Devolution holds promise for Kenyans

The promise of equity and delivery of services to the people of Kenya is probably one of the key reasons that the Kenya Constitution 2010 was overwhelmingly voted for.

Devolution’s promise of promoting democratic and accountable exercise of power, fostering national unity by recognising diversity, giving powers of self-governance to Kenyans, enhancing the participation of all the people by allowing them to manage their own affairs and to further their development, has catapulted development in Kenya to a higher level.

The challenge of devolution would be to ensure that through the two-tier levels, national and county, decentralisation of State organs, their functions and services from the capital of Kenya, would be enhanced to ensure checks and balances and separation of powers.

Devolution stands out in contrast to the economic adjustments of the 1980s that forced the Government to cut provision of social services like education, health water and sanitation.

In fact, the majority of reviewers of Kenyan development in the past three years agree that the devolved system the country adopted after the March 2013 elections, holds a lot of promise to unlock the country’s potential, hitherto stifled by the centralised system of government since independence. From then, Kenyans have witnessed the devolution of health, roads, housing and water services.

In the health sector, the county governments have refurbished health facilities, increased the number of doctors from 3,000 to 4,500, employed thousands of para-medical staff, and equipped the facilities with medicines, ICU equipment and ambulances.

Rural roads that remained unattended for decades have been rehabilitated and are regularly repaired and patients in certain hospitals are no longer ferried on donkeys.

It is also on record that leaders in northern Kenya and other marginalised areas have sunk more water boreholes within two years of devolution; a number that far exceeds what the central government managed in more than 50 years.

However, like anything else that is a first, devolution has encountered several challenges. The resources that counties receive are not sufficient for the execution of, especially, development projects and a large proportion of revenue to counties goes into recurrent expenditure.

Most of the staff was also inherited from local authorities and more training and capacity building towards the system of governance of devolution was needed. Human resource capacities have sometimes not been realigned to ensure success of predetermined goals and objectives of the county.

County Integrated Development Plans measurability to ensure a results framework and clear output mechanisms have not been put in place in some counties. Various players of organs of implementation of devolution have also been engaged in high levels of consternation, slowing down the pace of devolution.

Moreover, many national agencies that ought to be restructured to fit in with devolution are being restructured and renamed to continue playing their roles within the national set-up.

Further, national government has not fully devolved some functions and yet in other cases devolved functions have not been costed.

Also, no proper forum for planning, implementation and execution of county projects across various levels of leadership exits in many counties. To fill these gaps several issues must be refocused on.

More resources need to be channelled to the counties. Further, devolution of county funds to wards needs to be deepened to ensure more equitable distribution at the ward levels.

A system of critical evaluation, measurability and scaling of county development needs to be put in place. Such a system should focus not only on economic indicators but social indicators such as the Human Development Index; Gini coefficients should be tabulated to monitor the reducing levels of inequalities across different measurement indicators within counties.

Participation of people at the county level in decision making and the budget process needs to be enhanced. The oversight from Senate and County Assembly levels as enshrined in Article 96(3) and Article 185(3) respectively should be enhanced.

Legislators need to trigger non-partisan approaches to dealing with key issues of devolution. The pinnacle role of public participation at all levels and more civic education through the setting up of the civic education units legislated in County Government Act needs to be actualised.

Finally, devolution is not an event but a process and like any other process, the dynamics, changes, challenges, mindsets and solutions need to be constantly navigated while clearly keeping the ‘eye on the ball’.

Because Kenyans have embraced devolution, let us nurse it to total fruition guided by the national values enshrined in Article 10 of the Constitution.