Kenya has 47 counties. The devolution framework established by the 2010 constitution transferred significant fiscal and service delivery responsibility to these units, with an annual equitable share from the national government now exceeding 400 billion Kenya shillings in aggregate.
The theory of devolution is correct. Decisions about water, health, agriculture, and local infrastructure are better made close to the communities they affect. The practice of devolution in Kenya has been uneven in ways that are visible in the data and obscured in the political narrative.
What the County Data Shows
The Controller of Budget publishes quarterly and annual budget implementation reports for all 47 counties. These reports contain absorption rates — the percentage of allocated budget actually spent — broken down by sector. The average development expenditure absorption rate across Kenyan counties hovers around 55 percent. Half the development money is unspent at year end. In some counties the figure falls below 30 percent.
A county that absorbs 30 percent of its development budget is not underfunded. It is under-institutionalised. The money is there. The systems to plan, procure, implement, and account for spending are not adequate to the fiscal responsibility devolution has assigned. Hesabu was built to make this visible — not to embarrass county governments, but because institutional improvement requires honest measurement of the current gap.
The variation across counties is the data. Makueni has historically been one of the better-performing counties on development budget absorption. Nairobi County has been among the worst, despite receiving the largest equitable share. The difference is institutional capacity and political will, not resources.
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