Our counties must embrace good leadership to develop

Counties have also collected their own revenues amounting to KSh. 271 billion. The 2024/2025 financial year allocations have been contested by the Counties which are against any reduction of their projected allocations. The Council of Governors (CoG), supported by the CRA has rejected a proposal to deduct counties equitable share from KSh. 400 billion to KSh. 380 billion. It is my considered opinion that 14 years from the advent of counties, they should project a different scenario, and one of which is that by now, they should have developed effective Own Source Revenue (OSR) and other financial resources mobilization strategies that over time reduces their over reliance on the allocations and transfers from the national government. 

It is important to note that all over the world, national governments are faced with many challenges which includes debt and fiscal crises, reduction in the tax revenues, ballooning public sector wage bill, security threats and other challenges like increased demands from the citizenry for employment creation, education, health and housing provisions, which ultimately shrinks their fiscal space and legroom for more allocations to counties.

 

In order for counties to grow their own revenues, undertake more infrastructure and service delivery projects and adequately perform the 14 functions assigned to them under the Fourth schedule part ii, they have to embrace transformative leadership. The governors and other leaders with and working below them must know that leadership is not just a position or a title; it is a privilege. When you find yourself in a leadership role, whether it's at work, in your community, or within a team, it's essential to understand and embrace the responsibility that comes with it. The influence you have as a leader can significantly impact the trajectories of people's careers and, often, their lives.Everything falls and succeeds on leadership. 

Our Counties should establish effective, broad-based County Economic and Budget Forums (CBEFs), not populated by cronies, but by people who can effectively assist the counties deliver, they can look at the composition of Muranga County CBEF for benchmarking purposes. There is need to operationalize and partner among the Eight Regional Economic Blocs we have in Kenya, where Machakos and Kitui belong to the South Eastern Kenya Economic bloc, while Embu, Tharaka Nithi and Meru belong to the Mt Kenya and Aberdares Region Economic Bloc. There is need to make these economic blocs as vibrant as the Jumuiya Ya Kaunti Za Pwani (JKP), which has been organizing common and annual investment forums together. These economic blocs should have effective secretariats that work to harmonize various local, national and international development blueprints, design common mega projects and advice the leadership of change and transformation. The economic blocs can champion Public Private Partnerships (PPP), Urban and environmental/climate change based projects from a regional point of view and enable the residents to fast track development and progress. 

Two examples should suffice to show how leadership can transform a place or a county or country whatever it is. First is the California State in the US, which has a $4 trillion economy, and if it was a country, it would be the fifth largest economy in the world after the USA, China, Germany and Japan. Because of transformative deliberate leadership, California’s economy dwarfs those of India, UK, France, Russia, Canada among others and is the largest sub-national economy in the world. Why is California rich and why are our counties not able to be weaned off national government support? The answer lies to leadership that has made deliberate attempts and attractions to industries that it has comparative advantage for. For California, it was the attraction to and for technology firms (as shown by the fact that 11 of the Fortune 100 companies and 53 out of the Fortune 500 companies have their headquarters in California), trade, media, tourism, and agriculture.

The two strongest economic areas surround Los Angeles (media, trade, tourism) and San Francisco (technology, trade, and tourism). To emulate and learn from California, County leaderships should attract investments from local and international capital by for example developing investment master plans. The most basic law of Economics is the law of comparative advantage, which simply means the ability of an economy, in this case a County, to produce a particular good or service at a lower opportunity cost than its trading partners. This will require Counties and leaders therein to address the challenge of impossible, hard and difficult issues and make them possible. 

Thirdly, learning from California, counties need to work on their tax and rates incentives and come up with strategic investing to further develop its technology industries and other key sectors of the economy with potential to pull many from poverty, carefully growing domestic industry by leveraging trade policy and government investment. 

Fourthly, there is need to focus on aligning and accelerating investments in infrastructure like provision of housing infrastructure to ensure sustainable decent and quality housing; transportation such that goods and services can easily move from one corner to the other; and provision of safe and clean drinking water and water for irrigation to stimulate agricultural production. Provision of water for example for domestic and irrigation purposes can drive agricultural transformation, agro-processing and intensive manufacturing once people have food security. 

Fifth, counties should develop industrialization strategies that capture, concentrate, and re-shore growth among various high-value industries like Research and Development, renewable energy production, biotech, manufacturing among others. 

There is need to work with the few universities available in these counties to charge them with a lot research work and products development since it has been found out that products and services developed through universities and institutions of higher learning have higher uptake than those developed elsewhere. These institutions of higher learning must be involved alongside professionals, business people, religious people, NGO’s, CBO’s and Faith Based Organizations (FBO’s).