Nairobi, Aug. 18 -- As Kenya begins the national conversation on what should come beyond Vision 2030, the fundamental question to guide us is: what resources do we own today that can transform Kenya into the country we aspire to be?

History offers good lessons. Successful economies identified strategic advantages and organised around converting them into productivity. Singapore for example had almost no natural resource base and only about 728 km² of land, so it leveraged its location, port, trade, manufacturing and human capital.

China's transformation began, in part, with agricultural reforms after 1978, raising rural productivity and incomes while releasing labour for industrialisation. Vietnam similarly used farming to move fro...