Friends of Eliud Owalo Launch Kisumu Chapter Campaign Team

Kenya, 28 January 2026 - The launch of the Friends of Eliud Owalo – Professionals Kisumu Chapter may appear like just another political mobilisation, but beneath the polite speeches and professional branding lay a carefully calibrated political signal: a bold attempt to recast Kisumu’s politics from grievance to economics — and to position former Cabinet Secretary Eliud Owalo as the face of that shift.

Meeting at the Public Service Club in Kisumu, Owalo’s allies framed their rallying call not around protest or historical marginalisation, but around what they described as Kisumu’s “economic paradox” — a county rich in land, water, human capital and strategic location, yet persistently poor.

To them, this contradiction is not accidental; it is structural, political and, increasingly, intolerable.

Led by Dr Edwin Gor, the professionals argued that Kisumu’s challenge is not lack of endowment but a systematic failure to convert advantage into shared prosperity. They pointed to hard numbers to back their case: the county spans about 208,590 hectares, with roughly 134,200 hectares suitable for agriculture, yet nearly half remains underutilised.

Agriculture contributes an estimated 54% of the local GDP, but poverty levels remain stubbornly high, with a Human Development Index of about 0.52 — evidence, they said, that value is being generated but leaking out of the local economy.

That leakage, they argued, occurs along broken value chains, where producers remain trapped at the lowest end while profits migrate elsewhere. In their telling, Kisumu’s economy is not failing to produce wealth; it is failing to retain it.

The sugar belt emerged as a powerful symbol of this dysfunction. Muhoroni, Chemelil and Miwani — once economic anchors — are today synonymous with unstable milling, delayed farmer payments, weak bargaining power and rising production costs.

What should be a thriving agro-industrial corridor has instead become a cautionary tale of policy neglect and institutional decay. For Owalo’s backers, reviving these factories is not just an economic necessity but a political statement about restoring dignity to producers.

Recurrent flooding was also cited as a self-inflicted wound, destroying homes, farms and infrastructure year after year. The professionals argued that the problem persists not because solutions are unknown, but because political will has been absent.

It is within this diagnosis that Owalo’s so-called “third liberation” narrative takes shape. Unlike the first liberation, which targeted colonial rule, or the second, which focused on multiparty democracy, the third liberation, according to his allies, is economic — freeing regions like Kisumu from extractive systems that generate value without improving lives.