Part three: what county governments can do to create jobs

The Kenyan population is estimated to be about fifty million people. All these people consume products on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Some of these products include matchsticks, milk, tealeaves, cooking oil, alcohol, buckets, plates and so on. But where are these products manufactured? Well, a good proportion of these products are made in Nairobi and shipped to other parts of the country. This has made that county to be the most developed in the country. This has made many young people from across the country to migrate to Nairobi in order to get work. This has led to overcrowding and all the negative effects associated with it. What is the solution?

Step one:

Decentralize some companies: - many companies have collected a lot of data on how their products are consumed across the country. They may even know the exact shops that order their products, the retail prices, when those shops will reorder products and so on. With this wealth of information, they can pinpoint where they can set up their factories. What can county governments do to lure them?

Step two

Free land:- one of the most valuable resources some counties have is the amount of land they possess. If you offer a company several acres for free, they may jump on it because it immediately increases the value of their assets. They can even take a loan and use that land as security. That loan can in turn be used to build a factory.

Step three

Lobbying:- county officials should approach as may companies as possible in order to draw them in. in order for a county to get the maximum impact of decentralization, they have to open many companies at once. Let’s think of an example. Imagine a county that has a population of one million people. Then 100 companies open operations in that county in the same month. Let’s also imagine that each company has an average of 1000 employees. That means 100,000 people will be employed in that county in a single month. This is equivalent to 10% of the county population. This will have a huge impact on the county because all these people will spend their money on different things like furniture, rent, clothes, food and many other needs and wants. This means that new jobs may be created in order to fulfill the new purchasing power of the new employees. Therefore, the whole county will benefit.

Conclusion

#       Will workers in Nairobi lose their jobs? Not necessarily. With a stronger county economies, the companies in Nairobi can now focus on making high value products that could otherwise not be made at county level. Also they can decentralize some of employees to their home counties to help support the new decentralized companies.