KEPSA held a consultative meeting with the Council of Governors’ (COG) management on 17^th March 2022 at the COG offices in Nairobi. The meeting discussed areas of partnership and complementarities between the private sector and county governments.

Present during the meeting included KEPSA Deputy CEO Mr. Victor Ogalo, COG CEO Ms. Mary Mwiti, COG Director in Charge of Committees Mr. Kizito Wangalwa, COG SDGs Officer Mr. Ken Oluoch and KEPSA Devolution Sector Board Lead Mr. Benjamin Musungu.

The engagement was in compliance with the results and implementation framework of the KEPSA Devolution Sector Board meeting held on December 2021, which agreed on the need for KEPSA to entrench structured Public-Private Dialogue (PPD) mechanisms and partnerships with counties, in order to enhance ease of doing business and competitiveness. The objective of the meeting was to discuss the areas of organizational congruence between KEPSA and COG as well as entrench partnerships through the newly developed Private Sector Devolution Support Program (PSDSP).

In his remarks, Mr. Ogalo reiterated the need for KEPSA and COG to entrench PPD mechanisms through the proposed Private Sector Devolution Support Program, to be jointly co-created between COG and KEPSA.

In her response, Ms. Mwiti affirmed the commitment and willingness of COG to engage KEPSA in a structured partnership framework and entrench PPD mechanism between COG technical committees and the respective KEPSA Sector Boards. She further stated the need to define and cement the areas of collaboration through a cooperation agreement.

As a way forward, the meeting agreed to nominate a technical committee to further enrich and finetune the PSDSP proposal, foreseen in the next two weeks. Thereafter, a cooperation agreement will be formalized detailing modalities of institutional partnership between KEPSA and COG.