African Center for Legislative Research & Policy

Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises are at the heart of not just the Kenyan economy, they are major drivers of solutions to development challenges globally.

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) represent about 98% of all businesses, and more than 80% of Kenya’s working population relies on them for income. SMEs are important actors in the transition of and quality of economic growth and sustainable transformation.

There are many institutions charged with the mandate of overseeing governance within the public and private sector. Legislatures are key among them, and they perform unique roles and responsibilities of representing the people, legislation, policy, and regulatory oversight among others. Legislatures have a unique obligation of advancing democratic values and principles while at the same time deepening the practical linkages with other public governance agencies, civil society, think tanks, foundations, and the academia on constitutionalism. Local, national, and regional legislatures are uniquely mandated to create a direct nexus between democracy and development thus elevating the quality of social and economic progress, transformation, and sustainability in human development. While democracy on its own cannot guarantee development, its deepening and consolidation creates safe spaces for elevating citizen engagement, effective participation, and ownership.

There are emergent opportunities for supporting local, national, and regional legislatures to resolve and address important issues that choke and hinder them from effectively and efficiently executing their mandates. Some of the leading challenges that require deep thinking and original ideation in modelling problem driven iterative solutions include institutional culture, structural problems, liaison and visibility of parliamentary work, outreach programming, audit and accountability systems verses legitimate public obligations and expectations, knowledge management, information management systems, research and documentation including technical support to committees and diverse capacity and capabilities development for high-performance leadership, impact oriented legislation, effective policy oversight, implementation, and effective budget making/approval among others.

Our Focus Areas

  • High-performance leadership and sustainability
  • Legislative research and policy analysis
  • Liaison and outreach programming
  • Technical capacity and capabilities development
  • Enhancing policy coherence and legislative impact analysis

  • Organizational culture and performance excellence
  • Institutional capabilities support for deepening democratic values and principles of governance
  • Supporting legislative performance through technical committees’ engagement.
  • Enhancing public knowledge, partnerships, liaison, and communication of legislatures

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