NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 28 — Every year, billions of shillings flow from the national government to Kenya’s forty-seven counties, supplemented by money raised locally.

📻 Breaking It Down

The funds are meant to pay doctors and nurses, maintain roads, provide water, support farmers, run markets and deliver other services assigned to counties under the Constitution.

But between the moment money is allocated and the moment a resident sees a completed road, a stocked hospital or a functioning water system lies a complicated chain of budgets, transfers, procurement, salaries and implementation decisions.

For the 2025/26 financial year, counties were allocated Sh415 billion as equitable share of revenue raised nationally. The figure is contained in the enacted Division of Revenue Act, making it the baseline transfer available to counties from nationally raised revenue.

📌 What You Need to Know

That is not, however, the entire pool of money available to county governments.

The 2025/26 county budgets also incorporated additional conditional allocations from the national government and development partners, alongside money counties expected to raise themselves.

The Controller of Budget’s first-quarter review put the combined approved county budgets at Sh603.72 billion.

Of this, Sh217.80 billion, or 36 per cent, was budgeted for development while Sh385.92 billion, or 64 per cent, was for recurrent expenditure.

The counties expected to finance those budgets through the Sh415 billion equitable share, Sh93.89 billion in own-source revenue, Sh68.21 billion in additional conditional allocations and Sh26.62 billion in unspent funds carried forward from the previous financial year.

But an allocation in a budget is not the same thing as cash already sitting in a county account.

📰 Source: Capital FM Kenya