Nairobi, 5 November 2019—About 100 planners drawn from Kenya’s 47 counties will benefit from a Geographical Information Systems (GIS) capacity building training organized by UN-Habitat and UNDP with funding from UKAid and the Department for International Development (DfID). The GIS Certificate Training will be held between 18 Nov to 6 Dec 2019 at the African Institute for Capacity Development (AICAD) located inside the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology.
The aim of the Training is to improve the capacities of County planners in the preparation of GIS-based Physical, Landuse, Spatial & Integrated Strategic Urban Development Plans building on the recommendations of the GIS Needs Assessment in Kenya Report prepared by UNDP in 2017, as well as previous training activities conducted by UN-Habitat and partners since 2015.
The training that seeks to demonstrate the UN Delivering as One (DaO approach) in Kenya, will see each sub-national government nominate two trainees to the fully-funded course to be facilitated by a multi-stakeholder technical team comprising experts from the academia and government ministries.
UN-Habitat and UNDP held a preparatory meeting on Friday 1st November 2019 with the Council of Governors of Kenya, County Executives responsible for Land, Physical Planning & Urban Development as well as representatives of the National government, ahead of the training.
Mr. Bill Momanyi, the Vice Chair of the County Executive’s Caucus stated that Counties welcome the training on GIS for technical staff since the training will address the skills gap currently existing in counties” adding that “counties are at various stages of establishing GIS Laboratories but the human resource capacity was low”
The CEO of the Council of Governors Jacqueline Mogeni, in a statement read on her behalf by Ms. Eva Sawe, committed to support the training activity.
“Under the Kenyan law, it is a requirement that spatial plans must be GIS-based. UN-Habitat will tailor the training to suit the current needs of technical staff in counties and to enable them prepare GIS-based plans for effective service delivery”, said UN-Habitat National Officer Jeremiah Ougo.
UNDP’s Geoffrey Omedo stated that “UNDP, with funding from DFID, is keen to enhance GIS skills capacity in counties as a way to promoting climate resilience and poverty reduction”.
The Training is organized into two (2) distinct but interrelated modules of Theory and Practice with the first module focusing on the Nexus Between Policy, Planning and GIS while the second module focusing on GIS Application in Planning
It is expected that at the end of the training, technical officers in the counties will be equipped with skills to prepare GIS-based spatial plans for sustainable growth and development.