President Ruto to Plant 56 Trees to Mark his 56 Years Birthday

The initiative, dubbed the National Tree Growing & Restoration Campaign, will mobilize the nation to engage in growing trees across the nation which will contribute to combating the effects of climate change.

A statement from State House spokesperson Hussein Mohammed on Wednesday noted that the campaign under the hashtag #jazamiti will be targeting a planting of 15 billion trees by 2032.

"President @WilliamsRuto to launch the National Tree Growing & Restoration Campaign on his birthday; to plant 56 trees commensurate to his age, on his 56th birthday & kickstart the tree growing campaign that targets to mobilize the nation in growing 15B trees by 2032," he wrote on Twitter.

The day is a double celebration for the president who also commemorates his wedding anniversary with First Lady Rachel Ruto.

This lies on the backdrop of a commitment President Ruto made on October, 26, of planting 5 billion trees in the next ten years during a meeting with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez in State House.

"We have already taken the policy direction that we are going to plant 5 billion trees in the next five years and another 10 billion trees in the next ten years. That is going to contribute significantly to the fight against desertification and the challenges that come with climate change," he said.

Likewise, President Ruto has been lobbying citizens, including children, to embrace tree planting, urging them to plant about a hundred trees each.

“Every Kenyan, 50 million of us, must plant at least 100 trees, either in your compound, in your farm or in any other place you find...that is the surest way for us to turn around the climate so that we can have water, grow crops, do dams, agro-processing and make sure we have prosperity,” Ruto stated during the commissioning of the Ksh.8.2 billion Thiba Dam on October, 15.