The Status of the Agricultural Sector after Devolution to County Governments

Abstract

Executive Summary

The agriculture sector has over the years been the largest contributor to our country’s economic growth. In recent years, the sector has undergone a number of institutional changes – the most significant one being transfer of majority of the national government functions to the county governments in 2013. We conducted a study to understand how the sector has adjusted to these changes, specifically in structure, planning and coordination provisions at the county level and the level of financing to the sector. We purposefully selected 16 counties across the regions in the country for our analysis. We held qualitative interviews with County Executive Committee members for agriculture, Chief Officers, and County Directors of Agriculture in these counties. We deliberated on issues such as: policy communication, coordination and implementation; financing of the agriculture sector; planning, linkages to national plans and targets; and requirements including human capital required for successful realization of goals all at the county level. We find that planning was done with a lot of emphasis on the constitutional requirement of public participation. Although funding for the sector in many counties had increased, the share in total budget was still low. Old problems such as late receipt of funds still exist especially at sub county levels, and the current budgeting system at the county level needs to be strengthened. Communication channels between the national and county governments were very long and bureaucratic in the first year, but improved in the second year. Coordination both between the two levels of government and among county governments was still weak and more could be done to improve this. Key institutions such as the Intergovernmental Technical Relations committee took long to set up, although the ministry now has a secretariat for intergovernmental relations. County governments took up a number of projects that were previously funded by the national government and in some cases initiated a number of new projects. However, in some cases, we found duplication of project between the national and county governments. Key challenges for the sector include harmonization of activities between the two levels of government, strengthening the planning and budgeting processes, legislating the required laws at the county level, attaining synergy among counties, strengthening key activities such as ix extension and the development of value chains. Another key challenge remains the handling of human resource. In some cases, staff from the national governments were absorbed by county governments, while in most cases, county governments hired new staff. External challenges facing the sector such as low productivity, disease outbreaks, and adverse weather will have to be tackled more effectively and efficiently by the county and national governments for the sector to sustain the growth recorded in recent years.