Kenya is committed to advancing good governance, transparency, and accountability at the sub-national level.
This year, 10 counties will join 12 others that were reviewed last year under the County Peer Review Mechanism (CPRM) process focusing on governance, service delivery, and development goals
Modeled after the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), the CPRM aims to help counties learn from each other and improve their systems.
Speaking Thursday during the 2nd National Summit of the CPRM in Nairobi, Dr. Bonface Makokha, Principal Secretary for the State Department for Economic Planning, applauded the counties for being at the forefront in the promotion of good governance.
Kenya, he added, was the first country to voluntarily submit to a second country review that was undertaken in January 2017, and he commended the counties whose data on citizens’ perception was collected from various electoral wards in the process of spearheading the CPRM process.
Data was collected from Nakuru, Uasin Gishu, Nyandarua, Taita Taveta, Laikipia, Kericho, West Pokot, Baringo, Embu, and Muranga.
“The State Department of Economic Planning is committed to this process and will continue lending the necessary support to enable the NEPAD-APRM Kenya Secretariat to implement this initiative in the remaining counties and follow up on the implementation of the county programs of action for ones that have already been reviewed,” the PS said.
Besides supporting an increase of budgetary support for this great initiative by the Secretariat, Dr. Makokha noted that the government will give due consideration to the proposals that the National Treasury avails conditional grants for outstanding service delivery performance against each of the 14 devolved functions.
He further said that the outstanding performance shall be identified from the CPRM, which has a crucial element to it, service delivery performance rating by the local citizens.
“The grants will reinforce and encourage sustained good performance while instilling healthy competition for excellence across our counties,” he added while appealing to development partners to lend similar support to the CPRM process.
The PS recommended that the two houses of parliament and county assemblies adopt recommendations arising from these peer reviews and help in following up their implementation for the common good of the counties and the Country in general.
He confirmed that the president will in the next few weeks be receiving the Continental APRM Review mission, which will be coming to undertake an independent targeted review on youth issues.
This, Dr. Makokha noted, will grant the youth an opportunity to comprehensively discuss issues that affect them, highlight their challenges, and give recommendations that will be presented in the APRM summit that would form a concrete plan of action to address.
Chairperson of the National Governing Council of the NEPAD/APRM Kenya Secretariat Rtd. Governor Sospeter Ojaamong said key milestones that makes the APRM Kenya office stand out among the other 44 country offices across the continent are the facilitation of two comprehensive country reviews, a targeted review on 8 broad sectors as well as the cascading of the APRM to the subnational level
“Last year, during the inaugural summit of the CPRM, 12 counties were peer reviewed, and this year, a total of 10 counties are set to be peer reviewed today, a coverage just shy of the 50% of our total number of counties,” he said.
Ojaamong noted that the counties continue to track governance indices to ensure that Kenya’s governance ratings are credible and devoid of manipulation, and this initiative, he said is implemented alongside others that seek to find solutions to recurrent governance challenges related to gender inequality, youth unemployment, diversity management, and corruption.
He thanked the National Government for its continued support for the great work but also sent an appeal to development partners to come on board and lend support to these important initiatives.
Archbishop Eliud Wabukala, Chairperson of the CPRM Panel of Eminent Persons, said that last year when they covered 12 counties, they were able to highlight numerous positive stories about how the county governments are delivering services to the citizens
“We presided over candid democratic dialogues among citizens of various stakeholder categories who gave thoughtful and useful recommendations on how their challenges could be resolved,” he explained.
The chair however noted that there were some heated conversations as citizens expressed frustrations over their governments’ acts of omission or commission, though the majority were enlightening stories of engaged and active citizens determined to ensure good governance.
“In the next summit we hope to have covered the counties that are yet to be reviewed and consider progress reports from the counties that were peer reviewed during the inaugural summit,” Wabukala said.
He appealed for credible reviews and genuine engagements followed by faithful implementation of the commitments made by the governors, assisted by the national government.
Key output for today’s meeting will be to see commitments by Governors regarding the implementation of their respective County Programmes of Actions (CPAs). Their peers and the citizens will apply pressure to ensure improved service delivery performance in line with said commitments.
The APRM was established in 2003 by the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) to encourage good governance among African countries as a voluntary process where participating countries assess their performance in four key areas: democracy and political governance, economic governance and management, corporate governance, and socio-economic development.
By Wangari Ndirangu
