The adoption of the 2010 constitution introduced a devolved system of governance in Kenya, which created 47 county governments. This among others was expected to lead to a more equitable distribution of resources and take service delivery and decision making closer to mwananchi.  It also introduced an emphasis on citizen engagement and participation in budgetary and fiscal planning processes. However, for this to happen, the political leadership in both the National and County level must realize that empowering Kenyans to participate in social-economic and fiscal planning has the potential to strengthen democracy, increase accountability and transparency in governance whose overall outcome is sound utilization of limited resources available.

In Kenya, the county governments started operating in 2013 after the general elections. Since then, the county governments have had some hick-ups and are still on the learning curve. The first batch of elected governors, senators and members of county assemblies were not privy on how the devolved system works. Additionally, there were disputes on resource sharing between the national government and county governments. However, despite these challenges, counties are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, and the need for adequate citizen engagement will improve the management of public resources and promote efficiency in service delivery.

Citizen engagement is prescribed and enshrined in the legal and policy frameworks that govern the administration of the county governments in Kenya. Article 196(1) of the 2010 constitution empowers county assemblies to facilitate public participation and involvement in the legislative and other businesses of the assembly and its committees. These obligate county assemblies to always invite members of the public during development of county plans, budget preparation, and enactment of appropriation laws required to implement the county government budgets as stipulated in section 125 of the Public Finance Management (PFM) Act, 2012. Notably, section 125(2) of the PFM Act, 2012 assigns the County Executive Committee Member (CECM) for finance the responsibility of ensuring that there is public participation in the whole county budget process, which starts from development of county plans: county integrated development plan (CIDP), strategic plans, annual development plan (ADP) among others.

Further, sections 6 & 7 of the PFM Regulations 2015 underscore the importance of public participation and provide a concise explanation on how county assemblies should roll it. Section 6(2-3) of the PFM Regulations require county treasuries to arrange for public participation in the development of annual budget estimates and release an annual calendar of events at the beginning of the fiscal year. Section 7 highlights that public participation for planning and budgeting processes be participatory and carried out through open forums with dates and venues communicated to the general public by the CECM Finance through a notice in a gazette or at least two newspapers of countywide circulation. Do counties observe these provisions?

This policy brief seeks to find out if counties engage citizens in the development of county plans. Mainly, it investigates evidence of public participation in selected counties for the formulation of the 2018-2022 county integrated development plan (CIDP), which is a five-year plan for counties that gives an overall framework for development on which the county pegs its budget. The CIDP determines the development needs of the county and enables allocation of county scarce resources to priority areas.

As required by section 108 of the County Governments Act, 2012, county governments are obliged to plan for the county such that public funds are not appropriated outside a planning framework developed by the County Executive Committee and approved by the County Assembly. Section 126 of the PFM Act 2012 requires each county government to prepare an integrated development plan that clearly states strategic priorities for the medium term, mechanisms in place to respond to changing the economic and financial environment and programmes to be delivered. In response to these provisions, county governments were to formulate first CIDPs in 2013 to cover the period 2013 – 2017 and the second phase to cover the next five years of 2018 – 2022.

Table 1: Evidence of public participation in selected counties

The use of CIDP I (2013-2017) ended in June 2018; counties were supposed to have CIDP II (2018-2022) in place by July 2018 to be used in the budget-making process for the financial year 2018/19. Counties that published theirs after June 2018 were late and did not have a long-term plan from which county programmes and priority areas were drawn to inform budget estimates

Out of the selected 19 counties, we cannot trace evidence or invitation of citizens to public participation forums for development of CIDP II in four counties namely: Migori, Garissa, Nyeri, and Mombasa implying that either they did not carry out public participation or did it without inviting or engaging citizens and did not publish any evidence to that effect. Twelve (12) counties among them Nairobi City County invited or engaged citizens to public participation forums but did not publicize evidence of public participation. On the contrary, two counties namely West Pokot and Turkana posted photos of public participation forums on their official Facebook pages while Wajir County posted a video clip of a public participation forum.