Your county government flew its officials to Dubai and Singapore to learn “emotional intelligence” — while leaving local suppliers owed a combined Ksh.172 billion. This is not a rumour. It is the official finding of Controller of Budget Margaret Nyakang’o, and it should make every Kenyan taxpayer furious.
The Budget Implementation Review Report for the financial year ended June 2024 is the kind of document that powerful people hope ordinary citizens never read. It details, in cold bureaucratic language, how Kenya’s 47 county governments collectively spent over Ksh.17 billion on travel — foreign and domestic — in a single year. County executives took the biggest slice of that budget, jetting off to preferred destinations that include New York, London, Singapore, Dubai and Dodoma. The stated justifications? Training in transformative leadership, ethical leadership and emotional intelligence. Benchmarking on best leadership practices. Nyakang’o’s own report notes, pointedly, that many of these events could have been held locally.
Who Is Spending the Most — and Who Is Being Left Behind
Nairobi County led the travel spending at Ksh.850 million, a figure that is at least partially defensible given the county’s size and population. What is harder to explain is Narok County burning through Ksh.758 million, Nakuru spending Ksh.655 million, Samburu reaching Ksh.614 million and Tana River clocking Ksh.579 million. These are not economic powerhouses. Samburu and Tana River rank among Kenya’s most underdeveloped counties, where basic services remain chronically underfunded. The optics of their officials touring global capitals to learn leadership are not just bad — they are an indictment.
Meanwhile, the national government spent Ksh.25 billion on travel during the same period, commanding a budget more than eight times larger than what counties receive. That context matters, but it does not absolve anyone. It simply confirms that the culture of performative travel runs deep across every tier of government in this country.
The more damaging figure in Nyakang’o’s report is the Ksh.172 billion in pending bills — outstanding payments owed to suppliers as of 30th June 2024. Real businesses, many of them small and medium enterprises owned by ordinary Kenyans, delivered goods and services to county governments and have not been paid. Nairobi City County alone accounts for Ksh.86.90 billion of that burden, more than half the national total. Kilifi follows at Ksh.8.15 billion, Kiambu at Ksh.5.80 billion and Machakos at Ksh.4.49 billion. These are not abstract accounting entries — they represent suppliers who cannot pay their own workers, who cannot restock, who are being slowly bankrupted by governments that prioritised first-class seats over settled invoices.
The One Number That Cuts Through the Noise
There is a detail in this report that deserves far more attention than it will likely receive. Mombasa County overtook Nairobi in own-source revenue collection, topping the list with Ksh.21.1 billion against Nairobi’s Ksh.15.5 billion. Kiambu brought in Ksh.6 billion, Nakuru Ksh.5.3 billion and Narok Ksh.4.4 billion. For a county that has long been treated as an afterthought in national conversations about economic power, Mombasa’s performance signals something significant — that revenue potential exists where political will drives collection, not just where population density is highest.
The Controller of Budget has done her job. She has flagged the waste, named the counties and put the numbers on record. The harder question — the one that young, politically engaged Kenyans should be asking their governors, their MCAs and their county executives — is what happens next. Because if the answer is nothing, then the Ksh.17 billion spent learning emotional intelligence in Dubai will have taught us only one thing: that accountability in Kenya remains optional for those with the right title.
