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The Nairobian

Industry boss: Local manufacturing has huge potential to boost economic growth

Enterprise

By Sofia Ali | Feb 12, 2025

Honda vice president Masanori Shimazoe tests the recently released Honda Ace 150 with Honda Kenya chairman Dr. Kalua Green when they visited Kenya's Honda assembling and manufacturing plant. Mr. Shimazoe has lauded Kenya's efforts in enhancing local manufacturing, but insisted on the need to fully embrace environment friendly approaches to reduce emissions.

The government has been challenged to support local manufacturers more to spur growth and increase job opportunities.

This as a call is made for the government and the private sector to expeditiously come together to offer solutions for unemployment, tapping into the strengths of each institution.

Businessman and ecopreneur Kalua Green, who is also the chairman of Honda Kenya, says there are numerous opportunities in the automotive industry, more so, motorcycles assembling, pointing out the sector as a key investment avenue to consider.

Speaking at the Honda Kenya assembly factory in Nairobi where he hosted visiting global Honda vice president Masanori Shimazoe, Kalua said so far, about one million people are benefiting from the boda boda sector, with more potential if added emphasis was placed in local manufacturing.

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“We believe, based on the research that was done by the Motorcycle Assemblers Association of Kenya, that each motorcycle supports the livelihoods of at least six people in our country,” he said. Kalua said motorcycles are now becoming a way of life and thus affect almost every sector, including agriculture which is the country’s backbone.

“We can authoritatively say we have impacted on the lives of close to a million lives this far and with support from the government, as the private sector, then we look into more investment and feeding more families.

Currently, out of the 299 parts needed to manufacture a motorcycle, Kenya is capable of doing 14 parts only. Kalua said there is need for the country to venture into such key manufacturing activities as a target of increasing the parts manufactured locally to 35 by end of 2027.

With Shimazoe, Kalua visited Megh Cushion Industries that produces local automotive parts and has employed about 500 Kenyans. Shimazoe said the Kenyan market is ripe for investment and underscored the importance of investing more in the Honda brand as it aims to become a market leader globally.

“Currently, our global market share stands at 40 per cent and we intend to raise it to 50 per cent,” said Shimazoe

With these advancements, they believe support from the government would be critical as they would also offer the much-needed trust and foundation for businesses to prosper.

Honda also committed to investing more into environment-friendly solutions in the manufacture of their motorcycles to conform to the current demands of conservation.