Devolution was sold to Kenyans as a revolution; a system that would bring resources, power, and decision-making closer to the people. But twelve years later, the dream feels hijacked. The promise of local empowerment has been replaced by a familiar question: where did the money go?
For the 2025/26 financial year, the national government allocated KSh 415 billion as the equitable share to counties…a record high. Yet, this represents only about 20% of Kenya’s KSh 4.2 trillion national budget. The remaining 80% remains in the hands of the national government, where wastage, inflated contracts, and unmonitored spending continue to thrive behind bureaucratic walls.
Despite billions trickling down each year, dispensaries still lack basic supplies, schools still leak, and youth still roam the streets jobless. In Kisumu, a recent Auditor-General’s report flagged over KSh 1.3 billion in unsupported expenditures for 2023/24. In Kakamega, ghost road projects swallowed hundreds of millions. Turkana, Garissa, and Nakuru have all recorded massive pending bills for incomplete works.
County governments were supposed to bridge the gap between the citizen and the state. Instead, they have too often become microcosms of national corruption: small republics of mismanagement. Leaders spend millions on retreats, entertainment, and benchmarking tours, while hospitals hold harambees to buy gloves. A 2024 Senate Committee review showed that an average of 27% of county budgets goes to recurrent expenditure unrelated to service delivery.
The tragedy is not that Kenya lacks money. It’s that we lack morals in management. How do governors justify million-shilling launch events while maternity wards run out of gauze? How do MCAs demand sitting allowances while boreholes lie broken?
Even the Auditor-General’s office admits that implementation of recommendations remains dismal. Most counties fail to recover stolen funds or sanction implicated officers. Reports gather dust; impunity gathers momentum.
Meanwhile, the National Treasury insists that counties must “tighten their belts,” even as national ministries overspend through opaque procurement and inflated projects. The 2025 Budget Policy Statement showed over KSh 220 billion in pending bills nationally — a number that continues to rise as oversight weakens.
Devolution was meant to heal inequality. Instead, corruption has become its cancer. It has robbed counties of dignity and citizens of faith. Development is no longer about impact, it’s about optics. Governors cut ribbons for projects that don’t work, and citizens clap because they’ve learned not to expect better.
If democracy means representation, then fiscal justice must be its foundation. Kenya cannot claim inclusion when 47 counties share barely a fifth of the nation’s wealth, and even that fraction is drained by greed.
Devolution without integrity is not devolution at all…it is the distribution of corruption.
Until accountability becomes louder than applause, Kenya will keep funding promises that never arrive home.
