By Munene Gachuru
Kenya’s system of devolved governance, established under the 2010 Constitution, was intended to correct historical centralisation, enhance accountability, and promote equitable development.
More than a decade later, it is increasingly apparent that the scale and design of the 47-county framework have produced outcomes that undermine, rather than strengthen, state capacity. The issue is no longer whether devolution was normatively desirable, but whether its current architecture is fiscally and institutionally sustainable.
The core problem lies in excessive fragmentation. Forty-seven counties—many with limited populations, narrow revenue bases, and weak productive capacity—operate as fully fledged administrative units.
Each county sustains a governor and deputy, a county executive committee, an assembly with a speaker, ward representatives, and extensive advisory and support structures. This uniform political architecture was imposed without regard to economic scale or administrative efficiency.
The fiscal consequences are significant. Recurrent expenditure dominates county budgets, with salaries, allowances, sitting fees, travel, vehicles, and protocol absorbing a disproportionate share of devolved allocations. Capital investment, which devolution was meant to prioritise, is routinely crowded out. In effect, devolution has reproduced the cost structure of the national executive at 47 subnational levels.
From a public finance perspective, this model is unsustainable for a lower-middle-income economy facing debt pressures, infrastructure deficits, and rising social expenditure. The constitutional objective of equitable development has been diluted by the administrative cost of maintaining political offices.
Equally concerning is the accountability gap that has accompanied fiscal decentralisation. While procurement authority and expenditure discretion were devolved, oversight mechanisms were not strengthened to the same degree. County governments have become semi-autonomous financial enclaves, with limited horizontal accountability and slow vertical enforcement.
Auditor-General reports consistently identify unsupported expenditures, stalled projects, inflated tenders, and procurement irregularities across counties. Yet enforcement remains sporadic, and sanctions rare.
The result is not simply corruption, but institutional dilution. Responsibility is dispersed, blame is localised, and systemic reform becomes difficult. Devolution has thus decentralised fiscal risk without decentralising effective accountability.
Comparative constitutional practice highlights the anomaly of Kenya’s approach. The United States operates a federal system of 50 states for over 330 million people, each with substantial economic scale and strong regulatory oversight.
India governs more than 1.4 billion people through 28 states and 8 union territories, deliberately structured to balance autonomy with economies of scale. South Africa, with a population comparable to Kenya’s, operates with just nine provinces. Germany manages Europe’s largest economy with 16 Länder, while the United Kingdom maintains strong local government without excessive upper-tier political units.
Kenya’s insistence on 47 counties for just over 50 million people is therefore not constitutionally inevitable. It was a political choice made during constitution-making, driven largely by considerations of inclusion and compromise rather than long-term fiscal design.
Many counties remain economically unviable, generating limited own-source revenue and relying almost entirely on national transfers, while maintaining full political and bureaucratic superstructures. This dependency weakens incentives for regional economic planning and reinforces rent-seeking behaviour.
The economic implications of this governance design are increasingly visible at the regional level. As Kenya grapples with fiscal consolidation and policy volatility, Tanzania is consolidating economic leadership through a markedly different institutional approach.
For much of the post-liberalisation period, Kenya was widely regarded as East Africa’s economic anchor. That position is now contested. Tanzania’s economic trajectory has been sufficiently strong that Kenyan President William Ruto publicly acknowledged, at an East African Community Heads of State Summit, that Tanzania has overtaken Kenya in key indicators.
Tanzania’s progress reflects deliberate choices favouring coordination over fragmentation. Under President Samia Suluhu Hassan, Tanzania has prioritised national logistics, infrastructure investment, and regulatory coherence. The port of Dar es Salaam now handles a greater volume of regional cargo than Mombasa, serving multiple landlocked economies, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Large-scale projects such as the Standard Gauge Railway and the planned Bagamoyo Port reinforce this logistical advantage. Tanzania has also leveraged its natural resource base—ranking among Africa’s leading gold producers and holding strategic reserves of critical minerals—to integrate into global value chains. Agricultural performance, including Tanzania’s leading position in African coffee production, further reflects policy emphasis on productivity and value addition.
Institutional performance reinforces the contrast. Tanzania ranks second in Africa on the World Bank’s GovTech Maturity Index, signalling progress in digital governance and service delivery. Kenya, once a continental leader in this area, has slipped amid fiscal strain and policy inconsistency.
Projections by the International Monetary Fund indicate that Tanzania is on track to become the largest economy in the EAC within the next decade, while data from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development shows Tanzania among the few African economies recording rising foreign direct investment during a global downturn.
The lesson is not that devolution is inherently flawed. Rather, it is that scale, sequencing, and institutional safeguards matter. Kenya’s error was excessive fragmentation without corresponding fiscal discipline and enforcement capacity. Fewer, economically viable regions—combined with strong national standards and credible oversight—could have preserved local participation while protecting state capacity.
Until Kenya confronts the structural weaknesses embedded in its 47-county framework, it will continue to underperform relative to peers that prioritise coherence over political accommodation. Tanzania’s ascent is not accidental. It is the consequence of governance design. Kenya’s challenge is whether it is prepared to rethink its own.
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