Kenya is still stuck in the colonial activity of exporting raw materials. This is soon changing as President William Ruto declared during the closing ceremony of the Kenya Industrialization Forum 2025 at Vipingo Ridge, Kilifi County.

He said it is time for Kenya to flip and start adding value to what is available, manufacture products, and later on export the finished products.

Industrialization and export development will help create jobs for young people since the country has a high number of educated but jobless youth.

These young people, who are tech savvy, will bring new and productive ideas that will maximize on production and hence high profits through selling commodities.

Food produced in Africa is mostly taken overseas to be tested and by the time it comes back, it becomes too expensive.

For industrialization to materialize, Africans should patronize commodities in Africa. Kenyans must learn to buy things produced locally and stop going for imported items while their own are lying unutilized.

“500 million dollars has been invested to put infrastructure in Vipingo, Dongo Kundu, and Naivasha,” said President Ruto.

Many investors will be attracted to invest in Kenya if local investors lead by example and invest in own industrialization.

This is because the investors are guaranteed that local investors will take good care of their own investment since whatever affects the foreign investors will also affect the local investors and nobody is willing to incur losses.

There is so much underutilized financial resources in Kenya because the money is taken to banks outside Africa instead of investing the money locally. Once the money is outside the country, it is hard to access it even in form of loans.

Kenya as a country, should run specific programs to attract investors from outside to join local investors as well as bring accessible markets for those investing within the country and Africa at large.

The Governor of Kilifi County, Gideon Mung’aro assured the investors that the government is willing to work with foreign investors in order to actualize all the industrial insights that were discussed during the Kenya Industrial Forum 2025.

The Minister for Industrialization Lee Kinyanjui said that Africa will rely more on African solutions provided by African experts and young professionals.

“Saving is the way to go. We should build our own capacity to invest. Local solutions require local money,” said Ruto.