President William Ruto has taken his bottom-up economic model to the United Nations General Assembly.
In his maiden speech at the 77 UN General Assembly in New York Wednesday, Ruto said he fully supported the 'Building back Better' initiative "which is the universal rallying call to incorporate lessons learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic in a better way to recover from its shock."
"Building back Better' from the bottom upwards is essentially about including the marginalised working majority in the economic mainstream. The bottom billion relentlessly wage their daily battle for survival in a crowded arena characterised by scarcity of opportunity and generally precarious existence," he said.
In his campaign before the just concluded General Election, Ruto used the bottom-up economic model as the main plank in his campaign messaging.
Through the 'hustler' ideology, Ruto said his administration would ensure that the ordinary citizens have a say in decision-making.
So far he has promised to set up a hustlers' fund that would see the boda boda operators and mama mboga's access money to bolster their businesses.
And at the Assembly, Ruto maintained that the ingenuity, optimism, resilience and energy in the ever-bustling bottom is what is called hustling.
According to him, invisible to policymakers and beyond the reach of many public services, the said hustlers take nothing for granted, surviving overwhelming odds and frequently succeeding greatly.
"It is time to bolster the resilience of our nations to mainstream these hustlers through deliberate strategies and efforts for economic inclusion by building back better from bottom-up," he said
He said, unfortunately, "interlocking challenges of conflicts triple planetary crisis and the global food crisis have impeded momentum and obstructed focus on achieving fundamental transformations towards sustainable development."
The head of state said severe drought disruption of supply chains due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict have left countries in the Horn of Africa region food insecure.
"We have been constrained to repurpose our strategies to prioritize drought and famine relief, insulating education front disruption and improving social protection and health care system to secure the well being of our people"
Ruto said a time has come for all UN member states and all relevant stakeholders to demonstrate strong political will and showcase effective cooperation by supporting the most affected countries financially, through sharing land restoration and climate adaptation technologies.
"It is through collaborations to expand inclusion that we can attain a new paradigm in multilateralism he said.
