SUED Support for Iten Municipality

Three critical sectors have been identified for support to Iten Municipality by the UKAID Sustainable Urban Economic Development (SUED) programme.

ACAL Consultants, contracted by the SUED to carry out assessment of the Municipality’s capacity needs, said the programme will fund the following infrastructural development and value chains in the following areas:

1. Agriculture and Livestock
2. Trade and Investment
3. Sports and Tourism

The programme will also build the capacity of Municipality Board as well as Staff to enable them have better capability of instituting and implementing initiatives in the said sectors.

Speaking in Iten today during a briefing meeting with H.E Governor Alex Tolgos, ACAL Team leader Ayub Odinda, said Iten had been identified as one of the high potential Municipalities owing to its international stature of being a world athletics training destination.

He added that the selection was also informed by the political goodwill displayed by the County leadership that saw Iten chosen among the 12 Municipalities out of 59 to participate in the programme.

Tolgos said the County was committed to ensure that Iten becomes a fully fledged Municipality to tap into the potential of the township to attract trade and investment.

“Already, we have made strides in improving the infrastructure of the town to make it attractive for business and the SUED funding will be a boost as we seek to position our County as a top investment destination,” he added.

SUED is a £70 million, five-year programme supported by the British Government through the Department for International Development (DFID). SUED funding is channelled through two mechanisms:

1. Seed Funding:of up to 50% of the programme’s total fund to support infrastructural development and value chain projects. The seed funding will be demand led and based on the projects identified in the respective municipal urban economic plans.
2. Technical Assistance: Each municipality is expected to get an equivalent of up to KES 400 million of technical support over five years.

An equivalent of up to KES 4.5 billion to be shared among the twelve (12) supported municipalities.

Present during the meeting were other ACAL consultants, Ken Wamai, Sarah Ochola, Job Mainye and John Mungaru. County officials included County Secretary Paul Chemmuttut, Municipality Manager Raymond Omonei, CEC Abraham Barsosio and CO Josephat Tanui among others.