Devolution can be better in Kenya

Turf wars have been erupting between Governors and Senators over the management of County funds and in some cases, County Governors have failed to honour summons to appear before various agencies undertaking audit and accountability for use of such funds. The issue of disbursements to Counties, the handing over of devolved functions and the joint implementation of joint projects are some of the issues that were discussed during the eleventh National and County Governments Co-ordinating Summit held on Monday, 16^th December 2024. This comes after the 8^th devolution conference held in Eldoret, Uasin Gishu County in 2023, under the theme “10 years of devolution: The present and the future” and under a sub-theme “driving transformation from the local level: county Governments as the centre of economic development”. It is through counties as the new frontiers of socio-economic development that Kenya can achieve the upper middle-income status envisaged under the Kenya Vision 2030. One of the challenges that counties have persistently faced is the low rate of collection of the Own Source Revenue (OSR). It has been documented that the aannual OSR targets were largely not met in the first five years of devolution. In the financial year 2013/14, the 47 counties achieved 48.5 percent of their own source revenue targets, which increased to 67.2 percent in the 2014/15 and to 69.3 percent in the 2015/16 financial year. In order for devolution to work, Counties need to do more to make devolution work by increasing their OSR so that they can fund additional programmes and projects, like the social infrastructure, to meet the immense needs of the people, and hence gain more trust and support from stakeholders.

Counties should support the achievement of the ten percent annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as envisaged under Kenya Vision 2030 by developing effective mechanisms for OSR and using the same for impactful social infrastructure programmes and projects. Counties should explore legal and institutional ways for increasing OSR collections as well as developing alternative ways of funding their budgets including floating infrastructure and Diaspora bonds. Secondly, counties should leverage on their huge chunks of land to structure win-win and effective Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) to attract capital, innovation, managerial expertise, efficiency and technology in infrastructure and service delivery. Section 33 of the Urban Areas and Cities Act, 2011, section 6(3) of the County Governments Act, 2012 provides for use of PPPs in delivery of goods and services across Counties for example and within urban areas. Thirdly, Counties must make the eight Regional Economic Blocs to work as an effective way of aggregating delivery of goods and services because of economies of scale and adequate population. Dr. Giti is an urban management, public – private partnerships (PPP) and environment specialist. mutegigiti@gmail.com , @danielgiti