Decentralized planning in Kenya

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND DEVELOPMENT, Vol. 7,77-93 (1987)

Decentralized planning in Kenya

JOHN M. COHEN and RICHARD M. HOOK Harvard Institute for International Development

SUMMARY

In 1983 the Government of Kenya embarked on an accelerated programme of decentralization known as ‘District Focus’. This exercise in devolution is aimed at promoting more effective and efficient use of scarce domestic resources through efforts to strengthen planning capacity at the district level, improve horizontal integration among operating ministry field agents, and expand authority to district heads of operating ministries for managing financial and procurement aspects of local project implementation. Given the importance of this initiative to the economic growth of Kenya and the current search for administrative reforms that could help accelerate rural development in Africa, District Focus merits close attention by development experts. This article reviews the historical background, content, and implementation progress of District Focus.

BACKGROUND ON DEVELOPMENT PLANNING

National planning efforts began in Kenya with the formation of committees charged by the British Colonial Development and Welfare Act of 1945 with preparing plans for post-war economic recovery. But planning did not take hold until after independence, when in 1964 a planning ministry was established. Given responsibility for promoting economic and social development, the ministry’s activities were guided by Sessional Paper No. 10 of 1965, entitled African Socialism and ifs Application to Kenya (Republic of Kenya, 1965). It stated that: (1) rapid, equitable economic, social and regional development would not occur if development activities were allowed to take their own course; (2) effective and efficient use of the country’s scarce resources toward development objectives required careful planning; and (3) planning would not be successful unless it was backed with efficient, responsive implementation machinery.

Rapid expansion of the private sector after independence (Killick, 1981; Swainson, 1980), the spread of rural infrastructure through the harambee movement (Mbithi and Rasmusson, 1977), and President Kenyatta’s decision to forge a strong centralized state controlling a range of parastatals (Leys, 1975, pp 63-169), reinforced the Government’s commitment to planning development and led to expansion of the budget. This involvement placed severe strains on the public sector’s capacity to design and implement development, particularly because of experienced personnel needed for increasingly complex planning and implementation functions.

The authors are on the staff of the Harvard Institute for International Development, I Eliot Street, Cambridge, Ma 02138, U.S.A.

0271-2075/87/010077-17$08.50 0 1987 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

78 John M . Cohen and Richard M . Hook

In an effort to address planning problems identified during the First National Development Plan, a national commission of inquiry was established in 1970 and 1971 (Government of Kenya, 197 1). Its recommendations, and subsequent reviews of other plans, led to reforms which steadily improved Kenya's planning machinery. Today the Ministry of Planning and National Development (MPND)' oversees five types of planning activities: macroeconomic, sector-specific, physical, environmental and district. These are reviewed elsewhere (Ghai, 1972; Killick, 1980; Pinfold and Norcliffe, 1980). They are co-ordinated through a set of sectoral planning groups, chaired by the MPND, which produce the national development plans and assist the Treasury in formulating budgets consistent with established policies (Jenny, 1980). While still plagued by staffing, budget co-ordination, and operational constraints, Kenya now has in place a well-defined planning system that is generally accepted by key government and policital leaders. Its most recent products are the 1984-88 National Development Plan and 40 District Development Plans. The latter identify on-going projects and programmes, as well as propose new facilities or services, that local representatives and technicians of operational ministries feel are priorities.

EMERGENCE OF A DECENTRALIZED PLANNING APPROACH

Sessional Paper No. 10 of 1965

During the first decade of independence the Government centralized control of development processes in the operational ministries (Leys, 1975, pp. 207-253; Mulusa, 1970, pp. 233-251). Yet, Sessional Paper No. 10 called for a mixed planning system that extended to the provincial, district, and municipality levels to accommodate investment proposals and allow local involvement in the development process (Government of Kenya, 1965, p. 51). This call was elaborated by the First National Development Plan (Government of Kenya, 1966, p. 8). It directed that committees be established at all levels, composed of field agents of ministries, palitical leaders, and local citizens, and charged with project planning, co- ordination, and implementation.

There are several reasons why these policy documents favoured the emergence of decentralized planning (Found, 1980, pp. 82-83; Delp, 1980, pp. 4-8). First, rural development was recognized as essential for agriculture to be an engine of growth. Second, data on local areas needed by planners were often unavailable or unreliable, and field agents of operational ministries were often transferred, or not well informed on the areas they worked in. Third, local people were recognized to have special knowledge about the development opportunities and constraints of their areas. Fourth, central planners had no institutional channels for tapping relevant local knowledge. Fifth, allowing local involvement in planning could generate increased commitment to development interventions and stimulate self-help resource mobilization. Sixth, significant ecological, demographic and historical

I The initial Ministry of Economic Planning and Development was absorbed into the Ministry of Finance and Planning (MFP) in 1976. In 1978 the Ministry split to form the Ministry of Economic Planning and Community Affairs, the title of which was changed to the Ministry of Economic Planning and Development in 1980. Merger into the MFP occurred in 1983, followed by a new separation as the MPND in 1985.

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differences between and within regions and districts made it difficult to formulate a coherent national approach to rural development. Finally, disaggregation of national plans to regional or district levels was likely to: (1) raise awareness of the pattern of government resource flows, permitting more rational and equitable budget allocations; (2) allow for evaluation of an area’s activities, facilitating the identification of investment gaps and promising interventions; (3) permit field agents to identify target groups needing special assistance, such as pastoralists or the landless; (4) facilitate supervision of operating ministry activities, thereby monitoring implementation rates; and (5) promote improved co-ordination among development programmes and projects in a given area. Based on such reasons, it was concluded that Kenya needed plans sufficiently specific to reflect the resources, endowments, development potential, and constraints of each region or district; and that plans, programmes, and projects formulated at the centre without local input were not likely to meet these needs.

Substantial constraints hampered district planning. These included: (1) absence of government machinery for administering a decentralized planning system; (2) shortage of field personnel skilled in planning techniques; (3) lack of support from local government officials and field ministry agents, who viewed themselves as administrators or technicians loyal to their authority or ministry rather than to the planning ministry; (4) concern by field professionals that increased regional or district involvement would allow political influence to affect what should be technical decisions; (5) concern that disaggregation needed to prepare district plans would alert the public to regional imbalances in the allocations of government investments and services, creating political problems; (6) reluctance of headquarters officials to give up their power to determine programme content and patterns of expenditure; (7) views by some national political leaders that centralization of decision making was essential to ‘nation-building’.

The Special Rural Development Programme

A 1966 conference on rural development at Kericho (Scheffield, 1967) led to the creation of the Special Rural Development Programme (SRDP) in 1967 (Oyugi, 1975). Six pilot areas were selected and special funds (including external donor support) were made available to them. In each area, local committees and foreign advisors assisted in forming plans and implementing projects. SRDP was expected to generate additional rural incomes and employment, develop planning skills and techniques appropriate to Kenya, and stimulate self-generating rural development programmes elsewhere in the country (Lele, 1975, p. 144).

The experiment identified the need for improved skill levels, increased staffing and infrastructure support, and commitment by central ministries to the concept of planning at and for decentralized levels. SRDP stimulated the appearance of the District Development Committee (DDC), the area co-ordinator or District Development Officer (DDO), and the kind of donor support that led to the Rural Development Fund (RDF) some years later (Hopcraft, 1977). However, project development was disappointing, implementation was slow, and inter-ministerial co- operation never reached levels permitting an integrated local approach (Institute for Development Studies, 1973, 1975; Oyugi, 1981; Nellis, 1972). The project was

80 John M. Cohen and Richard M. Hook

phased out entirely by 1977. Still, by moving headquarters staff to the field and getting them to work with district staff to prepare acceptable local plans, SRDP contributed to a government decision to engage in district level planning.

First National Development Plan: 1966-1970

No district plans were produced during this period. However, the plan stimulated the SRDP experiment and recommended the district as a key unit of analysis. Provisional Planning Officers (PPOs) and provincial and district committees were established but did not become active for several years.

During this period districts were asked to contribute to project formulation, but no adequate guidelines were given on priorities, financial ceilings, or project format. Seven PPOs were not enough to serve 40 districts, and no independent funding source was made available for financing local priorities. As a result, district contributions were uneven in quality and were often little more than long lists of inadequately justified project ideas. Even if useful district plans had emerged the Treasury could not have made use of them, since it lacked the technical manpower and procedures to incorporate district suggestion into national plans and budgets.

Second National Development Plan: 1970-1974

Again, no district plans were prepared in this period, although districts were encouraged to identify or initiate local development activities, some of which found their way into ministerial programmes (Government of Kenya, 1974, p. 166). The second plan period saw the gradual strengthening of planning committees at district and provincial levels. However, the committees had little impact on the planning process and were ineffective in setting local priorities or deciding between competing claims. Provincial administrators lacked the capacity to promote decentralized planning, few trained planners worked at the district level, data needed to make district plans useful were inadequate, and district heads of operating ministries were not integrated into the planning process (Heyer et al., 1971, p. 26; Government of Kenya, 1971, pp. 22, 112). Aside from the modest District Development Grants (DDG) started in 1971, which funded locally identified projects with large self-help components, districts continued to lack access to discretionary funds and the central ministries were still unable to fold local projects into their budgets. On balance, and with the exception of the lessons learned from the SRDP, the second national plan period represented a setback for district-based planning.

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE DISTRICT AS A BASIC UNIT OF PLANNING

Third National Development Plan: 1974-1978

Building on Government recommendations that DDO posts be established to promote decentralization (Government of Kenya, 197 1, pp. 112-1 14) and a growing trend by operating ministries to devolve more implementation authority to district

Decentralized Planning in Kenya 8 1

heads (e.g Leonard, 1970, pp. 91-lll), the draftsmen of the 1974-1978 plan addressed the problems hampering district planning. Their document presented detailed objectives and procedures for district level planning (Government of Kenya, 1974, I, pp. 111-113). These guide the production of 40 district plans prepared between 1975 and 1976.

The plan made the district the operational unit for preparing local plans and implementing selected activities (Selections 4.19-4.23). District plans were to be prepared by the DDCs, with a DDO posted to each district. The role of provincial committees and PPOs was reduced to providing professional guidance. District plans were to be forwarded to Nairobi and co-ordinated by an interministerial committee served by the Rural Planning Division’ in the Ministry of Finance and Planning (MFP). Implementation was to remain the responsibility of the operating ministries.

Funding for such district development was to come through the budgets of operating ministries supplemented by grants from the MFP’s budget. The mechanisms for incorporating district initiatives into ministry budgets still were not identified. Since the district plans were prepared after the publication of the National Plan, they made no contribution to determining the profile of national activities.

The Rural Planning Division adopted a format for district plans based on the topics outlined by the National Plan (Section 4.17), recruited and trained 20 DDOs, and prepared a plan formulation manual. Forty plans were produced. Labelled ‘District Plans’, they were in fact largely written at provincial and headquarters levels by PPOs and expatriate advisers. Despite these limitations, their production was a major accomplishment. However a 1980 evaluation of all 40 plans concluded they contained too many proposed projects, failed to set clear priorities, lacked detail needed by operational ministries, and failed to merge with the national budgetary system (Delp, 1980, pp. 15-16).

The amount of discretionary funds available outside operating ministry budgets for locally defined projects increased in 1974 with the establishment of the Rural Works Programme Grants, which supported small labour-intensive projects that created employment opportunities, developed productive infrastructure, and filled gaps in ministerial programmes. It soon combined with the DDG to form the RDF. Since then the RDF has steadily expanded its largely donor-supported funding so that today the RDF and an EEC micro-project fund created in 1976, provide incentives to districts to get allocations for suitable projects (Anonsen, et al., 1985; de Crombrugghe, 1985). While not a large allocation in each budget year K f 100 million in 1985/1986), these funds demonstrate the importance of outside resources to institutional development at the local level.

The challenge since 1976 has been to strengthen local capacity to implement and maintain the infrastructure these funds generate. Donors have provided province- based engineers, the Treasury has revised its fiscal rules to allow funding of RDF or EEC projects for 2-year periods, and the MPND has strengthened district level capacity to appraise, select, and monitor the hundreds of projects begun each year.

* Originally the Rural Planning Unit, i t was upgraded to a Section in 1978 and made responsible for co- ordination of all rural development activities. l t become a Division in 1979 and a Department in 1985.

82 John M, Cohen and Richard M. Hook

Fourth National Development Plan: 1979-1983

The Third Plan asserted that the next National Plan was to be formed by a synthesis of district plans. This was quickly recognized as impractical, but a number of important steps were taken between 1979 and 1983 to improve district-level planning.

First the government identified constraints to be overcome. Central among these were: (1) insufficient numbers of trained DDOs; (2) inability of many DDCs to manage the district planning process; (3) inadequate Treasury guidelines on budget ceilings; (4) scepticism by provincial and district planners over the use of district plans by central ministries; ( 5 ) poor liaison between planners and operating ministries in developing sectoral recommendations; (6) insufficient generation and sharing of data to carry out planning exercises; (7) limited participation by popular representatives in the DDCs; and (8) financial information systems at the ministerial level that made it difficult to disaggregate expenditures to the districts.

Second, with funding from USAID, the government extended a 1976 agreement with the Harvard Institute for International Development to help Kenyan officers address these constraints. Kenyan planners and Harvard advisors accelerated government efforts to train officers involved in decentralized planning, improve data systems for district planners, develop guidelines for local groups preparing small projects, increase local participation, and build planning and budgetary links between district and national allocation processes (for a full documentation of this project and topic see Cohen and Hook, 1986).

Third, by March 1978 the government had recruited, trained, and placed DDOs in every district. However, despite the arrival of advisers, the Rural Planning Division was understaffed and lacked technical capacity to assist DDOs in their activities. By mid-1978, it was clear that not all 40 plans could be prepared before the deadline. It was therefore decided to incorporate the next round of district plan drafts simultaneously into the national plan.

The exercise began in 1977 with the issuance of guidelines and the approval of a more comprehensive format for the district plans (Ministry of Finance, 1977). The plans were to be written at the district level, with major responsibility placed with the DDO, assisted by ministerial officers on the DDC. To force specificity the guidelines required each plan to contain a disaggregated list of ministry activities planned for the district, identify the intended beneficiaries of each activity, and spell out ways for broadening local involvement. The intention was to establish an iterative process in which DDCs would suggest revisions to ministerial programnies to be further refined by the ministries.

Central planners aimed at obtaining disaggregated ministry forward programmes and budgets early in the exercise to allow each DDC to voice its reaction to proposed allocations. However, most ministries were unwilling to break down their forward budget allocations to the district level until they were convinced that the forward budget ceilings were final, and this was very late in the National Plan drafting exercise. So, for only a very few programmes was the disaggregated imformation provided in time to allow even an interaction between the center and districts.

Other problems plagued the drafting process. Many DDOs, lacking disaggregated basic statistics on income in Kenya, had difficulty preparing social-economic profiles. DDOs also had trouble forging an integrated district plan because the DDC had no authority to require action or co-operation from the operating ministries.


Little effort was made to conceive an integrated plan, and procedures for carrying out the exercise were unclear. There were few incentives for central ministries to allow district input into their expenditure programmes or to stimulate participation by field agents in district plan formulation. Still, all 40 district plans were written at the district level and their content and quality exceeded that of the initial set.

District planning during this period was improved by the introduction of district development projects implemented under the Arid and Semi-Arid Lands Programme (Wiggins, 1985). These projects increased the planning capacity of 14 of the 40 districts during the 1984-1988 plan excerise. Importantly, the planning lessons which these projects generate for marginal areas have potential utility for more than half of Kenya’s districts.

Decentralized planning system By 1983 well-articulated planning structures were in place. DDCs were operating in all 40 districts, chaired by the DC with the DDO taking responsibility for the co- ordination of district- level planning. The DDCs were composed primarily of district and sub-district representatives of operating ministries, but included all members of Parliament from the district, two representatives from the elective local government, and a very limited number of non-official members, representing important parastatals, church groups, or other local development agencies. As the DDCs gained in responsibility, the role of the Provincial Planning Committees (PPC) declined, shifting from reviewing district plans, offering technical advice to the districts, and acting as a co-ordinating body for projects that cross district lines, toward programme monitoring. As a result of this shift, PPCs were renamed Provincial Monitoring and Evaluation Committees (PMEC) in 1983.

Below the district, divisional committees were operating in all divisions. Most locations, the second lower tier, had development committees, as did sub-locations in very densely populated areas. Such lower-level committees, which often have a higher proportion of non-official members than the DDCs, are taking on increased responsibility for identifying local small - scale development projects.

Also functioning at the district level are Community Development Committees, District Agricultural Boards, District Education Boards, District Land Control Boards and District Joint Loan Boards. The Physical Planning Department has representatives in many districts. Watershed authorities operate on an inter-district basis (for a full list see Republic of Kenya, 1982, pp. 99-106). Despite this profusion of committees, there has been little jurisdictional conflict, reflecting the fact that the DDC has been recognized and given direct support by the government as the principal institutional base for development. The area of greatest overlap is between the DDCs and local authorities (Akivaga et al., 1985), most notably the County Councils, which have the same geographic borders as DDCs and represent local citizens through elected representatives. Because the responsibilities and revenue base of the County Councils were sharply reduced in the post-independence period, the DDCs have little difficulty maintaining authority over them. Still, there is need to strengthen the development activities of local authorities and better link them to the DDCs.

1983 District Focus Policy A major government report issued in 1982 addressed Kenya’s declining economic growth, reduced public revenues, and inefficient management of budget resources


(Government of Kenya, 1982). In reguard to decentralization, it outlined recommendations for achieving the National Plan’s proposal that districts become the operational centres for rural development (pp. 53-55). These were adopted after lengthy government discussion and launched by President Moi as the ‘District Focus’ strategy.

Outlined in a June 1983 paper (Republic or Kenya, 1983) and revised in 1984 and 1985 (Republic of Kenya, 1984; 1985), the strategy asserts that district-based projects implemented by operational ministries, NGOs, or self-help groups should be identified, planned and implemented by DDCs. It emphasizes strengthening planning capacity at the district level, improving horizontal integration among ministry field agents, and expanding authority to district officers for managing financial and procurement aspects of local project implementation. The strategy does not change the framework for provincial administration or local government. Rather it transfers considerable responsibility from ministerial and provincial headquarters to district-level officers.

Implementation of District Focus is co-ordinated by the Office of the President, with the MPND developing planning systems to make the new policy work and the MOF ensuring that financial procedures support the policy. It has centred on: (1) increasing the DC’s supervisory authority over ministry field agents; (2) strengthening DDCs through a District Executive Committee (DEC) of technical officers responsible for plan preparation and project implementation; (3) providing more timely district-level financing through devolution of central responsibilities to district treasuries and tender boards; (4) training DCs and DDC officers; ( 5 ) redeploying technical personnel from the headquarters to the districts; and (6) increasing DVDCs’ and LDCs’ responsibility for identifying potential projects.

The District Focus strategy does not necessarily expand available resources beyond current levels. Funding of district activities remains under operating ministry control. Despite offical talk of allocating 5 to 10 per cent of their development allocations to districts for their own priorities, this has yet to occur. No ‘unified district budget’ is likely for some time, if ever (Goverment of Kenya, 1982, p. 120). Moreover, to date the strategy has yet to address directly the problem of limited recurrent budget resources at the district level. But some progress has been made, through the current budget rationalization programme (Ministry of Finance, 1985; Rural Planning Division, 1985), to require operating ministries to link their forward budget exercises to district plan priorities and to disaggregate budgets to the district level. Some initial steps have been taken to tie financial power to district planning efforts, an essential requirement for effective planning (Caiden and Wildavsky, 1974).

Fifth National Development Plan: 1984-1988 The fifth plan and the 40 district plans prepared concurrently were guided by the government’s new emphasis on more efficient use of scarce domestic resources. Guidelines for the 1984-1988 plans set a format of two chapters and five annual annexes, one published during each year of the plan period. Chapter 1 is a descriptive statement of the development context in each district, Chapter 2 sets forth the proposed strategy for development within the Chapter 1 context, and the annex contains revised district development priorities, a review of implementation accomplishments over the last year, and an update of the district’s 2-year rolling


plan, which includes a forward budget proposal and a work programme for the current year.

The two annual annexes prepared to date have allowed each district to: (1) note accomplishments made and problems encountered during the preceding year; (2) reflect changes in priorities; (3) adjust budget proposals to on-the-ground implementation status; and (4) gradually build a data baseline for monitoring implementation rates. Taken together the plans and annexes provide an overview of the context, the strategy and priorities for development within the district, and a regularly updated work programme for implementing the strategy. The framework encompasses not only district-specific projects funded by ministries, but those financed by the RDF, EEC and ASAL projects. Local self-help or harambee activities and private sector entrepreneurial initiatives are also included, although the system has not yet incorporated them well.

All 40 district plans were produced on time, partly because of the creative application of microcomputer word processing technology. Draft plans were written in the districts by DDOs and sent to headquarters Rural Planning Division for comment, initial typing, and editing. As in the previous district planning exercise, the strategy envisioned a multi-cycle iterative process between the DDOs and headquarters staff. In some cases this did occur, although in most districts time constraints limited the process to no more than two iterations. When a final draft was approved, camera-ready copy was sent to the printer for offset printing, avoiding the delay of mechanical typesetting and giving districts a high-quality draft that raised morale.

This set of district plans was plagued by the continued inability of operating ministries to disaggregate their forward development budgets for the 5-year plan period in time for each district to have information for the preparation of its plans. Dissagregation was difficult because the ministries used mechanical technology to process financial data and because the Treasury did not produce reliable forward budgets, leading ministries to avoid disaggregation because of uncertainty and revisions. These constraints were addressed in 1984 with the introduction of a credible forward budget process as part of the budget rationalization programme (Ministry of Finance and Planning, 1985), the issuance of a circular requiring ministries to issue disaggregated budgets that could be reviewed by districts prior to ministry budget submissions to the Treasury (Ministry of Finance, 1985), the introduction of microcomputers to process the Treasury’s budget (Westcott, 1989, the expansion of microcomputers into the financial offices of the operating ministries (Pinckney et uf., 1983), and the issuance of a set of ministry-wide development and recurrent budget books disaggegated by district. Such reforms increase the availability of accurate financial data in the districts and could lead to more realistic 1989-1993 plans and better political awareness of the distribution of government resources among districts (Barkin, 1978).

IMPORTANT PATTERNS IN THE KENYAN EXPERIENCE

Several important patterns characterize the history of decentralized planning in Kenya. They help explain past difficulties and outline future needs if recent progress is to be institutionalized.

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Local resource allocation authority

Decentralized planning is unlikely to be taken seriously by local leaders and ministerial field agents when financial resources are inadequate to promote their priorities. Where discretionary funding has been available (for example RDF, EEC and some ministry programmes such as Rural Access Roads or Rural Water Supply) substantial local planning activity has been generated. But for most of the period reviewed resources have been limited, explaining in part the equivocal response of districts since 1966.

Only 8 per cent of the 1983 development budget was available on a discretionary basis for districts. Current ceilings on government expenditures (Leonard et al., 1983) and domination of operating budgets by large donor projects, make it difficult to increase this percentage. Two major options for increasing discretionary funds exist: (1) establishing a donor and government-funded National District Development Fund (a consolidated and expanded RDF/EEC fund) from which each district would have an agreed resource share to be allocated entirely in accordance with its preferences; and (2) granting districts revenue-generating sources, particularly to support the recurrent costs which the District Focus will generate but which the government cannot afford and donors will not support.

John M. Cohen and Richard M. Hook

DDCs and district planning capacity

DDCs are too large (70-90 members) and meet too infrequently to provide continuous management of operating ministry programmes and projects. The newly formed DECs (30-35 technical officers) provide a more efficient planning and management committee. But even they may prove unwieldy. What is needed is a core ‘steering committee’ (chaired by the DC, composed of a few DEC members, and served by a technical secretariat) and specialized subcommittees for specific tasks. The secretariat is currently emerging as the District Planning Unit (DPU), headed by the DDO and staffed with an assistant DDO, a statistical officer, and a paraprofessional engineer.

The PMECs need to be strengthened to help DPU staff undertake more economic analysis. The monitoring and evaluation functions of the PPOs’ offices need to be strengthened so they can better enumerate achievements, identify problems, make recommendations, and serve both the DDOs and the operating ministries to improve project implementation.

Sub-district Development Committees

The numbers and activities of DVDCs, LDCs, and SLDCs are increasing, particularly in densely populated areas-a necessary step if decentralized planning is to be responsive to local needs. It is particularly important to strengthen technical input at the divisional and sub-divisional levels so that projects are neutrally evaluated before they are adopted and become politically sacrosanct.

Training and staff development

Decentralized planning and implementation have become increasingly complex. Today some provinces have more economic activity than the entire nation had at the


time of independence. It is no longer possible to use minimally trained officers to direct the development process at the provincial and district level. Nor is it possible to guide the District Focus strategy from a small unit of planners and economists in Nairobi. Substantial training at all levels must occur.

Some 3500 persons must receive short-term training courses in district-based government development strategies, procedures, and regulations. Perhaps an additional 500 officers will need more specialized long-term technical training. Here the emphasis should be on building technical capabilities at the provincial level so that province-based resource teams can assume leadership in training and provide extension services to their districts. To meet this challenge the government has adopted a national training strategy (Office of the President, 1985). It is guiding an emerging set of courses run by the government training institutes, ministries, and overseas universities.

District capacity for financial management

Decentralization of spending authority and Treasury operations is essential to reduce finance-generated delays in implementation. Several reforms promote this. First an increasing proportion of Authorities to Incur Expenditure (AIE) are being transferred directly to operating ministry spending stations (some 90 per cent of which are located at the district level) for the full amount authorized at the beginning of the fiscal year. This reform alters previous practices where AIEs were transferred in an ad-hoc way from headquarters to districts through provincial departmental heads. Second, limits of local District Tender Boards have been sharply increased. Previously, limits were set so low that virtually all important project purchases moved to ministry headquarters or to the Central Tender Board. Delays were lengthy. The new increased limits permit speedier decisions, and should help develop local supply and contracting capacity in the private sector. Finally, District Treasury staffs have been strengthened. There have also been dramatic increases in the level of imprest funds available to district heads of operating ministries and the ceilings of the district cash float. Higher cash float levels allow for more rapid payment of AIE holder expenditures. Previously, many ministries had to use provincial treasuries for payment of invoices. Depending on distance and communication facilities, delays were often discouragingly long.

Completion and maintenance of local infrastructure There is a pressing need to ensure completion of development budget-financed projects. Beyond building facilities, the districts need to better maintain and use what they already have. But decentralization in Kenya makes achieving these objectives difficult because projects planned by DDCs are dependent for their implementation on technical officers in operating ministries and on vulnerable recurrent budget lines in those ministries responsible for the maintenance of the projects financed. Given the facts that DDCs have little influence over the recurrent budget allocations of operating ministries, that the government is likely to have severely restricted budgets for at least the next decade, and that the estimated annual recurrent cost of grant-financed district projects is estimated to run to 15 per cent of the investment costs, the operation of completed district projects is a major problem that must be resolved.


Potential solutions to this problem are not promising. First, the government could require that district heads legally commit their ministries to maintain those development budget-funded projects they implement. But there is little districts can do to enforce such agreements when ministries are pressed against recurrent budget ceilings. Second, donors are unlikely to cover recurrent costs of projects they fund. Transition strategies for those willing to provide maintainance support are risky, with donors fearing becoming enmeshed in endless support. Third, it is unrealistic to expect the harambee movement to fill this gap. Most such projects start with the expectation that the government will assist with operation and maintenance costs. Local people are likely to see harambee drives for recurrent costs as taxation (Homquist, 1984). Fourth, it is unlikely the government will give taxation powers to districts, although it might return to local authorities some that they lost in 1970.

District-level stafing

Effective decentralization requires posting more experienced officers to districts, and slowing down transfer rates by ensuring a career path and timely promotion for district service. The government must train more technicians in decentralization tasks (planning techniques, budget management, or project implementation), motivate officers through the delegation of duties, and raise morale by providing adequate staff housing and logistic support.

District data requirements

Districts must be provided with the minimum information needed to plan and implement development activities and technical officers who can interpret and apply the data. Toward this end, Kenya has begun to establish District Information and Documentation Centres tied to a central clearing house. Building links among the clearing house and the data sources in the government (e.g. Central Bureau of Statistics household surveys), the donor community, or academia is an important task. So too, it is essential to post to each district at least one statistical officer who can maintain the documentation centre, interpret information, and promote greater data use.

Local project preparation

Successful decentralization depends in large measure on district capacity to formulate viable project proposals. Recognizing this, the government has developed project handbooks for local use (e.g. Bethke, 1984), prepared district-specific ‘standard design manuals’ for improving project costing and construction activities, and commenced training programmes focused on project preparation.

Rural-urban links

Kenya’s most pressing problem is to build modernizing small farm and non-farm sectors linked to urban areas in ways that generate employment for an increasing population (Evans, 1985; Republic of Kenya, 1986, pp. 41-61). To date DDCs have been largely concerned with water, health, and education projects that promote the


quality of town life. It is now imperative that DDCs and local authorities incorporate into district plans investments that create the infrastructure needed to attract manufacturing firms, stimulate suppliers of agricultural inputs, and support a lively informal sector of service and fabrication entrepreneurs.

National and district planners must therefore give attention to policies and investments that: (1) facilitate the vigorous growth of small towns and urban centres; (2) expand the distribution of urban goods and services required to raise agricultural productivity; (3) stimulate employment-generating private investment in towns; (4) enhance the adminstration and revenues of local authorities so they have the capacity to promote productive urban growth. If the government does not get districts to invest in employment-generating infrastructure, Kenya will face a very difficult future.

National political factors

Kenya’s experience since independence is an excellent example of the importance of national political factors in determining the possibilities for decentralized planning. From independence until his death in 1978, President Kenyatta’s primary emphasis was on centralizing economic direction of the economy as part of the nation- building process. While his government wrote the rhetoric of decentralized, participatory planning into national policy statements, progress was slow. Pilot programmes were undertaken and harambee efforts encouraged, but these were relatively weak impulses compared to the dominating thrust of centralization.

The environment changed dramatically with the accession of President Moi. Early in 1979 the Office of the President sent a note to the planning ministry expressing interest in decentralization as a principal vehicle for rural development and inviting planning to respond and to initiate a dialogue. The emergence and positive reception of the District Focus strategy shows that the power of the Office of the President and the provincial administration is squarely behind the programme. The efforts of the 1970s taught valuable lessons, increased the constituency in favour of district- level planning, and gradually improved the institutional base and staffing position. However, the rapid gains of recent years are clearly and directly attributable to changes in national leadership, economic vision, and political imperatives.

Participation

Participation, as used in Kenya documents on decentralized planning, has not meant a high degree of involvement by non-officials or citizen groups. The Kenyan model more closely approximates ‘bureaucratic deconcentration’ (Rondinelli, et al., 1983, pp. 13-31). The DDC includes Members of Parliament and some elected Chairmen of County Councils have been asked to sit on some DECs. But overall, popular representatives make up a small proportion of active committee membership. One survey of five districts estimated non-governmental membership of DDCs to be less that 25 per cent (Anonsen, 1985, p. 39).

Containing district development participation mostly within the bureauracy does provide for control, co-ordination of efforts, and accordance of activity with national and DDC priorities. But the present rapid turnover of district-level officers, and the informal policy that discourages most of them from being from the district


in which they serve, reduces the amount of local knowledge brought to the planning process. There is also the risk that retaining the major responsibility for local development in central ministry hands may fail to promote private sector involvement and result in increased central control. This would be a perverse outcome, clearly not within the guiding concepts of the District Focus strategy. It is clear, however, that central guidelines are necessary to ensure that local demands for social welfare investments do not result in excessive recurrent cost burdens on the state, or that increasing regional inequality does not result from the tendency of richer districts to surge ahead of the poorer ones. Centralized gate-keeping on expenditures, and some re-allocation of locally generated funds, is essential to ensure efficient use of scarce domestic resources as well as avoid politically destabilizing regional imbalances.

Participation by local leaders can be advanced by increased reliance on sub- district committees as sources of project proposals, since there is more local participation in them. While not established or funded in all jurisdictions, they do provide an opportunity for local notables to promote popular priorities. Government can enhance participation by urging operating ministries to keep staff and local people informed about their activities. In particular, governments can make better use of radio stations and rural newspapers. Steps in this direction are essential for local knowledge and involvement in decentralization processes.

Scope of district plans

Under District Focus, DDC plans should include activities of local authorities and non-governmental organizations. However, this relationship needs to be clarified, particularly for districts having extraordinary revenue from agriculture, gameparks, or other sources. The jurisdiction of DDCs over NGOs operating at the grassroots level also needs to be addressed.

It will not be easy to balance central control through DDC plans with the 1982 Working Party’s call for the government ‘to stimulate the people to supply more of their development needs through self-help’ (Republic of Kenya, 1982, p. 5). The government has struggled with this problem in regard to harambee projects since 1966 when Sessional Paper No. 10 declared they would be ‘subject to the same discipline as other parts of the development effort’ (Government of Kenya, 1965, p. 36). Pressures for control emerge for political reasons as well as economic concerns that scarce resources should not be wasted on poorly conceived projects. For this reason the question of DDC jurisdiction over local authorities, NGOs, and self-help activities will require much negotiation.

Sectoral ministry response

The Office of the President, the MOF, and the MPND can push district planning and the District Focus strategy only so far. In the end success depends on the active support of the operating ministries. If they fail to establish guidelines for district activities in their sector, neglect to incorporate district priorities into their budgets, or do not redeploy competent staff to the field, decentralization is unlikely to succeed. A 1985 study of plans submitted by all ministries in 1983 concluded that


ministries generally are: (1) unclear about what activities should be transferred to the districts; (2) unable to recruit sufficient technical staff to deploy to all districts; (3) inattentive to problems of training or reorienting staff to District Focus objectives; (4) unclear how to revise their budget management systems to comply with District Focus; and (5) uncertain how to monitor and evaluate district development projects (Ministry of Planning and National Development, 1985). Substantial attention must be given by senior government officials to sectoral ministry responses if decentralization is to succeed.

Interministerial co-operation and co-ordination

Decentralization depends heavily on the government’s ability to promote better interministerial co-ordination and co-operation in district planning. In the past, interministerial working groups were the vehicle used to design and implement multisectoral district level activities. Only a few were successful, largely because of naive central-level conceptualization of the task of sectoral coordination and the absence of real resources to induce it. There are a number of grounds for optimism since then. One is the increased awareness during the 1984-1988 district planning exercise that local-level decisions are important and legitimate, and that interministerial co-operation is possible. The various ASAL programmes have promoted greater local co-ordination across ministries in many districts. Most important is the government’s clear message that District Focus is an important initiative that has strong political support. Still, careful attention must be given to the mechanisms promoting and effecting interministerial co-ordination.

Consolidation of the planning strategy

By 1985 the structure of an expanded district planning system was in place. Now the gains introduced over the past five years must be consolidated. Aside from training a cadre of district planning officers to make it function correctly, the analytical content of plan documents must be increased and their use by technical and financial officers in the operating ministries promoted.

Careful evaluation of current decentralization activities is needed. Based on such findings a strategy must be worked out for raising the quality and utility of district planning exercises. It will have to be closely linked to training programmes, and they in turn to more rigorous planning officer recruitment standards. Importantly, government personnel rules will have to be revised so that officers have terms of service that allow them to advance their careers without having to transfer to headquarters positions unrelated to district planning functions.

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