Written By Vanessa Kariuki ||
Ababu Namwamba, the CS for Youth Affairs, the Arts, and Sports, officiated the KCB Group East Africa Golf Tournament’s opening, featuring competitors from five East African nations over 12 counties.
The CS commended the KCB Group for its dedication to assisting Kenya’s athletic community and noted that this assistance had enabled Kenya join the ranks of sporting superpowers.
“I wish to commend KCB for their pivotal role as a crucial sports partner in this country. The ministry recognises your invaluable input in the sports ecosystem, which has directly caused a positive impact on the livelihoods of many sportsmen and women,” said the CS.
Namwamba noted that the competition was a good fit for the Ministry’s flagship #TalantaHela program, which aims to capitalize on talents and put money in the pockets of Kenyan athletes.
“This tournament which will also see the youth and the ladies take part in clearly fits into our Talanta Hela initiative, where we are about identifying and nurturing talents with a view to monetizing the sector and ensuring that our sportsmen and women live well earning from their talent, all while doing what they love,” said Namwamba.
He added, “The tournament dovetails into our Sports Safari agenda, which seeks to leverage sports to brand Kenya as a top tourist destination and is in line with the government’s Bottom-up Economic Transformation Agenda (BETA) which seeks to build our economy from the Bottom.”
The CS commended KCB for including environmental protection in the competition through the Linda Miti program, which would see the Bank plant over 1 million trees to assist the government’s 15 billion trees in ten years objective.
“The Linda Miti initiative will ensure that through sports, KCB contributes towards protecting our environment and making our world greener and safer for all of us,” he said.
In turn, the CEO’s representative, KCB Group HR Director Mr. Japhet Achola, told the CS that the bank was ready to work with the ministry to assist Kenya’s numerous sporting programs and guarantee that the nation’s athletic environment was advanced to the next level.
“Sporting is a huge part of our brand promise. As a bank, we are keen to explore more areas of collaboration and partnership with the ministry so that we can continue to positively transform livelihoods of Kenyans in line with our brand purpose, for people for better,” he said.
“To the Ministry, I want to assure you that you can count on us for unwavering support. We want to put Kenya on the regional and international stage as one of the golf sport destinations in Africa,” he added.
