Inside Ruto's delayed and unfulfilled grand promises nearly four years into his presidency

• President William Ruto promised to immediately reduce the price of a 6kg cooking gas cylinder to just Sh500. [Kipsang Joseph, Standard]

When President William Ruto campaigned for Kenya’s top job in 2022, he positioned himself as the saviour of the "hustler nation", the market women, boda boda riders, and millions of young job-seekers crushed by the high cost of living.

He promised to immediately lower maize flour prices, slash fuel taxes, and reduce a 6kg cooking gas cylinder  to just Sh500.

Nearly four years into his presidency, those pledges remain largely unfulfilled a review by The Standard shows.

Instead, the latest official data shows Kenyans are significantly poorer, with basic goods costing far more than when he took office.

The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) July 2026 Consumer Price Index report reveals that annual inflation accelerated to 6.5 per cent, up from 6.4 per cent in June. The overall index climbed from 154.91 to 155.20, meaning the general price level is now substantially higher than it was four years ago. For ordinary families, this translates into starkly diminished purchasing power.

Food and non-alcoholic beverages, which account for nearly a third of household expenditure, recorded an annual inflation rate of 9.0 per cent in July, up from 8.6 per cent the previous month. Transport costs surged 15.6 per cent year-on-year, while housing, water, electricity, gas, and other fuels rose 3.2 per cent. Together, these three divisions account for over 57 per cent of total household spending, ensuring that every price spike hits Kenyan families where they can least afford it.

A kilogramme of sukuma wiki (kale), a staple in most Kenyan households, now costs Sh116, a 26.8 per cent jump from Sh92 a year earlier. Tomatoes have soared 33.7 per cent year-on-year to Sh113 per kilogramme, up from Sh85. Beans, while easing slightly month-on-month, remain elevated. A litre of diesel in Nairobi still retails at Sh224, up a staggering 29.7 per cent from Sh173 in July 2025 despite a modest monthly decline. Petrol is up 14.7 per cent over the same period, and beef with bones has climbed 10.7 per cent to Sh770 per kilo, while sugar has risen 10.4 per cent.

The monthly data offers a mixed picture. Between June and July, tomatoes dropped 3.7 per cent, carrots fell 3.6 per cent, and sifted maize flour eased 1.6 per cent. However, these marginal reprieves were offset by sharp hikes elsewhere. Potatoes rose 2.1 per cent, mangoes increased 3.2 per cent, and electricity charges for 200kWh surged 3.1 per cent, a painful blow for households already struggling with utility bills.

Perhaps no single issue crystallises the gap between Ruto's campaign promises and his governance more than fuel prices.

During the 2022 presidential debate, Ruto declared: "I think the first thing we need to do is look at the taxes because 50 per cent of the cost of fuel is taxes. There are 15 different taxes on fuel." He vowed to remove Value Added Tax on fuel to cushion Kenyans.

Instead, in September 2022, his administration promptly abolished food subsidies introduced by his predecessor. In July 2024, it hiked the fuel levy from Sh18 to Sh25 per litre. While the government has pointed to a marginal monthly decline in diesel and petrol prices in July, pump prices remain far above the levels Ruto had promised to address.

The much-touted Government-to-Government oil deal with Saudi Aramco, ADNOC, and ENOC has failed to deliver lasting relief. Following the eruption of conflict in the Middle East, Ruto reduced VAT on fuel from 16 per cent to 8 per cent but opposed calls to scrap all taxes and levies, warning that doing so would cripple public services.

In March 2023, Ruto announced that a 6kg cooking gas cylinder would cost between Sh300 and Sh500 by June 2023. He outlined measures including a Sh2,000 subsidy per cylinder and the removal of VAT, the Railway Development Levy, and the Import Declaration Fee on LPG products. By May 2023, however, he had backtracked, admitting the target was "over-ambitious" and clarifying that the price reduction applied only to purchasing the physical cylinder, not the gas refills themselves. In July 2026, the government disclosed that the Sh4.6 billion LPG storage facility expected to lower gas costs had been delayed until 2028, pushing the dream of affordable cooking gas even further into the future.

While Ruto promised to ease the burden on ordinary Kenyans, his administration has introduced a cascade of mandatory deductions that have progressively gutted household paychecks.

The Affordable Housing Levy, now facing potential securitisation, deducts 1.5 per cent of gross monthly salary from employees, matched by a similar amount from employers. The Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF), which replaced the National Hospital Insurance Fund in October 2024, demands 2.75 per cent of gross monthly salary with no upper ceiling, a dramatic leap from NHIF's capped banded system.

The abolition of the Linda Mama programme has further impacted access to maternity services despite its replacement by the Linda Jamii initiative.

Meanwhile, National Social Security Fund (NSSF) contributions have ballooned to a maximum of Sh6,480 per month for high earners, up from as little as Sh200 under the old regime. For millions of salaried employees, the combined weight of these deductions, housing levy, SHIF, and NSSF, has left them with severely diminished spending power.

Many now find themselves at the mercy of exploitative shylocks and digital loan platforms simply to survive the month.

The KNBS data also reveals a telling divergence between core and non-core inflation.

Core inflation, which excludes volatile items such as fresh food and fuel, stood at a relatively modest 3.2 per cent in July. However, non-core inflation, which tracks the essentials that households cannot avoid, remained a punishing 15.0 per cent.

This disparity underscores the acute pressure on basic necessities. Food alone contributed 2.6 percentage points to the headline inflation figure, while transport added another 1.5 percentage points. Together, these two categories accounted for 4.1 percentage points, or 63 per cent, of the total 6.5 per cent inflation rate.

Ruto has repeatedly described the affordable housing programme as a major policy triumph. Yet by March 2026, government figures showed only 8,367 units completed since September 2022.

This represents a fraction of the stated annual demand of 200,000 units and falls far short of the ambitious target of 500,000 units by December 2027.

While officials claim 320,000 units are at various stages of construction, the gap between rhetoric and reality remains vast.

On infrastructure, among the promises Ruto made in his 2022 campaign manifesto were the construction of 100 large dams and 1,000 small dams, alongside expanding irrigation from 670,000 to 3 million acres.

In October 2022, he reiterated the commitment to build at least 100 dams. In April 2023, during the ground-breaking for the Sh18 billion Mwache Dam, he pledged 100 large dams and 1,000 small ones.

Nearly four years later, these ambitious targets remain conspicuously unmet. In July 2025, Water Cabinet Secretary Eric Mugaa admitted before the Senate that not a single large-scale dam had been completed.

The Mwache Dam, set for completion in August 2026, was only 47 per cent complete a month earlier. Mugaa cited limited financial resources and a lack of private-sector interest, noting that "water tariffs are not cost-recovery, which has made the sector not attractive to investors".

In November 2021, Ruto promised to slash Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) interest rates to zero per cent, increase loan allocation amounts, and extend repayment grace periods to five years.

None of these pledges have materialised. Instead, his administration has been forced to review the higher education funding model after the Variable Scholarship and Loan Funding system, which determined aid based on family economic status, met widespread opposition and confusion.

On employment, the picture is equally grim. Youth aged 15 to 34 make up roughly 35 per cent of Kenya's population yet face an unemployment rate hovering near 67 per cent, five times the national average.

Over one million young Kenyans enter the labour market every year, but the economy formally absorbs only about 300,000.

A 2026 African Youth Survey found Kenya ranked last in confidence regarding both the economy and future employment prospects among people aged 18 to 24.

Recently, Ruto announced plans to initiate a national conversation on Kenya's development trajectory dubbed "Beyond Vision 2030."

Kenyans took to social media platform X to cynically audit his public promises since 2022.

One widely shared clip showed Ruto pledging in 2019 that Kibera would no longer be a slum. In October 2023, he repeated the promise, declaring that within a decade, Kibera would be transformed into a well-developed estate.

Many noted that most of his grand promises remain unfulfilled barely a year before the next presidential election.

The President has also proposed raising the minimum taxable income from Sh24,000 to Sh30,000, a measure he says would exempt 1.5 million workers from PAYE.

However, the 2026/27 budget presented by Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi left this exemption out, prompting a parliamentary push to legislate it independently.

For the mama mbogas and boda boda riders who formed Ruto's political base, the reality nearly four years into his presidency is one of persistent struggle.

The "hustler" narrative that carried him to State House has given way to a quiet but growing anger over broken promises, rising taxes, and an economy that continues to squeeze the very people he vowed to uplift.

As one viral social media post put it: “the man who promised to lower prices has presided over an avalanche of new levies and stagnant wages leaving Kenyans demonstrably poorer and more frustrated than they were in 2022.”