Kenya's socioeconomic future post-Covid-19.

Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations (UN) resident coordinator in Kenya. He leads and coordinates 27 UN agencies based in the country.

In this interview with Raphael Obonyo, Chatterjee answers questions and shares his vision and optimism for Kenya's socio-economic future. These are excerpts.

How is the UN helping Kenya to contain the spread of Coronavirus and to deal with the secondary impact of the pandemic?

On the current COVID-19 pandemic, the UN family in Kenya, has deployed over 80 UN staff and volunteers to bolster the Government of Kenya's capacity to respond. The UN has procured and supplied PPE kits, testing kits masks and range of medical supplies needed by health workers. From within the UN Development Assistance Framework to Kenya, the UN has redeployed US$ 45 million from its ongoing programmes to support Kenya's COVID 19 response. Together with the Government of Kenya and our humanitarian partners, we have launched a Flash Appeal for US$ 267.5 million or KHS 28 Billion to meet the needs of 10 million of the most vulnerable people in Kenya.

We know that COVID-19 will not only stretch the current health and economic status but that the effects will continue to reverberate long after the virus is defeated. We also know that recent outbreaks are caused by viruses jumping from animals to humans, mainly due to the destruction of wild habitats. Due to population growth, we are exploiting forests at a calamitous rate, eating away into the traditional buffer zones that once separated humans from animals, and from the pathogens that they carry.

Post-COVID-19, the world must wake up to the reality of a global health emergency originating from one country to the rest of the world. Investments in preparedness by one continent will have an enormous impact on the global capacity to manage any pandemic. And giving women access to reproductive care and family planning is one of the most important things we can do to reduce epidemic-ready conditions.

We must look at how best to retool and repurpose the Kenyan industry to respond to local and global health needs where demand has outstripped supplies. I see huge opportunities for Kenya to bridge the supply chain gap. I was delighted to see the article in the Washington Post about an initiative in Kitui county. The county is churning out as many as 30,000 masks a day and selling them to private and public hospitals across the country, which are desperate for them. Kenya can lead the way in Africa and this, in turn, will generate jobs along the entire value chain.

The UN family in Kenya is working closely with the Government of Kenya to look at the socioeconomic impact of the COVID 19 pandemic as well as working with the Ministry of Industries to look nat how we can kick start initiatives of local production of health supplies not only for the current pandemic but who knows when the next pandemic strikes.

In 2016, the United Nations (UN) appointed you a resident coordinator of its activities in Kenya. It has been about 4 years. What are some of your key accomplishments?

I lead one of the finest UN country teams, and a lot of what has been achieved has been a result of great teamwork. This video documentary gives readers an idea about how the UN is working in lockstep with the Government of Kenya, advance human development and progress in Kenya.

But let me summarize a few concrete areas of success;

Under the leadership of the Government of Kenya we launched the first cross border initiative between Kenya and Ethiopia in the Moyale region, to reduce conflict, advance peace and development and support better cross border trade and prevention of violent extremism and conflicts. This initiative has been assessed by the UN University in Japan as a global best practice. In addition to the Kenya-Ethiopia Cross border programme, we have now launched a similar initiative along the Kenya-Uganda border in the Karamoja region in 2019. The report says, ' Kenya's multidimensional cross-border program simultaneously addresses violent extremism, human trafficking, economic development, local governance and inter-communal peace with mutually reinforcing objectives and means. Now offered as a global model of best practice, it reveals as much about the virtues of RC tenacity and outside-the-box problem-solving, as it does about the outmoded territorial tendencies behind internal obstacles the RC confronted along the way.'

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