The current contentious debate in the Senate on the horizontal revenue allocation formula between counties, reveals a lack of political goodwill to end legal, systemic and institutionalised marginalisation in Kenya. The fact is that this formula does not exist or emerge in a vacuum, but is rooted in the political machinations and ideologies of those who control the dominant knowledge system that has informed economic policies responsible for sustaining regional privilege.
The proposals on the new revenue sharing formula are a clear sign that although regional discrimination might have been legally terminated, structural, social and systemic discrimination still thrives in Kenya. This is because the dominant philosophy of public policy continues to mirror the same exclusivity and discrimination that were legally institutionalised by Sessional Paper No. 10 of April 1965 authored by Tom Mboya and a cabal of bureaucrats at the post-independence national treasury and planning ministry.
Kenyans must be reminded that the idea of the Commission on Revenue Allocation (CRA) as an independent Commission emerged in response to the (traditionally) skewed allocation of revenue in Kenya. The constitution provides for Commissions and Independent Offices as an avenue to better cushion Kenya’s national interest against transient executive policy choices. Until the enactment of the 2010 constitution, all revenue allocations were centralised under the national government. Because of the pervasive absence of a culture of nationhood in Kenya and the extent of fragmentation in the society, most distribution of national resources has been based on ethnic, regional or political interests.
The exclusion of many ethnic communities in Kenya is the legacy of colonial rule and a decades-long centralised, ethicised, and personalised presidential system. Concerned by the entrenched economic inequalities, the constitution devised the counties to disburse a minimum of 15 per cent of the nationally generated fiscal revenue to the 47 subnational units. Additionally, it sought to ensure that equity was the overriding consideration in sharing revenue among the 47 counties.
The CRA was created to safeguard this intention and mandated to develop a sharing formula every five years. In conceptualising its mandate, the CRA must thus bear in mind this twisted legacy of our economic history and adopt a holistic and not just a positivist approach. Such an approach will integrate an appreciation of historically skewed allocations in favour of some regions the net effect of which has been to render these regions more attractive to diverse economic activities. Factoring in an amortised perspective of an investment in roads in 1960 would provide clarity in what the present value of such an investment could have accrued to a beneficiary region.
To fully understand the institutionalised discrimination patent in the proposed formula, it is important to recognise that, whereas 70 per cent of Kenya’s revenue remains with the national government, the formula does not take this into consideration, yet we know the degree of political expediency that underpins the national government’s distribution of this revenue across various counties through infrastructural and social development programmes. Then, on the basis of only the 30 per cent allotted to counties, the Commission has designed the formula presently before the Senate, where again it proceeds to attach much weight to population and disregards its responsibility to assign equal weight to regional economic disparities and the need for affirmative action in favour of disadvantaged regions.
Why did the formula turn a blind eye on inter-governmental fiscal transfers over and above the amount allocated to county governments as their equitable share of the revenue raised nationally under Article 202(1)? Is it proper for the formula to fail to factor in the impact of five other types of transfers to counties by the national government, namely, conditional and unconditional grants, loans, the equalisation fund, and constituency development funds?
The formula and the range of reactions in its defense reveal gaps in the way marginalisation in Kenya is understood, defined and addressed. In other words those individuals who designed the formula are conditioning Kenyans to only consider the slices of cake and ignore the way the national cake is divided. Under a purposive and holistic interpretation of article 203 (1) (f) (g) and (h), the revenue allocation should consider the distribution of national government projects.
The information on how the national government projects are allocated to the various counties is easily accessible to the Commission and the public through the Presidential Service Delivery Website. Furthermore, the CRA needed to have conducted a structural audit assessment of various counties. Such an audit would assess the kilometres of paved roads, the hospitals, the bridges, power connection, water connection, accessibility to mobile telephony and internet infrastructure, number and quality of schools, among others. Take for example the two counties of Kiambu and Kakamega with a population of approximately 1.6 and 1.9 million people and a landmass of 2,500 km and 3,225 kilometres respectively. Kiambu has 1,145 km of bitumen roads against a mere 700 km for the entire Western Province which has five counties. Kiambu County has 1,145 primary schools against 460 for Kakamega, and a 7/1000 infant mortality rate in Kiambu compared to 65/1000 in Kakamega.
A good formula that accounts for the above reality must involve the conscious use of the normative system called the “Presidential Service Delivery” to examine the extent to which national government programmes comport with the notion of equitable economic development. The lack of conscious use of the process of developing the revenue sharing formula by the CRA to narrow the poverty and marginalisation gap undermines its possible instrumentality to secure a more equitable and just nation. It undermines the use of Independent offices and commissions in promoting checks and balances in the developmental process in Kenya. It is up to the Senate and CRA to consider using the revenue allocation formula not as a ritualistic policy obligation to be undertaken every five years but to deploy it in furthering the entrenchment of economic justice, equality and inclusion in the country.
The argument advanced by those supporting the formula that counties that generate more revenue should benefit from higher allocation is pretentious as it conceals the fact that their present economic advantages flow from the relative deprivation of other regions historically. The justifications mobilised by proponents of the formula as they seek to protect their privileged economic status is a type of absolution (to help them sleep at night) and is aptly captured by Albert Memmi, the Tunisian Jewish writer and one of the most influential theorists to emerge out of the post-World War II African decolonisation movement:
The fact remains that we have discovered a fundamental mechanism, common to all marginalization and oppression reactions: the injustice of an oppressor toward the oppressed, the formers permanent aggression or the aggressive act he is getting ready to commit, must be justified. And isn’t privilege one of the forms of permanent aggression, inflicted on a dominated man or group by a dominating man or group? How can any excuse be found for such disorder (source of so many advantages), if not by overwhelming the victim? Underneath its masks, oppression is the oppressors’ way of giving himself absolution.
In other words, to justify the formula is to totally disregard the important reports on historical marginalisation like the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Report, that clearly pointed out those who are at the center and at the margin or periphery of national development.
The CRA’s mischief in the current stalemate regarding the formula to be used as the basis for sharing revenue among counties is a continuation of the disdain towards marginalised counties reflected in its recommendations to parliament with respect to the Second Policy on the Criteria for Identifying Marginalised Areas and Sharing of the Equalisation Fund in accordance with its mandate under Article 216(4) of the Constitution. The fund is a constitutional earmark of 0.5 per cent of annual revenue to be used to “provide basic services including; water, roads, health facilities and electricity to “marginalised areas”, as urged by article 204(2).
Under the second policy, the CRA departs from the first policy that had identified 14 counties in northern Kenya as marginalised areas and thus deserving of benefitting from the equalisation fund and instead identifies 1,424 administrative divisions across the 47 counties as “marginalised areas”. The policy choices in the CRA’s approach to the equalisation fund unravel when one realises that a good number of the administrative divisions identified are within the geographical limits of fairly well developed counties. Moreover, the choice of administrative units privileges national government structures and weakens the role of counties in the process. Worse, the choice shifts focus from the 14 historically marginalised counties whose economic exclusion the fund was intended to ameliorate. It assumes that parity in development has been achieved between the 14 counties and the rest of Kenya, a wildly fallacious assumption. Had the equalisation fund mechanism been implemented as envisioned in the constitution—with beneficiary counties managing the allocations—it could have assisted in cushioning marginalised counties in the event a formula favouring population as the overarching basis for revenue sharing is enacted.
In 2010, Kenya adopted a constitution that promised to address the daunting problem of ethno-regional economic discrimination. Its egalitarian tenets are evident in the quiet embrace of the principle of Ubuntu via Article 10 which holds “sharing” and “social justice” as defining values of our statehood.
As such, those at the CRA who developed the contentious formula must review their empirically unsupportable position that Kenya has made substantial progress in addressing marginalisation. We are persuaded by Malcom X’s assertion in his attack on race relations policies in the United States thus, “If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches, that is not progress. Even if you pull it all the way out, that is not progress”. Progress is thus about healing the wound, and Kenya hasn’t even begun to pull out the knife of inequality. The CRA must stand up to its mission or disband.
