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{
    "id": 1128428,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1128428/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 695,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Nominated, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. David ole Sankok",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13166,
        "legal_name": "David Ole Sankok",
        "slug": "david-ole-sankok"
    },
    "content": " Thank you very much, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker. I have to withdraw because even my own crutches are made by very good welders, some of whom may not have gone to any school. But I was making reference to the alien characters other people were mentioning as engineers and yet we do not know their classmates in primary and secondary school or university. We also do not know their teachers. I have withdrawn. I am talking about research in hides and skins, for instance. Annually, we produce three million hides, but 2.7 million of them go to waste. Yet we annually import 25 million pairs of shoes. If we do our calculations very well and make sure that we conduct research in innovation and our ability to have tanneries and cottages that will transform the wasted hides and skins in the pastoralist regions into shoes, then, they will have a ready customer base. We can even be exporters. Each hide can produce 40 shoes. So, we are talking of a wastage of 120 million shoes and yet we import more than 25 million pairs of shoes. Nine million of our school-going children are required to have leather shoes yet we waste hides and skins in pastoralist regions. It is shameful that we import even toothpicks. You can imagine what technology is required in production of toothpicks. Using your own labour, you can literally use a knife and make good toothpicks. One tree is capable of producing 30,000 packets of toothpicks. At a price of Kshs10 each, that is Kshs300,000 from a mere small tree. Our youth are innovative. You have seen how they produce durable akala shoes from used tyres. We only need to invest in the youth to make the akala shoes more presentable, of high quality and affordable, so that we can even export them to countries from which we import sandals. Herbal medicine is another area. My father is a specialist herbalist. He can tell you which herb is useful for joints and which one is useful in treating malaria or gonorrhoea. He can even tell you which herb is good for male erectile dysfunction, and yet he did not go to any school. If we can tap on such innovation and knowledge through KIRDI, we may become a medicine-producing country instead of a medicine-importing country. Why have we not done all these things as a country? It is because for a long time, we have been doing trickle-down investments, in which we offer legislative and financial support to large corporates. These innovations do not take place in large corporates. They are found in the jua kali industry, with hustlers. If we empower the youth through the bottom-up economic model, we would be far. Go down to the Maasai with the knowledge of herbs and invest in them and protect them through legislation so they can patent their innovations, and we will grow our economy. We also need to invest in labour-intensive undertakings. You invest in the jua kali artisan who makes"
}