PREAMBLE :
The formation of this initial association was conceived under the auspicious office of the Mombasa Senator Mohamed Faki where then I was the office deputy manager.
This was necessitated after an article in the local newspaper that highlighted a very big upcoming conference of over 5000 delegates in Nairobi on the Blue Economy was going to be held.
Together with Khalfan Mzee the Office Manager and a consultant Barua Tsuma who we had engaged from the former Mombasa Senator Hassan Sarai offices at the Renaissance Centre we started this journey.
Under this office we managed to pull in a few like minded persons such as Abdalla Secco, Daudi Hajj, Farouk Said, Senator Abu, Alawy Abzein, Gloria among others.
During this pre conference period running from March to November 2018 we were very motivated by the buzz word and frontier of the Blue Economy.
The President had spearheaded this as a National policy by making several visits to partnering countries such as Portugal Japan Canada among others.
At the local level we were saddened by the low esteem of the counties to address this new frontier and hence the KENYA COAST BLUE ECONOMY was conceived to propel the region so as to benefit with this new opportunity.
With the support of JKP under the CEO Emmanual Nzai and USAID we were able to host our first forum at the Sarova Whitesands where we were able to bring on board several stake holders to speak including Joh Msafari and Madame Nancy Murage and so became of the new kid on the block named KECOBE.
SUSTAINABLE BLUE ECONOMY 2018
Out of the support of Captain Twalib of Lamu Shipping, Silvester Kituta of Express Shipping Line and the late Mohamed Zubedi of Absons Motors we were able to gather a team of more then 20 members to attend both as delegates , speakers and exhibitionist to this first ever conference held in Kenya dubbed SBE 2018.
This event was well worth it as we converged with distinguished fellows from different countries and nationalities all like minded persons out to share, exchange and promote matters to do with the Blue Economy.
Out of this Corporate support the KECOBE group then under the Office of the Mombasa Senator was the only Senate in Kenya that had representation at the Exhibition stand that had participated in full.
We were able to come out with a lot of information journals and contacts that was suppose to be helpful in the future.
SECOND PHASE OF THE KECOBE
2018 to 2022
The next 4 years saw the building up of our forum into a formidable association with members being recruited to cover most of the Blue Economy sector mainly in the areas of:
1. Maritime Transport
2. Fisheries Investment
3. Tourism, Culture and Heritage
4. Scirnce,Research and Training
5. Oil and Gas exploration
6. Waste Management
7. Climate Change
The Covid 19 pandemic in 2020 slowed down most of the activities in the country and this was a backlash in also most of our sector groupings that gave way to a decrease in interest to this sector.
However the online option that we stood by gave us a lot of realisation on future prospective.
THIRD PHASE OF KECOBE 2022......
After dilly dallying over a long period of time this grouping realised that the need to have a legal entity to our ownership was now necessar.
Led by Sanjay Gandhi we were able to craft an idea to have this group registerd as an a association however this was later again shelved due to the political climate of the day.
After the General elections that is when we got serious again and have met on several occasions on the registration issue as well as a discussion on marking tbe 4th Anniversary of the Kenya Blue Economy and the attendance of the JKP Agribusiness Conference.
Efforts are now at high speed to register not only the CBO which is planned to be an advocacy unit as well as the Youth platform to propel the Blue Economy stories.
Our future lies in registering this unit now not as an a association as had earlier been envisioned but as an NGO with an international outreach programmes so that we can partner with countries and donors to improve on the livelihoods of the 6 coastal counties facing the Kenya Blue seas.
Our first task after our registration is to partner with the National and County Governments, institutions such as JKP, KEMFSED and others who can propel us to greater heights
Mbwana Abdalla Mohamed
Chairman: KECOBE
INDEPENDENT CRITICAL ANALYST
18th January, 2023