We Are Failing Devolution, Not the Other Way Around

By S.K. Waweru

They chose to move power — and the resources that come with it — closer to the people. They chose devolution across the board: health, education, agriculture, early childhood development, trade, local roads, and more.

Fourteen years later, the frustration with that choice is real, and it is loud. County hospitals without medicine.

Agricultural extension officers who exist on paper but not in the field. Early childhood development centres that are understaffed or locked.

Roads that were devolved but never properly resourced. Markets that county governments were supposed to develop but haven't.

These failures are genuine. I am not here to dismiss them. But I want to make a distinction that I believe is critical — not just for this debate, but for the future of Kenya's governance.

There is a difference between devolution failing and us failing devolution. And the evidence, across every sector, points firmly to the latter.

"You cannot hand someone a constitutional mandate, deny them the tools to execute it, and then declare them a failure."

Counties Were Set Up to Fail

In 2013, when Kenya transferred functions to county governments, something important happened — and something equally important did not happen.

What happened: 47 county governments suddenly found themselves responsible for primary healthcare, early childhood education, agriculture, county roads, local trade and a host of other functions that had previously been managed — however imperfectly — from Nairobi.

What did not happen: the full transfer of the resources, the staff, the infrastructure and the institutional support needed to deliver those functions.

Health facilities were handed over without adequate drug supply chains. Agricultural departments were transferred without the extension officers to run them.

Early childhood centres were devolved without a proper framework for staffing or curriculum. County roads were assigned without maintenance budgets proportional to the task.

This was not devolution working as intended. This was a transition that was planned as if it were a simple handover — when in reality it was one of the most complex governance transformations in Kenya's history. The counties did not fail devolution. The transition failed the counties.

"The counties did not fail devolution. The transition failed the counties."

The Money Has Never Been Right

Kenya's Constitution entitles county governments to not less than 15 per cent of nationally raised revenue.

That floor has technically been met in most years. But meeting the technical floor and actually financing the mandate are two entirely different things.

Consider what counties are expected to do with that money. Primary healthcare across 47 counties. Agriculture and food security programmes.

Early childhood education. County roads and infrastructure. Local economic development. Environmental management. And more.

The gap between what counties are funded to do and what they are constitutionally mandated to do is not a small administrative discrepancy. It is a structural underfunding that has compounded year after year since 2013.

The result is predictable. A county health facility that cannot buy drugs. An agricultural department that cannot fuel its vehicles to reach farmers.

A county road that is graded once and then left to deteriorate because there is no maintenance budget. These are not symptoms of devolution failure. They are symptoms of devolution being starved.

"Meeting the constitutional floor and actually financing the mandate are two entirely different things."

The Critics Are Asking the Wrong Question

The loudest voices in this debate are asking whether devolution has worked. That is the wrong question. The right question is whether we have given devolution a genuine chance to work.

Before 2010, Kenya's health facilities were managed from Nairobi. Were they better? Before devolution, agricultural extension services were a national government function. Were farmers better served? Before devolution, early childhood education was largely left to harambees and individual communities. Were children better prepared for school?

The honest answer to all of these questions is no. The problems that critics now attribute to devolution — patronage hiring, mismanaged funds, uneven service delivery — existed long before devolution.

What devolution did was make these problems more visible and more directly attributable to identifiable leaders. That is not a failure of devolution. That is devolution doing exactly what it was designed to do: bringing accountability closer to the people.

The difference is that today, when a county hospital runs out of medicine, you know who to call. You know who the Governor is. You know who your Member of the County Assembly is. You can show up at a public participation forum and demand answers.

Under the old centralised system, accountability for a broken dispensary in Turkana or a failed agricultural programme in Kwale was essentially impossible to locate. It disappeared into a national ministry and was never seen again.

What Fixing Devolution Actually Requires

The answer to imperfect devolution is not recentralisation. It is accountability. It is resourcing. It is the full deployment of the constitutional architecture that Kenyans voted for but have never fully seen in action.

The Senate — established under Article 96 specifically to protect county governments and oversee how national revenue flows to them — must become the institution the Constitution intended. Not a ceremonial upper chamber. Not a retirement home for senior politicians.

A genuine oversight body that demands health delivery reports, scrutinises equitable share allocations, and holds both national and county governments to account.

Parliament must fund counties at the level their mandate demands — not the constitutional minimum, but the constitutional spirit.

County governments themselves must be held to the accountability standards that their own residents have the constitutional right to demand.

Public participation is not a bureaucratic checkbox. It is a constitutional right. County assembly scrutiny is not optional. It is the mechanism through which ordinary citizens hold their governors to account. These tools exist. We have barely used them.

Devolution is not broken. Across health, education, agriculture, roads and trade — the promise of devolution is still largely unrealised.

Not because the idea was wrong. Because we have not yet had the courage, the commitment or the political will to do it properly.

The question Kenyans must now demand an answer to is not whether to keep devolution. That was answered on August 4, 2010. The question is whether we are finally ready to make it work.

S.K. Waweru is an advocate of the High Court of Kenya, Managing Partner of Kamuti Waweru & Co. Advocates LLP, and founder of New Thinking — a platform for opinion and analysis on law, governance and public affairs in Kenya.