NAIROBI, Kenya, Jun 28 — Azimio la Umoja presidential candidate Raila Odinga has promised to fund development in county-level administrative units through what he now calls “bottom-up development.”
Odinga, a fierce critic of Deputy President William Ruto’s bottom-up economic model upon which his presidential campaign is anchored, made reference to the approach during a campaign meeting in Garissa on Monday.
“We will have a Ward Fund which is what I call bottom-up so that we have development at the grassroots,” the ODM leader said while drumming up support for his bid ahead of the August 9 presidential election.
Odinga’s campaign has been at the forefront dismissing Ruto’s clarion call for a bottom-up approach to reverse economic inequality which he has blamed to the prevailing top-down approach.
Ruto has also been advancing a middle-out approach which his team of economists led by David Ndii says will enhancing the middle class’ buying power to support job creation.
“The bottom-up, middle-out model has the power to turn millions of Kenyans at the base of the wealth pyramid into active and meaningful participants in the economy,” Ruto said in August 2021 amid sustained public debate on the bottom-up model.
Odinga’s men had at the time dismissed the model with some ridiculing the proposal.
“Lakini hii maneno ya bottoms up economy… Labda Peter Kenneth ungetafsiri… What is it is swahili?… (****) juu?” Raphael Tuju, Secretary General of the ruling Jubilee Party at the time, and presently Head of the Odinga Campaign Secretariat, posed during a forum in Gatanga, Murang’a County, in July 2021.
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