Nairobi, June 17 -- Kenya does not suffer from a shortage of industrial policies. Over the past two decades, successive governments have launched ambitious programmes to transform the country into a manufacturing and export-oriented economy.

Vision 2030, the Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda, Special Economic Zones, County Aggregation and Industrial Parks, and export promotion initiatives all reflect a clear commitment to industrialisation.

Yet manufacturing's contribution to GDP has remained largely stagnant. This raises an important question: Is Kenya's industrialisation challenge really about policy, or is it increasingly about governance?

Much of the debate focuses on what government should do. Far less attention is paid to ...