Devolution is Dying — And Sifuna Is Right That Ruto Is Killing It

Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna accused President Ruto of "undermining devolution" at Sunday's Linda Mwananchi rally, and I am going to do something uncomfortable: I am going to agree with him, at least on that specific point.

Devolution — the genuine, constitutionally mandated transfer of power, resources and accountability to Kenya's 47 counties — was the most transformative structural change in the 2010 Constitution. It was designed to end the historical concentration of power in Nairobi that had allowed successive national governments to allocate resources along patronage rather than need lines, to ignore peripheral counties, and to deny citizens any meaningful accountability over the services that most directly affected their lives.

Sixteen years on, devolution has underdelivered against its potential but it has also achieved real things: the proliferation of county hospitals that have saved lives in previously underserved areas, agriculture extension services that have reached farmers who previously had none, and a new class of county-level political accountability that, however imperfect, is more responsive than the old district commissioner system ever was.

What the current national government has done — systematically, and often through very ordinary bureaucratic mechanisms — is to claw back the fiscal and policy space that counties need to function. The 2024 and 2025 budget cycles both saw the national government withhold equitable share allocations for months, forcing counties to borrow from commercial banks at market rates to pay teachers and nurses. The HSSF and NHIF reforms moved critical healthcare resources back to national agency control rather than strengthening county health systems. Conditional grants have been structured to give national ministries de facto veto power over county programme design.

None of this is illegal. All of it is intentional. And the counties that would normally be shouting loudest about it — those with governors aligned with the Broad-Based Government — are instead counting their blessings in State House meeting rooms. Devolution needs defenders. They are currently too busy defending the President.