The Military and Kenya’s Big Four Agenda: The Case Of Infrastructure

The Big Four Agenda are Kenya’s President, Uhuru Kenyatta, development agenda from 2018 to 2022 focused on raising the standard of living of Kenyans and promoting a strong, inclusive, economic growth in line with Vision 2030 of Kenya. This paper studied the Role of the Kenya Military in the Achievement of Kenya’s Big Four Agenda with a primary focus on enhancing infrastructure. The primary purpose of any military is National Defence. A State’s military in the past was charged with the responsibility of protecting the State from external aggression and in most cases, it was against other states. Globalization has brought about new dimensions of threats, mainly considered Human Centric threats to security that requires a paradigm shift in the way they are handled. This means that the military is presently tasked to engage in activities that are considered a deviation from the traditional roles that it was accustomed to. In this study, an analysis of opportunities for Kenya Military to participate in economic development, assessment of the role that Kenya Military has played in the past in enhancing infrastructural development and identification of opportunities, in particular infrastructure development, that are there in Kenya and would largely enable the realization of Kenya’s Big Four Agenda. It was established that the military possesses considerable capability for rapid response and may therefore be called upon to assist in the event of disaster response. Following this study, it is recommended that that the government should engage the military more by increasing the mandate of KDF to encompass infrastructure development.