Council of Governors meeting. FILE PHOTO | NMG
Over the last week I have been travelling around the country and
interacting with county governments on various assignments. What has
become clear is that county governments are beginning to truly
appreciate the power they have to guide development in their counties.
Devolution is reorganising power dynamics at county level in several ways.
The
first is that devolution seems to be engendering brain-gain to
counties. Professionals from private sector and development agencies are
now working as technical staff in counties. This is due to both push
and pull factors.
On one hand, county governments are
seeing the wealth of expertise in their county and pulling individuals
to lead various dockets in the county governments.
Secondly, as professionals interact with county governments,
they begin to get excited about how they could contribute to the
development of the regions in which they work and push themselves into
county structures. This confluence of factors is creating a situation
where county need for expertise meets the willingness of professionals
to work in the county, for the benefit of the county.
Thirdly,
counties have learnt from the first phase of devolution and county
structures are strengthening, which has implications for numerous
players.
The first is that stronger structures at
county level mean development partners must align their funding and
programs with County Integrated Development Plans (CIDP). No longer are
donors coming in with thematic areas and priorities with which counties
must comply; it is now the other way around.
Secondly,
counties are becoming increasingly aware of the power of the private
sector in their counties and are taking steps to make the private sector
environment positive and enabling.
There is a
willingness in many county governments to engage with the private sector
on what county governments can do to build private sector activity in
their jurisdictions with a focus on job creation and income growth.
To
be clear these dynamics are not unfolding evenly across counties, but
this is the general direction of the momentum being generated at county
level. For example, counties are not interested in coordinating numerous
donor programmes each with varied objectives not linked to the CIDP;
that is where the momentum sits.
It is clear that in
this second phase of devolution, that donors and development partners
have to not only align their programmes with the CIDP, they must ensure
that county governments are aware of their activities.
There
is a sense of autonomy emerging. Donors aren’t the all-powerful
entities they used to be; either they make themselves relevant or
counties will eventually have no real use for them.
In
terms of the private sector, what is clear is that there is a growing
interest for county governments to engage with the private sector.
As
counties open channels for communication with the private sector, there
is impetus for the private sector to effectively organise itself at
county level to fully leverage the attention of county government.
The
private sector associations must now ensure they have representation in
all counties so that they are prepared to present their ideas on how to
work more effectively at county level.
Gone are the
days where the private sector associations had main offices in Nairobi
and paltry representation at county level. The Private sector must be
organised and effective at both national and county levels if they are
to spawn strategies, relevant to the local context.
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