Let us celebrate the well-run counties and shame the rest

Devolution is the crown jewel of the 2010 Constitution. This fact should be remembered not just during the annual devolution conference but throughout the year. It is because of devolution that some counties ever got hospitals, running water or paved roads.

It is because of devolution that it is hard for Nairobi to perpetually ration access to “development.” Governors and the people in our devolved units have a right to resources based on a formula, not personal discretion. Devolution has been a massive improvement in how we govern ourselves.

This is evident in the poll numbers as well, where more than two thirds of Kenyans consistently support devolution.

That said, devolution is performing well below what framers of the Constitution intended. The 47 counties are supposed to be engines of growth and localised self-government. Instead, they have so far evolved to function primarily as a way to distribute wealth to county elites.

Most of our governors are terribly unambitious – both in policymaking and forms of corruption they dabble in. Few can point to any commercial successes they have enabled in their counties. Nearly all are satisfied merely riding around in big cars and being feted as waheshimiwa.

You saw this on display at the recent devolution conference in Homa Bay County. There were switched counties like Murang’a, whose governor proudly showcased their governance achievements as well as how they are supporting the private sector.

And then there were counties just happy to be in Homa Bay, with their displays exhibiting the abiding mediocrity of their leadership. Where is the shame in not having anything to show for being a leader of an important unit like a county?

Do these leaders not understand that today it is impossible to hide mediocrity? Do they not have honest friends and colleagues that can tell them the truth about their performance?

An important reason for getting furious about devolution’s under-performance so far is that it was meant to correct the ills of decades of spatial unevenness in our development.

Yet, it is the governors from previously marginalised counties or opposition bastions that have shown little interest in turning their counties into engines of growth.

We cannot continue thinking of governance as being just about elites amassing obscene amounts of wealth. The point of politics must also be to solve many of the problems we collectively face as a society.

More than a decade after devolution, most of our counties are yet to elect truly switched-on governors. That means they are guaranteed to lose at least 15 years. How are they ever going to catch up with counties that elected switched-on governors in 2013?

Unfortunately, it is also the case that the least developed counties are also the ones most likely to have their electoral politics hijacked by considerations other than performance – like identity. What this means is that in the long run we shall have even inequality across the counties.

The writer is a professor at Georgetown University