest quality of human capital to power our development.

[00:20:36]This must be deliberate.

[00:20:39]And I wanted to say this in this gathering.

[00:20:42]We must develop, we must have the best human capital.

[00:20:48]And then, we must demand of that human capital productivity.

[00:21:00]And if you look at the history of Korea, the investment in their education.

[00:21:09]And um part of the reason why I traveled to Korea twice is because we are building with them the Kenya Advanced Science the Kenya Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in concert technopolis.

[00:21:26]A university that I chartered a month ago that is going to work on some of our very uh specific science, technology, and innovation areas to be able to sharpen our human capital.

[00:21:48]We've done the same with Kemri.

[00:21:53]And we are identifying some special universities that are going to work with us on specialized fields for us to make sure that we have the men and the women that have the intellectual capacity for future.

[00:22:13]We must therefore focus not only on the quantity of education but more importantly on its quality.

[00:22:24]We must build a workforce equipped with the skills, knowledge, and adaptability required for the jobs of tomorrow.

[00:22:35]Equally important, those already in employment must have opportunities for continuous reskilling and upskilling to remain competitive in what is now, and we all know, a very rapidly changing environment.

[00:22:56]We must restore merit to the heart of public service.

[00:23:02]It is our expectation that all public service recruitment commissions to hire on merit, fairness, and transparency so that only the most competent get the opportunity to serve.

[00:23:19]Promotion at work must be based on demonstrated results, never on mere longetivity longetivity.

[00:23:29]Let advancement be the consequence of contribution.

[00:23:35]To entrench this culture across the public service, I task the public service commission to ensure that the values enshrined in Article 10 and 232 of the Constitution become the living standard of every public office.

[00:23:54]We will reward performers and innovators, and we will sanction non-performers without apology.

[00:24:04]Technology will be our multiplier.

[00:24:09]Artificial intelligence, automation, and data are rewriting how value is created, and Kenya will not be a spectator in that space.

[00:24:22]We will invest in digital infrastructure and a leaner, faster, citizen-centered service.

[00:24:33]2 days ago, I had interaction with the owner of AI, artificial intelligence, and chat GPT GTB, whatever it's called.

[00:24:48]And he I asked him a question, you know?

[00:24:55]Because it's now documented that Kenyans are the number one Kenya is the number one country in the use of social media in the world.

[00:25:14]In the world.

[00:25:18]Every Kenyan spends 4 hours and 13 minutes every day on social media.

[00:25:32]So, I was asking this good man, "What have you done to my people?"

[00:25:37]You know?

[00:25:42]And we agreed with him that we are not going to be mere consumers of his platform. We must be co-creators and we must begin >> [applause] >> Mhm?

[00:25:58]As a country to appropriate the space around technology and how we can use it for commerce, for learning, for delivery of public service, for agriculture, for trade, for investment, not just for all the other things that social media present.

[00:26:25]But while technology may accelerate performance culture sustains it.

[00:26:32]Technology serves people.

[00:26:35]It does not replace them.

[00:26:37]That is why we will embed Kaizen, the discipline of continuous improvement at every level built on a singular question, "How can we do better today than we did yesterday.

[00:26:56]This movement must reach the counties where the services citizen need most, including health, water, agriculture, and health childhood education are delivered.

[00:27:11]I urge my good brother, um Abdullahi, and the county governments to mainstream productivity.

[00:27:19]To benchmark against one another.

[00:27:22]And through the Council of Governors to adopt a county productivity framework.

[00:27:29]And the commission and the steering committee should work with them.

[00:27:36]And it should be a whole of society effort.

[00:27:40]Just as Kenya once mobilized around universal universal education, infrastructure, and digital inclusion, we must now mobilize government, private sector, labor, and academia together around productivity.

[00:27:57]Ladies and gentlemen, today we adopt a bold productivity reform agenda.

[00:28:03]We will re-engineer performance management to measure results, not activity.

[00:28:10]We will invest in human capital and transform the culture of service.

[00:28:16]We will tie reward directly to productivity.

[00:28:20]And we will marry fiscal discipline to productivity so that every shilling collected from taxpayers generates maximum value.

[00:28:30]We will harness technology under a one government data-driven approach.

[00:28:36]And we will build the governance and financing necessary to sustain delivery.

[00:28:43]I have listened very carefully to the chairman of the salaries and remuneration commission.

[00:28:51]And he has said something very profound about moving our revenue as a percentage of GDP from 14.5 percent today to 20%.

[00:29:14]Mr. Chairman, I want to persuade you we move it to 25%.

[00:29:21]We can do it.

[00:29:23]We can do it.

[00:29:28]Revenue as a result of GDP in OECD countries, my friend is here, is on average 35 the highest I think is 45.

[00:29:42]We are at 14.

[00:29:46]I mean, we cannot we cannot develop this country that way.

[00:29:53]And let me persuade you to look at things a bit differently.

[00:30:00]Many people did not believe that we have resources that we can use, Kenyan resources, that we can use to drive some of our most consequential infrastructure development.

[00:30:19]You know, many people thought for us to do any consequential development in Kenya, we have to go to the World Bank or IMF or the banks or or borrow from friends or get bilateral loans or things like those.

[00:30:34]Let me give you one example that is real in Kenya.

[00:30:43]We have built 300,000 housing units.

[00:30:50]We have built 480 modern markets.

[00:30:56]And we are building hostels for 180,000 college and university students in Kenya at a cost of 9 billion dollars.

[00:31:11]Not a single shilling has been borrowed from anywhere. It's all national our national resources. It's all our money.

[00:31:23]I mean, somebody will ask where where where was all this money?

[00:31:29]We just mobilized it.

[00:31:32]Us, the people sitting working.

[00:31:36]You know, with just 1 and 1/2% we have mobilized resources that is transforming Kenya in a very very fundamental way.

[00:31:47]Check the skyline of Nairobi. Check the skyline of every city, Eldoret, Mombasa, Kisumu, Kakamega, Thika, whatever.

[00:31:59]The skyline is changing.

[00:32:01]Not because we got some windfall from somewhere, because we were deliberate and intentional.

[00:32:09]So, it is possible for us to do this.

[00:32:14]We just need the courage to do it.

[00:32:19]You know, the courage to do it.

[00:32:21]And if there was anybody who was in doubt as to what Kenya can achieve in a very short while, that doubt should be erased.

[00:32:34]We We do it.

[00:32:37]So, when I say it is possible for us to transform this nation from where we are to a first world country in a generation, it's not talk.

[00:32:51]It's reality. It is what we can do.

[00:32:56]Yeah, it's what we can do.

[00:32:59]And that is why, Mr. Chairman, I wish I had more time for this meeting.

[00:33:05]But, I will create I have already told you.

[00:33:09]I'm giving you and the steering committee an appointment for Monday 3:30 because all the recommendations you have read here, we must implement each and every one of them.

[00:33:22]And I have also And I have also some ideas on how we need to get we need to do this.

[00:33:29]I have some ideas.

[00:33:32]Yeah. Because I've been thinking about them.

[00:33:35]And we move this country to the next level.

[00:33:40]Don't worry about all the other stories. I made up my mind long time ago that we are going to change this country.

[00:33:51]It doesn't matter the consequences and all the other issues because for far too long we have made peace with mediocrity at the expense of our nation.

[00:34:03]There is absolutely no reason why Kenya is where we are today when our peers Singapore, Korea, Malaysia are in the first world. What the hell are we doing in being a third world country?

[00:34:22]Honestly.

[00:34:24]You know?

[00:34:27]And people want to make it oh, it's okay, you know.

[00:34:31]It's not okay.

[00:34:33]It is not okay.

[00:34:36]We have too many people living in squalor.

[00:34:40]We have too many people who have no jobs. We have too many people who still sleep without a proper meal.

[00:34:51]We cannot continue this way.

[00:34:54]We have to change, and it is possible for us to do it.

[00:34:57]I want to persuade you that it is possible for us to change this nation.

[00:35:05]We have the resources to do it. We have the means to do it. We have the um human capital to do it.

[00:35:13]And if what we have achieved in 3 years is anything to go by, we can achieve a lot more with the momentum we have built.

[00:35:27]I am very, very confident about the future of this nation.

[00:35:31]I will repeat again.

[00:35:34]Good people, we must believe in ourselves.

[00:35:39]We must believe in our country as we believe in God.

[00:35:44]This we can do.

[00:35:47]You know, there are very many people who don't believe in They don't believe in our country. They believe in something I don't know where.

[00:35:54]You know, you you you find people very negative about Kenya. And they are Kenyans.

[00:35:59]I am wondering. So, you want to belong to which place?

[00:36:05]You think who who who is going to give you their country?

[00:36:11]You hate yours so that who will give you theirs?

[00:36:15]Nobody.

[00:36:17]If there is a problem in Kenya, let's fix it.

[00:36:20]It's our country. We must fix it.

[00:36:24]You know?

[00:36:25]Whatever it is that is there in Kenya.

[00:36:29]And I and I and I'm telling us as as as a people let us work together.

[00:36:38]We must protect our country.

[00:36:42]We must focus on our development.

[00:36:46]And we must never allow things that take Kenya backwards, you know?

[00:36:55]I hear some people you know the other day I saw some people there saying, "Oh, we want to shut down the country."

[00:37:04]Oh, we want you know we will defend the right of everybody because we are a country that believes viciously in order. We are a civilized nation. We are an organized society. We believe in the rule of law. We protect everybody's right.

[00:37:29]It is right for every citizen who has an issue to petition or to protest and we must protect their right to do so.

[00:37:39]We must also protect the right of our children to go to school and learn.

[00:37:47]And our farmers to go to the farms and produce food so that we don't sleep hungry. And the business people we must protect them to go to work to do business. We must protect every worker to go to work so that we can raise our productivity.

[00:38:07]So, we must protect the right of everybody so that we have a functioning civilized orderly democratic constitutional nation.

[00:38:24]And we are going to do it together.

[00:38:29]The public service the legislature constitutional commissions our judiciary the executive and on that mission of protecting the rights of everybody I will lead that charge. I will be right at the forefront.

[00:38:54]Yeah? Because that's that's how we keep our nation as to what it is.

[00:39:01]And um the one thing that is not going to happen is that people will be mobilized to destroy property or to cause chaos or mayhem. That will not happen.

[00:39:20]Children will go to school because it's their right to go to school.

[00:39:25]Workers will go to work because that's how we raise the productivity of our nation. And businesses will go open their businesses and grow our economy.

[00:39:36]And farmers too and everybody.

[00:39:39]So that we can we can we can take the nation forward.

[00:39:46]The distance between where we stand today and where we aspire to be will not be measured by time.

[00:39:55]It will be measured by productivity.

[00:39:59]And if we commit ourselves to that task then within our lifetime Kenya will take its rightful place among the developed nations of the world.

[00:40:15]I believe it.

[00:40:18]It will happen.

[00:40:19]And I want to encourage you that we walk together this journey.

[00:40:24]So, Mr. Chairman and your steering committee, 3:30 on Monday.

[00:40:32]>> [applause] >> Thank you, Your Excellency. With your permission, Your Excellency, I'd want us to transition to the award ceremony. So, we'll request that you remain on International Government Coordination, Ahmed A. Abdissalam, to come and run this session, and also invite the chair SRC together with PCS to flank His Excellency as we now progress to the award ceremony.

[00:41:12]>> And we will take uh shortest time possible.

[00:41:17]I think the way to go now is >> our country. Let's all say yes, we can.

[00:41:25]Yes, we can.

[00:41:27]>> Thank you so much. Thank you, Your Excellency. Without taking a lot of time, I will proceed to the next session.

[00:41:34]And uh Your Excellency, you have already issued most of the awards.

[00:41:40]And uh we will now take this opportunity to award the best ministry in performance contracting, which is Ministry of Defense. I request I will request to the CS to come forward.

[00:42:14]I will request also the CS represented by PSSMMS E Ministry of Cooperative and Micro Small and Medium Enterprise which is the most improved ministry to come forward and uh take our award.

[00:42:42]Thank you so much.

[00:42:44]I will request our state corporation and our state corporations productivity award Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development in the best state corporation to come forward CEO with a PS as well. If the PS is here, please.

[00:43:06]Come forward, please.

[00:43:09]Under the wage bill award, I will request uh under state corporation Tom Mboya University Tom Mboya University come forward, please.

[00:43:24]Tom Mboya University Thank you, Your Excellency, and this brings us to the end of this session.

[00:43:38]Thank you so much.

[00:43:41]>> The last item, Your Excellency, on our agenda is just a gift that will be presented to His Excellency by the chair SRC. If we can just present the gift, after which we will then end with the national anthem. A clap for the gift for His Excellency and also for his determination in ensuring this happens. I'll request that we all be upstanding as we now come to the close of this session with the national anthem.

[00:44:10]The anthem.

[00:44:49]We'll allow his Excellency to now exit at his own pleasure as we >> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music]