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{
    "id": 788993,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/788993/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 247,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. (Ms.) Odhiambo-Mabona",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 376,
        "legal_name": "Millie Grace Akoth Odhiambo Mabona",
        "slug": "millie-odhiambo-mabona"
    },
    "content": "what our competitive niche is. If we have oil, we must look at it and see how it benefits us as a country. We need to identify five or six areas where we will put all our energies into. This is what I would call the hardware of development. For instance, the current Government is focusing on four areas but we must look within that context of four areas and find out what our competitive niche is. Is it tourism, fisheries or oil? Wherever it is, we must put in all our energy and attention. However, going by my background of human rights, whatever competitive angle we take, we should always remember that we must apply a human rights angle to our work. That is why I am happy that this Bill has focused on local content which has been defined to mean the added value brought to the Kenyan economy from petroleum-related activities through systematic development of national capacity, capabilities, investment in developing and procuring locally available work-force services and supplies for the sharing of accruing benefits. There is an Hon. Member who gave the example of Nigeria. One of the reasons wars have been fought in countries is the lack of focus on the benefits that accrue to communities, whether it is on the issue of gold, oil or plant genetic resources. If we do not focus on what benefits accrue to local communities, then like Nigeria, we will be starting on the wrong foot. I am very happy that this Bill focuses very seriously on the issue of local content. One of the things that I have not seen very strongly in this Bill is how we translate that to the issue of gender mainstreaming. Somebody asked me how come I always see the issue of women in every Bill. If we do not input it, people will never see it and it is never effected through the value chain. There is a project I once engaged in with various Government ministries where we were mainstreaming gender in the roads sector and in sectors where hitherto, people have never looked at the issue of gender mainstreaming. I remember some of the engineers asked me where women are in the roads sector. When we analysed the road sector, we discovered that because it is a very masculine sector, women do not appear anywhere in the value chain. It is the same case when we talk about oil exploration. You may find a very small number of women in this sector. The Government must take deliberative and proactive action to ensure that we include women in the value chain. We will do this first, by ensuring that we encourage our women to be more involved in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), or subjects that will ensure that they get into this sector. Secondly, we will do this by ensuring that we protect our girls because in the recent past, we have seen very many alarming cases of girls who have dropped out of school because of abuse. Local content needs to be expanded and gendered so that when looking at a community, we unpackage it and see what benefits accrue to men, women, children, persons with disability and communities as a whole. With those few remarks, I wish to support this Bill."
}