Concept of devolution is as old as Kenya’s independence

Devolution as mandated by the 2010 Constitution was not Kenya’s first foray into decentralisation.

Upon independence, the country adopted a constitution that mandated shifting of power to regional governments. It has a lot of similarity with the current Constitution save for the fact that it devolved power to regional levels numbering seven plus Nairobi area, while current law devolves power to the 47 county governments.

Apart from this post-independence initiative, over the decades, Kenya has also taken other steps to decentralise economic and administrative power.

The story told through these initiatives is that although the country does well in formulating plans, it often falls flat in implementing them mainly because of lack of political will.

The majimbo system, as it was known, was aimed at protecting Kenya’s minority ethnic groups under the Kenya African Democratic Union (Kadu) from the dominion of the “bigger” ethnic communities grouped under the Kenya African National Union (Kanu).

Barely a year later, Kadu was dissolved and along with it the devolution-centred Constitution of 1963 fizzled out. Kenya, instead, adopted the development blueprint that was the Sessional Paper No. 10 of 1965, with strong emphasis on centralisation of powers.

“I would say that political greed led to the dissolution of the initial devolution plans,” notes KIPPRA analyst, Dr Douglass Kivoi.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, governance would grow increasingly centralised with the government absorbing powers previously left to the local authorities. Kenya, Mr Othieno Nyanjom notes in his 2011 paper, essentially created the ultimate symbol of centralisation — an imperial presidency.

However, this era of centralisation was not without wisps of decentralisation. In 1971, the Kenyatta government introduced the Special Rural Development Programme (SRDP). Meant to foster equity in the country, the programme was only implemented in five of the originally targeted semi-arid districts.

In the 1990s, Kenya adopted expenditure reforms at the behest of the World Bank. These were accompanied by the introduction of various decentralised funds such as the Road Maintenance Levy Fund in 1994 and the Local Authorities Transfer Fund (LATF) in 1998. In his second year in power, President Kibaki introduced the Constituency Development Fund (CDF).

Although not entirely ineffective, all these initiatives have fallen victim to corruption and mismanagement. In an audit published in November last year, the National Taxpayers’ Association said 13 per cent of CDF funds had been misused in the 2010/2011 financial year.

And as the World Bank notes: “Those counties that stand to benefit the most from devolution in theory (the more remote, least developed counties) could lose out in practice if their capacity to manage devolved funds effectively and transparently is not sufficiently developed.”