The debate over Kenya’s Equalisation Fund has burst into the open, exposing a deeper question at the heart of devolution: can Kenya truly achieve equitable development by distributing resources through formulas that do not fully account for the country’s enormous differences in geography, population density, infrastructure and historical marginalisation?
The question has gained fresh urgency after Eldas Member of Parliament Adan Keynan delivered a blistering attack on the Equalisation Fund, declaring that the mechanism has failed to deliver its constitutional promise and should, in his words, be considered “dead completely.”
Speaking in the presence of Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi, Keynan went further, challenging Parliament to justify continued funding of a mechanism he believes has drifted far from the intention behind its inclusion in the 2010 Constitution.
“I want to declare equalisation as dead. Dead completely. Don’t waste your money. It’s a cash cow for governors, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, it’s unfortunate. Especially for those of us who have been part and parcel of the making of the inclusion of this particular Article in the Constitution,” Keynan said.
His intervention is significant not only because of the strength of his language, but because of his assertion that he was directly involved in the constitutional negotiations that produced the framework for devolution and the Equalisation Fund.
Keynan recalled that the making of the Constitution involved competing political positions, including those advocating for a presidential system, others pushing for a parliamentary model, and another group demanding stronger devolution and a more equitable distribution of national resources.
According to his account, negotiations at Naivasha reached a point where compromise became necessary, and devolution and the Equalisation Fund emerged as part of that broader constitutional settlement.
For Keynan, however, the current implementation of the Equalisation Fund does not reflect the spirit of that agreement.
He invoked the historical circumstances that informed the constitutional provision, linking the idea to the Marshall Plan of 1948, which was designed to support European countries devastated by the Second World War.
The comparison is important because it goes to the original philosophy behind equalisation: resources should not merely be distributed, but deliberately directed towards places that have been left behind so that historical disadvantages can gradually be reduced.
Keynan argues that Kenya has lost sight of that objective.
Turning his attention to the Treasury, Keynan questioned whether the current policy framework reflects what the Constitution originally intended.
He praised the Cabinet Secretary responsible for Finance as one of the country’s better Finance Ministers, saying he had taken time to examine what successive Finance Ministers had done for Kenyans. But the praise quickly turned into a challenge over how the government approaches historically marginalised parts of the country.
Keynan argued that Kenya lacks a holistic approach to national development, particularly when it comes to regions that have experienced decades of marginalisation.
He also invoked Sessional Paper No. 10 of 1965, a document that has long been associated with the historical debate over the concentration of development resources and the marginalisation of certain regions.
His argument is that the constitutional promise cannot simply be altered through administrative or policy decisions.
He questioned whether the letter and spirit of the Constitution could effectively be changed by a commission because of political pressure, arguing that the second Equalisation Fund policy framework had done precisely that.
The most consequential part of his argument, however, came when he questioned whether Members of Parliament should continue appropriating money for a mechanism he believes is failing its constitutional purpose.
“If that is the case, are we duty bound as Members of Parliament to continue funding Equalisation Fund? The answer is and I’m on record there is no iota, iota of even one project of equalization in [unclear], and I want to be challenged to that extent,” Keynan said.
That claim is particularly explosive because it moves the debate away from whether the Equalisation Fund could perform better and towards whether it has any meaningful impact at all.
On Wednesday last week, Keynan sharpened the argument further, saying: “There’s no an iota of a single Equalization Fund project in Wajir.”
He said he was ready to be challenged over the claim and described the fund as a “cash cow.”
“It’s a cash cow for governors. It’s a cash cow for cameras. Let’s go. We cannot spend billions just to cover for the ills of a clique. So I want to urge you, and I’ll go on record…” he said.
But while Keynan’s intervention raises serious questions about accountability, utilisation and the constitutional purpose of the Equalisation Fund, Wajir Governor and Council of Governors Chairperson Ahmed Abdullahi offers a different lens through which the resource question should be understood.
Rather than treating the debate simply as a question of whether the Equalisation Fund is working, Abdullahi places it within the much bigger problem of how Kenya funds development across regions with dramatically different physical and demographic realities.
The Governor argues that what President William Ruto is doing is expanding development investment in the periphery beyond what counties receive through the conventional devolution framework.
“What the president has done or he is doing is to now expand that developmental space for the periphery over and above what they are entitled to from the devolution pot,” Abdullahi said.
His argument begins with a distinction between the equitable share allocated to counties and the Equalisation Fund.
“On equitable share, the equitable share is one pot it shared through some formula between all the counties there is also equalization fund we give 0.5 percent of the revenue annually to bridge the developmental gap but those two are not sufficient to equalize this country and I will tell you why,” he said.
That “why” is perhaps the most important part of the argument.
Wajir County covers approximately 56,000 square kilometres, a vast area in which communities are spread across a landscape that presents very different service-delivery challenges from densely populated urban settlements.
Abdullahi argues that Wajir’s landmass is comparable to approximately 24 of Kenya’s smallest counties combined.
The comparison illustrates a problem that a population-based understanding of equitable distribution can easily overlook: the cost of reaching a citizen is not the same everywhere.
“Wajir is 56000 square kilometres in terms of landmass is equal to 24 smallest counties in the country that’s making up the landmass of Wajir county and service has to be provided to citizens that spread over that kind of landmass,” Abdullahi explained.
He used healthcare to demonstrate the difference.
“The child in Kibera where the density is so high that the two doors are so close is entitled to vaccination and the child whose parents are grazing for them to be vaccinated the parent has to take them to the next dispensary which could be 30 or 50 kilometres is also entitled to vaccination,” he said.
The point is not that a child in Kibera should receive less. It is that providing the same constitutional entitlement can require dramatically different public expenditure depending on where that child lives.
A vaccination may require a short trip in a densely populated urban neighbourhood. In a sparsely populated pastoral area, reaching the same service may require roads, vehicles, health infrastructure, communication networks and personnel covering enormous distances.
Abdullahi therefore challenges the assumption that treating counties according to a common formula necessarily produces equitable outcomes.
“With that of terrain then becomes even to equalize because communication connectivity and road network everything is different added to that is harsh climatic conditions,” he said.
This is where the two positions intersect, even though Keynan and Abdullahi approach the problem from different directions.
Keynan is questioning whether the Equalisation Fund has actually delivered the targeted development that the Constitution envisioned.
Abdullahi, meanwhile, is arguing that even the existing architecture of equitable share and equalisation is incapable of overcoming the structural disadvantages facing counties such as Wajir.
One is asking: Where are the results?
The other is asking: Is the money being distributed according to the real cost of delivering development?
Both questions lead to the same uncomfortable national conversation.
Kenya’s Constitution did not create devolution merely to divide money among counties. Its broader promise was to bring government closer to citizens, promote equitable development and address historical marginalisation.
That means the debate cannot end with how many billions are allocated. It must also examine where the money goes, what projects are completed, who benefits and whether the resources are sufficient to overcome the disadvantages facing particular communities.
Keynan’s declaration that “equalisation is dead” therefore places the Equalisation Fund itself under scrutiny.
But Abdullahi’s argument complicates the debate by suggesting that eliminating or reducing the fund without addressing the wider inequality in development could leave historically marginalised regions with an even bigger problem.
The question confronting policymakers is consequently larger than the fate of one fund.
If a county is enormous, sparsely populated, poorly connected and exposed to harsh climatic conditions, should “equitable” mean giving it the same formula-based treatment as every other county or should equity recognise that some citizens cost substantially more to reach?
And if the Equalisation Fund has failed to deliver its constitutional purpose, as Keynan contends, should the answer be to abandon equalisation or to fundamentally redesign it so that it actually works?
For Wajir and much of Kenya’s periphery, that distinction matters.
The county does not merely require resources to build facilities. It requires resources to connect scattered communities to those facilities.
It requires roads to connect people to hospitals, communication networks to connect communities to government and emergency services, water infrastructure to support livelihoods, and investment capable of making development possible across distances that would be unimaginable in densely populated parts of the country.
That is why Abdullahi believes the additional development focus on the periphery could be critical.
“That’s what the president is doing he want to open up this region,” he said.
Whether that approach ultimately succeeds will depend not on declarations from either side, but on measurable development outcomes.
Keynan has issued a challenge: show the Equalisation Fund projects and demonstrate that the constitutional promise is being fulfilled.
Abdullahi has issued a broader challenge: recognise that Kenya cannot achieve equality by ignoring the radically different costs of serving its citizens.
Between those two positions lies the central question of Kenya’s unfinished devolution story: Is Kenya distributing resources equally, or is it genuinely investing in equity?
Because equalisation, in its constitutional sense, was never supposed to be simply about sharing money.
It was supposed to be about closing the distance between citizens who inherited dramatically different starting points.
And for a child in Wajir, that distance may literally be 50 kilometres to the nearest dispensary.