After college I used to help a buddy at cyber cafe. I used to see these local pastors dressed in high waist trousers with sharp shooters shoes with a tie and an over size coats writting emails to wazungu lying to them about an orphanage they have and they need money to run it.they would google desperate pics of hungry children and now how healthy they were. In real sense there was no orphanage .then they would head to western union or money gram to collect the donation, some were even lucky to be sent cars from abroad . I felt bad for them though.
Back to your point,it's true .manufacturing can thrive in Kenya well since we have abadunt labor force.i had this crazy idea. If the govt is genuine about employment why not give one year tax free incentive to any manufacturing company coming to Kenya hoping to employ over 300 employes .then if they keep hiring youth the tax will be proportionate to the number of employees hired yaani the more you hire the more you get tax breaks ,but the sad this is that manufacturing industries are highly taxed and that's why some manufacturing companies had to close down Eg unilever, nestle and others, it's cheaper to import in kenya than to manufacture here .by giving these industries tax breaks ,youths will be hired hence less crime, opening more industries means more taxes for government hence balanced budget,then overall we will be exporting more than importing .
On a sad point I felt bad when Donald trump said Kenya is a net importing country till we import simple thing like matchsticks. I hope someone in kra or parliament can read what wazuans feel about their country and change not kukula tu then shafting to begin.

So before we embark on manufacturing lets do something on that tax code

In theory, yes. But try manufacturing in Kenya utalia

In Kenya the govt thinks short term, 5 year cycles. How do you end up with universities in every nook and cranny but our engineers can't build a road or rail 50yrs after indipendence. KRA is given targets which they have to meet, if they start proposing tax breaks (which would yield results 3-5 yrs down the line), they are summoned to treasury. Devolution is give 50plus billion to dish money to youths, rather than investing this money in tourism, which would lead to sustainable employment for the same youths in hospitality industry.