Homa Bay Governor Gladys Wanga with President William Ruto view the plan of Homa Bay city during the 2025 Devolution Confrence in Homa Bay town on August 13, 2025. /Robert OmolloGood morning on this Saturday? Are you aware that according to meteorologists, this is the last of the three coldest days on earth as it moves 66 per cent further away from the sun? Now you know that Kenya too has its winter months, only that August was once associated with summer, but clearly with this cold and rain, we are now quite sure that climate change is real.
However, last week, the whole country descended in Homa Bay for the devolution conference, and it was much warmer over there.The beaches of Rusinga are so inviting, what with that fresh air of the countryside, the breeze of the mighty Lake Victoria, and the warm reception of the locals, unadulterated by the sophistications that come with the knowledge in the city.
The biennial conference was a tremendous success, what with the President having signed two critical bills into law, at the newly built State Lodge? This was historic as it has never happened before, that a bill became law in Homa Bay. One of them is the County Allocation of Revenue Act that distributes funds to various counties.
A great gain is that monies have been raised by 28 billion to 415 billion. This is the highest amount ever given to counties in a year. It’s also true that all monies owed to counties for the last financial year were disbursed accordingly by the national government.
This is a truly great win for counties as most times there have been arrears that roll over to the next financial year. For the last 12 years, counties have received over 3.6 billion in equitable share from the national government.
Clearly, one can see the evidence of such monies across the length and breadth of our country, as sleepy rural townships have been turned into mini cities, what with the development of huge infrastructural projects that were heretofore associated with Nairobi.
The building of tarmac roads to the county headquarters, the referral hospitals and markets in particular have been a game changer to local economies to say the least.
Also the fact that many people now draw salaries from the counties mean that there is now more circulation of money within the local economies, as witnessed by more modern houses, hotels and businesses owned by the county staff coming up.
The signing of the County Public Finance Amendment Act 2023 has created the County Assemblies Fund, thus giving autonomy to the assemblies, away from being managed by the county executive branch.
This is a very critical step in strengthening oversight within the counties. Further, there is a bill in the Senate that proposes that two term MCAs and governors also qualify for pension, having served their respective counties. This is critical because many of them end up in penury as a result of the same service to the county residents (counselors).
Some outstanding counties have come up with very good innovations to help improve service delivery for example, Murang’a county has been able to automate its revenue collection in areas such as parking, hospitals, market fees etc, such that its own source revenue has doubled to surpass the one billion mark according to data presented at the conference. It’s interesting to note that four counties account for 50 per cent of all the own source revenue. These include; Narok, Kiambu, Mombasa and Nairobi.
The national government has invested heavily in counties especially with the themed celebration of key national holidays. As a result, counties now have better roads, and even stadia such as Bungoma, Kericho, Homa Bay, Kwale and currently Kitui which is set to host the Mashujaa Day celebrations in October.
One of the flagship projects that was showcased during the conference was the school feeding programme that is enabling hundreds of thousands of school going children to show up to learn.
The Early Childhood Education is a devolved function, and many counties such as Kiambu have constructed many classrooms for the PP1 and 2 children eager to learn.However, children who have special needs are yet to be properly accommodated.
A case in point is the children who have dyslexia. This is a little-known condition that affects many learners in Kenya. It’s defined as a learning disorder that involves difficulty in reading due to problems in identifying speech sounds and learning how they relate to letters and words (decoding). Also called a reading disability, dyslexia is a result of individual differences in areas of the brain that process language.
It’s very important for counties to train the ECD teachers on dyslexia. The first-ever conference on dyslexia was held this week on Wednesday and Thursday August 20 and 21, 2025 at the Kenya Institute of Special Education. Organised by Bloom Dyslexia Centre under the leadership of Emma Wamae, the conference brought together parents children, experts and policymakers from various countries including Kenya, Tanzania and the USA.
It’s commendable that Mt Kenya University has started a certificate course in collaboration with Dyslexia Organization Kenya to help train teachers on the same. There is, however, a need to have policy interventions to accommodate these learners from the kindergarten level such as speech to text technology.
Devaluation is the real revolution, and if we can get it right at the ECD level, we will be able to transform so many lives towards a prosperous Kenya.
