Background document on Umbrella Legislation for kenyan Agriculture

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Kenya’s agricultural sector is governed by over 130 pieces of legislation. Many of these are out of date with the current economic thinking and are in need of updating, amendment, and repeal. The traditional pace and method of updating legislation has been extremely slow with only 3 pieces of directly agricultural legislation passing through parliament in the last 4 years. At that pace the legislative review could take upwards of a century. The tragedy is that even those pieces that have gone through parliament have not been fully implemented due to flaws in the new bills, sections that are impossible to implement, and resistance from various quarters. The situation is further compounded by the large number of commodity specific pieces of legislation in the pipeline, some of which have been in that pipeline for more than a decade. Government has responded to this situation with a pragmatic decision to consolidate agricultural legislation under one (or a few) pieces of umbrella legislation. This commitment is first hinted at in the PRSP, stated in the ERSWEC and expounded on in the SRA. Government has since suggested that assistance to move the process forward would be appreciated. Parliament has indicated a desire to have the process well advanced by October 2004, and completed by March 2005. The intention is to have any budgetary implications included in the 2005-6 budget that will be being prepared at that time.