Sh1.5 trillion that breathed life into counties

Counties have gobbled up nearly Sh1.5 trillion in five years of devolution in what has seen significant redistribution of resources.

The national government has so far sent at least Sh1.2 trillion to the devolved units in the period, an amount equal to what the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) collects from taxpayers in an year.

The devolved units also generated an additional Sh100 billion through local taxes charged in their jurisdictions.

They have also been attracting additional allocations from the national government in form of conditional grants. Donor agencies such as Danida and other development partners such as the World Bank have also been pumping hundreds of millions every year into devolution.

In the period, donor funded projects have been valued at Sh30 billion and the level five hospitals have received in excess of Sh12.8 billion according to data from the Commission on Revenue Allocation (CRA).

Counties have also received Sh1.8 billion so far as compensation for user fees forgone, Sh7.6 billion as fuel levy funds, and emergency funds running into Sh200 million.

Together with the Sh302 billion they expect to have received at the end of this financial year, which comes to an end in two months, counties will have received cumulatively close to Sh1.5 trillion.

Though more than two thirds of the money went towards paying salaries, operations and maintenance, several counties have pumped significant resources into development expenditure, in what has started to turn around fortunes of their residents.

On average, counties have been spending about Sh100 billion on development every year, cumulatively bringing the total spend to half a trillion shillings, an amount that can build another Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) from Mombasa to Nairobi, and remain with enough change to build three Thika super highways.

By sheer of its population size and other metrics behind revenue sharing, Nairobi received the biggest chunk of the billions from the national government.

By the end of the last financial year, the county had been allocated Sh51.6 billion. It was followed by Turkana (Sh39.9 billion), Kakamega (Sh36.9 billion), Mandera (Sh34.2 billion) and Nakuru Sh33.4 billion).

Besides population and equal share, other factors considered in the revenue allocation formula are poverty levels, land area, fiscal effort and development factors of counties.

Those that received the least allocation due to their sizes and other characteristics were Lamu (Sh8.2 billion), Isiolo (Sh12 billion), Tharaka Nithi (Sh12.9 billion), Taita Taveta (Sh13 billion) and Elgeyo Marakwet (Sh13.5 billion).

But the devil in the billions has been absorption rate, which measures how much of the budgeted amount is actually utilised.

Poorest spenders

The most recent development expenditure analysis ranked Governor Alfred Mutua’s Machakos County as the top in terms of spending the money it received on development expenditure. The efficiency was so high that the county spent 99.1 per cent of its entire development budget within the set period. Wajir and Bomet counties came in second and third, respectively, with each absorbing 90 per cent and 89 per cent of their development budgets.

The poorest spenders were Taita Taveta, Nairobi and Nakuru counties who only absorbed about a third of their total development budgets, leaving billions of shillings unspent.

Allocating huge budgets for development expenditure does not necessarily change the lives of the people unless a county follows up its plans and spends the resources as planned. This is what absorption rate means. But this is not all.

For citizens who fully felt the impact of the expenditure, their county governments did not just spend the money, the expenditure was on impactful projects.

Some of the biggest beneficiaries of devolution have been the counties in the Arid and Semi-arid (ASAL) areas, who despite starting from a low base due to decades of marginalisation, ended up diverting the bulk of their resources to development expenditure.

In a trend that promises to correct historical injustices, the ASAL counties, among them Turkana, Mandera, Wajir and Marsabit, have remained the top 10 spenders of development expenditure in the past five years, throwing the biggest proportions of their resources into development projects.

For instance, in the last financial year (2016/17), Turkana spent Sh6.1 billion, the largest amounts in absolute terms, on development expenditure. It was followed by Mandera and Kakamega County, which pumped Sh5.8 billion and Sh5.2 billion, respectively, into development projects. The other ASAL counties were not too far behind, as they fought to change the stories of their residents.

Impact of devolution

Some of the biggest impacts have been in healthcare. Before devolution, there were about 8,466 health centres and dispensaries in the country. But currently, there are over 10,030 health facilities, with the majority of the new ones put up by the counties.

By the time the first commissioners of the CRA exited the scene last year, counties had significantly invested in mechanisation of agriculture, thereby reducing the cost of farm preparation and essentially leading to increased and superior crop and animal production.

“At the time of writing this report, some 132 agro-based value addition projects have been instituted in 34 counties and 1,021 greenhouses installed in 36 counties. The area under irrigation has increased to 69,966 hectares, substituting heavy reliance on rainfall for crop and animal production,” CRA says in its report.

In the livestock sector, counties have provided artificial insemination services to over 886,147 animals and counties have bought 118 milk coolers countrywide.

More than 649,000 banana tissue culture seedlings have also been distributed to small-scale farmers across the country.

In the roads sector, counties have tarmacked more than 379km of roads, placed murram on 35,934km, opened 19,148km of new roads and undertaken rehabilitation of 9,572km of roads.

Available data shows that household access to water has increased to over 70 per cent from about 30 per cent.

“There has been a national average of an additional 600 households in each county newly connected to piped water. Counties have rehabilitated and constructed new dams to expand the water catchment base,” CRA says in its report.

In 2013, the early childhood development education (ECDE) enrollment was at 1,691,286. Today it stands at over 2,074,060. Additionally, 30,049 teachers and assistants have been recruited by counties to cater for the increased enrollment. Counties have also built more than 6,000 new ECDE centres while some counties have already made ECDE schools free for their residents. Polytechnics are also beneficiaries of devolution, receiving hundreds of shillings.

Own oxygen

Other key sectors counties have pumped the devolution billions include street lighting and construction of modern markets for traders.

These benefits are changing lives of millions of Kenyans across the country.

“In Makueni, we produce our own oxygen within the county and distribute it to our health facilities,” Makueni Governor Kivutha Kibwana says.

The county, which is emerging as one of the best case studies on how devolution can work, last week met representatives of AMSA Renal Care Group of Dubai, who it said it is partnering with to establish a 50-bed dialysis unit at the Makueni County Referral Hospital.

Mr Kibwana, who fought some of the fiercest fights with ward representatives in his first term, seems to have risen up from the ashes and is now racing to secure his legacy.

He says his county has registered 35,000 households under the Makueni Care Universal Programme that allows them to access medical services in the county’s health facilities free of charge. To facilitate investments in healthcare, Kibwana says his county has donated 50 acres of land to AMREF University to set up a modern facility.

Similar successes are being witnessed in Kakamega and Machakos counties, which have also been trailblazers in healthcare provisions.

In Kakamega, for instance, the county started the Oparanya Care programme, a maternal health programme in which new mothers take home Sh2,000 after child birth and a similar amount every time they visit the hospital to vaccinate their newborn kids.

Reducing deaths

The programme, which has earned Governor Wycliffe Oparanya admiration at home and among his peers, has also attracted donors for its effectiveness in reducing the deaths of newborns in the county.

Oparanya is also implementing a One Cow programme where every family is given one dairy cow after being trained on best dairy farming practices.

But his biggest legacy will be the Sh10 billion teaching and referral hospital the county is building which will have a cancer centre, 17 theatres, a helipad, trauma centre and housing for staff.

On its part, besides buying 70 ambulances, Governor Mutua has positioned Machakos County as one the best investment destinations in the country. He has also been experimenting with road construction technologies in a bid to build roads faster and at lower costs.

At the beginning of his first term, Mutua built the 33km Kithimani-Makutano-Mwala road in only three months.

As if this was not enough, in the first few months of his second term, he recently launched another technology that he says can now tarmac a kilometre of road in 10 minutes down from an hour.