Prof. Romanus Odhiambo, the DVC (AA) JKUAT, has urged public administrators to embrace strategic thinking and visionary leadership in order to enable the country achieve vision 2030.
Addressing over 80 top level government administrators at JKUAT, the scholar challenged the public officers to adopt an open door policy to enhance participatory realization of government goals and objectives. The administrators drawn from the provincial administration, Office of the Prime Minister, police force, Local Authorities among others, were at JKUAT on a day long familiarization tour.
He told the civil servants to tap from the many JKUAT research advances in terms of new technologies to foster the country’s industrialization agenda.
Prof. Odhiambo equally challenged the government to partner with research institutions like JKUAT in provision of services like targeted training to the public officers. He singled out the numerous academic programmes offered by the institution that respond to the current market needs.
To achieve effective public service delivery, Prof. Odhiambo emphasized the need to embrace performance contracting concept, saying JKUAT had registered monumental progress in last three years through the practice.
“In the last three years alone, JKUAT has posted exponential growth in student enrolment that now stands at 25, 000 up from slightly less than 10, 000. The institution has equally registered an increase in the number of programmes in anticipation and response to the needs of the economy including petroleum engineering”, he said.
JKUAT has continually lived up to its vision of being a global university. The institution was the only one in the entire Eastern Africa region selected to host one of the three institutes of the Pan African University. According to Prof. Odhiambo, JKUAT is set to open more campuses in the East African region.