One-stop-shop for service providers set up at Tatu City
Mathew Ndung’u and Oliver Musembi
A one-stop-shop facility intended to coordinate the activities of various government entities and private service providers will start operating in January 2022, making it easy for both local and foreign investors to do business.
The shop at Tatu City in Ruiru, Kiambu county, will facilitate operation of Special Economic Zone Authority’s (SEZA) activities which include application of permits, approvals, and licenses for ease of doing business with the government.
Speaking during a board of directors of the Special Economic Zones Authority visit of the 5,000-acre new city, SEZA’s acting chief executive Dr Meshack Kimeu commended Tatu City as the country’s first operational SEZ, responsible for catalyzing more than Sh130 billion of local, regional and international investment in Kenya.
“As a result, one-stop shops are critical to the main value an SEZ offers from a public policy perspective – they are opportunities for innovation in governance,” said Kimeu.
He stated that the facility will be a benchmark for business-centric government services and another driver of Kenya’s rapid rise in facilitating quicker service provision rankings globally.
On his side, Stephen Jennings, Founder and CEO of Rendeavour, Tatu City’s owner and developer, noted that the facility will remove barriers in the Kenyan business environment by developing innovations in regulatory administration that make it much easier to start and operate a business.
“We anticipate that Tatu City SEZ’s pioneering one-stop shop will catalyze improvements to the ease of doing business throughout the country,” he stated.
Tatu City SEZ is currently home to more than 60 businesses, thousands of homes and two schools – Crawford International and Nova Pioneer – which educate more than 3,000 students daily.
The private sector SEZ pioneer in Kenya, Tatu City recently partnered with Konza Technopolis, a public SEZ, to establish the Association of Special Economic Zones of Kenya, which aims to further economic zone development and operationalisation.
