Men shop for second hand clothes at Kehancha Bus Park in Kuria West constituency

Last year during Migori Investment Forum held in Migori Teachers College and attended by investors and county residents, Governor Okoth Obado made an appeal to members of the county to put more effort on promotion of local investment.

According to the Governor, counties will only develop faster when the locals took it as their role to develop
their counties and not wait for people to come from outside to help them in developing them.

The Governor’s call could not have come at a better time. Especially at this time when counties across the country seem to be obsessed with looking for ‘investors’ to come and invest in their counties

As counties, we have to accept that the development of our counties solely lies in our hands and that nobody will travel all the way from USA, Europe, Middle East or Asia just to come and help us develop the county.

What we should be asking for is for the respective county governments to come up with rules and regulations which will make it possible for our investments to thrive as well as encouraging more county residents to invest within their counties.

Like all counties in the country, Migori faces a number of challenges among them unemployment, poverty, diseases, poor infrastructures among others and these are areas that we have to address by ourselves and not wait for any person to come from out and help us sort out.

And we are lucky; we have the solution to most of the challenges we are experiencing. To begin with, Migori is the second richest county in terms of natural resources, only second to Kw
ale County.

This means that we have to get the best way of managing our resources well and ensure that the county is able to use them to our advantage.

From fish in Lake Victoria, to Gold in Nyatike and Rongo, Copper in Nyatike to Sugarcane in Awendo, Thim Lich Ohinga to Sandy beaches of Lake Victoria, we have to get the best way of exploiting them and using them to develop the county.

We must embrace partnership as a key component for development.

Another area we must put more emphasis on is in the Human Resource department.
(The writer is a teacher based in Suna West constituency)