By Kepher Otieno - Reporter
Kenya, 26 August 2026 - Counties have been challenged to seal loopholes through which public revenue is lost and borrow aggressively from one another to improve service delivery, in a fresh push to make devolution deliver more tangible benefits to citizens.
The call was made by Principal Secretary for Economic Planning Dr Boniface Makokha during the ongoing County Peer Review Mechanism (CPRM) exercise in Kisumu. He said counties could achieve more by learning from those that were performing better instead of operating in isolation.
Dr Makokha said leakage of public resources through acts of impropriety undermined the ability of county governments to finance essential services. Plugging the loopholes, he argued, would release more resources for development and improve the quality of services delivered to citizens.
“We want counties to learn from one another, identify what is working and replicate those good practices,” Dr Makhoha said.
“We must also minimise leakages of public resources caused by acts of impropriety because every shilling lost is a shilling that cannot be used to provide services to our people.”
But the PS's message went beyond financial discipline. He urged counties to benchmark successful governance and service delivery models and adapt them to their own circumstances.
He said enhanced co-operative governance would strengthen the capacity of counties to manage diversity, build stronger institutions and respond more effectively to the needs of their populations.
Dr Makhoha said the national government would promote peer-to-peer learning among governors through the CPRM platform. Such collaboration, he said, would strengthen multi-agency partnerships and help counties address complex development challenges collectively.
The intervention comes as devolution enters a more demanding phase. Counties are no longer being judged only by the amount of money they receive from the national government. Increasingly, the question is what they do with those resources.
The CPRM is designed to provide an institutional platform for counties to examine one another's governance systems, identify weaknesses and replicate practices that work. It is, in effect, an attempt to turn the 47 counties into laboratories of public-sector innovation.
The delegation paid a courtesy call on Kisumu Governor Prof Anyang' Nyong'o, who welcomed the exercise as an important instrument for improving the delivery of services to Kenyans.
Prof Nyong'o said the peer review process would allow counties to move beyond working in isolation and learn from jurisdictions that had developed better approaches to governance and service delivery.
“The CPRM is good because it allows counties to learn from one another,” Prof Nyong'o said.
“We should not work as islands when there are counties that have developed better ways of doing things.”
He said benchmarking could help counties improve their systems, strengthen accountability and ensure that devolution remained focused on improving the lives of citizens.
For Prof Nyong'o, the value of peer review lies in the opportunity for counties to look beyond their own experiences. A county does not have to reinvent the wheel if another has already found a better way of delivering healthcare, managing public finances, developing infrastructure or involving citizens.
Former Busia Governor Sospeter Ojaamong also stressed benchmarking as a critical tool for improving governance. He argued that systematically adopting successful practices could help institutionalise good governance rather than leaving performance to individual political leaders.
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Former Ambassador Rukia Subow, one of the panelists, urged counties to leverage proven governance practices to accelerate economic transformation. She also underscored the importance of active public participation in the review process.
“It is important that citizens actively participate in this process because they are the ultimate beneficiaries of county governments,” Subow said.
Residents, she added, were best placed to judge whether development projects were being implemented, whether services were improving and whether county resources were being managed transparently.
Her argument highlights one of the central questions facing devolution: whether better administration can be translated into stronger local economies and improved livelihoods.
The CPRM therefore has the potential to become more than an assessment exercise. It could become a mechanism for creating healthy competition among counties.
During the inaugural CPRM summit in August 2024, at least 12 counties underwent the peer review process. The new drive seeks to bring another 24 counties into the programme, significantly expanding its reach.
Currently, assessments are being conducted in Migori, Homa Bay, Meru and Kisumu counties.
The process involves consultative workshops bringing together stakeholders from the selected counties. Participants examine county performance and assess their governments on service delivery, development projects, accountability, transparency and infrastructure development.
The involvement of residents is particularly significant. It gives citizens an opportunity to assess whether promises made by county administrations are translating into actual services and projects.
Subow said active citizen participation would make the peer review process more credible while encouraging county governments to become more responsive to the people they serve.
That makes CPRM potentially powerful in an era when public frustration is often less about the architecture of devolution than about its performance.
The test, however, will be whether counties act on the findings.
Benchmarking without implementation risks becoming another bureaucratic exercise. But if counties genuinely adopt successful practices, plug revenue leakages, strengthen accountability and learn from one another, peer review could provide a practical route towards a more effective devolution system.
The bigger prize is therefore not the ranking of counties. It is whether the exercise can help turn devolution from a transfer of functions and resources into a measurable improvement in the everyday lives of Kenyans.