For how long will the lie be repeated that there are no roads in turkana? They even have airports. And universities. And street lights.

Lodwar:











Their markets even look better than githurai market

Turkanas are also even processing fish for export and also exporting fish skins and leather. While nyinyi huko central are busy hawking mali mali from china. Who is poor and marginalised?

http://www.fao.org/fao-s...s/article/en/c/1171688/

Is this somali marginalised? With his 100 camels, each worth 100k, he is a multimillionaire and you are still giving him more money eti coz he is "poor and marginalised". He should be the one subsidising that landless farmer in central who has only one cow.

75% of the sheep, goats and beef eaten in nairobi comes from north eastern while the rest comes from and narok, kajiado, RV making the regions billions each year. When you enjoy your nyama choma at kamakis, you are putting money into the pocket of someone in north eastern or narok. Then you call them poor and marginalised. The only livestock central sells is chicken which are fed on expensive manufactured feeds leaving farmers with very little cash, while livestock farmers in other areas use natural pastures and thus incurring minimal costs those in central use > 80% of the cash they make on feeds. NB the feeds cash end up benefiting maize farmers in RV. So as you can see central livestock farmers are the most marginalised and poorest and should be the ones being assisted with extra funds. Dont be deceived that those people are poor just because they live in manyattas, without the so called development of "cabro and sewer", they are actually millionaires who should be funding the chicken farmers of kiambu. Simama hapo ruiru and you will see hundred of trucks full of cattle worth billions from north eastern being delivered to njiru and dagoreti slaugher house. Juzi it was idd holiday and all the sheep and goats came from north eastern generating billions of the NE herders.


https://www.sciencedirec...e/pii/S0308521X16301445

Dr Ndii explained the issues very well in an article published by the online magazine, The Elephant. The untapped agricultural potential of marsabit county stood out for me.

In an ideal world we should continue giving more cash to the NFD counties. But in reality, we know the county allocation will not achieve much.

What if we used the CRA formula to allocate the national government's development budget to counties ? Again, this only happens in Utopia.

MY take ...... let's bite the bullet and go with the new formula.

BtW let us not lose sight of the fact that this is a political decision. So far, mount kenya people have been told that their money is being given to those who have larger geographical areas.
The siege mentality has worked as expected and kyuk tangatanga politicians have had to quickly change positions and join their kieleweke colleagues, lest they be branded as enemies of the community.
The weak link will definitely come from north rift. WSR will have to decide between the 700K NFD votes or 5M from central.

Population should be a very big factor, in that Nairobi should get 24B and Kirinyaga 4B per tge formula. Giving Nairobi 15B is taking just too much away from taxpayers. Moses Kuria is right money should go to the people

You're out of context and boring this conversation.

@SQFT, you bring some refreshing arguments, but even with this landmass/population debate, we’re just scratching the surface. If we are serious about equalization, we must then ask, where is the data?

What makes someone conclude that a particular county is relatively more developed and the other less developed? What are the parameters? What are the baselines? If access to healthcare is one of them, what is ratio of hospital beds to population? If access to education is one of them, what is the average number of students per classroom, and student to teacher ratio? Water, same argument. Turkana for instance, how many boreholes have they drilled over last 10 years?

Road network, and this is where I have a big break from jubilee, we need not upgrade all roads to tarmac standards. In most rural areas we can do by just upgrading roads to all weather status. At very least the only roads we need to have tarmacked are international trunk roads, roads branching from these trunk roads connecting county headquarters, roads from county headquarters to sub-county headquarters, major streets within towns, estate roads, etc. For all other roads, criteria to be based on number of vehicles using the roads, or whether there is a major economic activity whereby tarmacking the road will reduce cost of production.

If you consider such factors, then you will arrive at what the equalization fund should be, decide what the baseline year is, and then decide for how many years this should apply (it cannot be perpetual entitlement). In my view baseline year should be 2010 since all this data existed even then and can be retrieved. The monies given to these counties over last 8 years should be factored and deducted, since by now they should already have started to match their counterparts in some aspects with prudent use of the resources.

But the big question should always be, whatever money we give the counties, are they able to generate new money for us to be able to give them next year?

It is very surprising with all the scholarship and research in our universities nobody has a sound and sustainable formula on something so basic as how to fund devolution

If you use such metrics you will find that nairobi is the most marginalised. Public services such as health and education, water and sanitation etc are non existent. Go to kibera Olympic primary school, githurai or mwiki primary schools and you will be shocked, even the teachers have given up due to the hundreds of pupils crammed in one class. The county doesnt also have secondary schools and parents have to take their kids to schools in other counties. Do the middle class in nairobi realise that if they were to lose their jobs today and thus cant afford private education there are no public schools to take their kids? For health, only one hospital has been built since independence - Mama Lucy hospital. Why should all the millions of mothers in nairobi go to deliver at pumwani hospital? Cant the county have a maternity hospital in each ward or constituency. Access to water is another issue. All residents from runda to mukuru have to make private arrangements to get water from boreholes, tankers etc. Isnt it strange that we are celebrating that NMS has sunk a few boreholes in the slums? When it comes to housing, it is said that 75% of residents live in sub-human conditions in slums without running water, electricity, or toilets.

Therefore you are right that we need to relook at how we define marginalisation or development. You will be shocked to find that nairobi is one of the most marginalised and has one of the lowest Human Development Index in the country.