Faith-based Organisations for Sustainable Empowerment in Kenya’s Journey towards Sustainable Development

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19627338

Togom Kipkoech Collins and Eric Blanco Niyitunga (Institute of Policy and Development Studies, Daystar University, Kenya)

Kenya’s quest for sustainable growth, in line with Vision 2030, has faced obstacles due to the lack of lasting empowerment, which is vital to foster inclusivity, tackle gender disparity, and advance gender equality, while also enabling the delivery of sustainable services. While in other countries, sustainable empowerment might have led to sustainable development, in Kenya, it is not the same business. Unfortunately, in Kenya, government and market players have been key to development discussions, while Faith-Based Organizations remain overlooked. This failure has hindered the achievement of sustainable development. Faith-Based Organizations promote basic needs such as education, health, social justice, and livelihoods. The paper found that Faith-Based Organizations are vital instruments for sustainable empowerment that lead to sustainable development. They were found to lead to sustainable socio-economic development, deliver sustainable basic services that would enable Kenya to realise its Vision 2030, thus achieving sustainable development. Findings further indicated that Faith-Based Organizations encourage inclusivity, build social capital, and support sustainable livelihoods, on which the possibility of achieving sustainable development depends. However, the paper found that in countries where there is fragile governance, Faith-Based Organizations can lead to a dependency attitude and behavior, politicization, which can make resources and services to the people unavailable. The paper concludes that FBOs are essential for Kenya’s sustainable development, provided their programs align with national plans and prioritize ethical leadership and transparency. To achieve the above findings, the paper adopted a qualitative research methodology with a narrative review approach that relied on the use of secondary data that was collected from available literature published in the public domain.