Kenyas counties have rich identities and poor strategies

Every place has a story. The question is whether anyone is telling it. Kenya's counties carry some of the most powerful stories on the African continent. Stories written in altitude and athletic greatness. In ancient lakes and extraordinary cultures. In landscapes so dramatic they stop the breath of anyone who sees them for the first time. In communities whose identity is recognised on every continent even when their county headquarters has no tarmac road. These stories exist. They are real. They are valuable. But a story that nobody is telling strategically is a story that earns nothing. And Kenya's counties have been leaving their stories untold, unmanaged, and unmonetised for long enough.

Turkana is the most honest illustration of this problem. It has oil. It has jade. It has Lake Turkana, the world's largest desert lake and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It has a culture so distinctive and visually compelling that photographers, anthropologists and documentary makers travel from across the world to capture it. It has paleontological discoveries that gave humanity its earliest known origins. The cradle of mankind. Literally. And yet Turkana remains one of the poorest counties in Kenya. Not because it has nothing. Because everything it has has never been converted into a development strategy that works for the people who live there.That is not a resource problem. It is a strategy problem.

Kisumu has Lake Victoria, East Africa's largest lake, a growing regional trade hub, a music culture that has produced some of Kenya's greatest artistes, and a cultural and intellectual heritage that has shaped this country's politics, law and public life for generations. Ask most investors what comes to mind when you say Kisumu and they will mention the lake. They will not mention an investment framework, a development strategy, or a county brand that has been deliberately built and actively managed.

Kilifi has some of the most beautiful coastline in East Africa. Pristine beaches, ancient ruins, a Swahili cultural heritage and warm waters that make it naturally competitive with the world's leading beach destinations. It sits beside Mombasa, which absorbs most of the coast's tourism revenue, while Kilifi's extraordinary natural and cultural assets remain largely underdeveloped because nobody has built the strategic framework to convert them into a competitive tourism destination in their own right.

Kajiado has the Maasai. One of the most globally recognised cultural identities in Africa. The Maasai brand travels. It appears on television screens, in fashion collections, in wildlife documentaries, in hotel names across the continent. The community that carries that identity lives in Kajiado. The economic returns from that identity flow overwhelmingly elsewhere.

This is Kenya's place branding crisis. Not the absence of identity. The absence of strategy.

Place branding is not a logo. It is not a slogan on a billboard outside the county headquarters. It is not the governor's face on a hoarding next to the word development. Place branding is the deliberate, sustained work of understanding what a county means, what it has, what it could become, and then systematically aligning every county government decision around that understanding in a way that attracts investment, grows tourism, retains talent, and builds the civic pride that makes residents choose to stay and build rather than leave for Nairobi.

It requires asking questions that most county governments have never seriously asked. What is our county's competitive advantage? What do we have that nobody else has? What does the world need that we can provide? What would it take to make this place the destination for that need rather than merely the origin of the resource that serves it?

Turkana has oil but refines none of it locally. It has tourism assets but minimal tourism infrastructure. It has a UNESCO World Heritage Site but no serious international marketing strategy for it. It has extraordinary cultural heritage but no mechanism for converting that heritage into cultural tourism revenue that stays in the county. Every one of these gaps is a strategy failure before it is a resource failure.

County governments were given devolution as a development tool. The theory was sound. Bring government closer to the people, give it resources, give it decision-making authority, and local development will follow because local leaders understand local assets better than a distant national government ever could.

The theory was right. The practice has been inconsistent because devolution delivered the structure of local governance without consistently delivering the strategic thinking that makes local governance a development engine rather than a smaller version of the same national bureaucracy.

Place branding is where that strategic thinking must begin. Because a county that does not know what it is cannot tell the world what it has to offer. A county that cannot tell the world what it has to offer cannot attract the investment, the tourism, the talent, and the attention that converts identity into development. And a county that cannot convert its identity into development is a county that is sitting on wealth it will never spend.

Turkana has the cradle of mankind. It deserves a development strategy worthy of that beginning. So does every other county in Kenya that has been rich in identity and poor in strategy for too long.

The assets are there. The identity is there. The potential is unmistakable.

What is missing is the decision to take it seriously.

Faith Seroney, the writer, is a strategic communication professional and the Director of Public relations, Branding and events at the County Government of Uasin Gishu.