President William Ruto has directed the Kenya National Innovation Agency (KeNIA) to be domiciled in the Office of the President.
Speaking on Wednesday, November 27, during the launch of the Kenya Innovation Week 2024 in Nairobi, President Ruto pledged to propose a budgetary allocation of Sh500 million for the agency.
The Head of State affirmed that the government will continuously support innovation because of its potential to create many employment opportunities.
“The government will continuously support innovation. When I came into office, the Kenya Innovation Agency had a budget of Ksh18 million. This year, the government has supported the agency with Ksh200 million.
“Because of the centrality and importance of innovation and the opportunities it can create, it is important that we harness the opportunity in this space. I therefore instruct that the agency moves to the office of the president. I’m going to propose to Parliament a Sh500 million allocation for the agency and Ksh1 billion for the Startup Fund,” the president remarked.
President Ruto highlighted that it was necessary for the agency to be moved to a central place because of its cross-cutting nature.
“Because of the crosscutting nature of innovation across different fields and the necessity to harness university education, TVETs and all the education sectors into assisting and providing momentum for us to innovate, scale up ideas and commercialize research from universities and ideas from innovators and take them to the next level, it becomes necessary that this agency moves to a central place where we can harness all these opportunities and assist in creating the momentum for job creation,” President Ruto explained.
He noted that many ideas cannot currently be commercialized due to limited resources, and his proposed allocation will help in de-risking these ideas.
“We should be able to move more ideas into practice because they offer practical solutions to some of the challenges we have. The wealth of knowledge, creativity and innovation in the young people of Kenya is demonstrable,” the president stated.
By Nairobi Leo