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Despite the government pumping billions of shillings into Turkana County, the level of inequality between the rich and poor has not changed much, a State report says.

A joint survey on inequality trends and diagnostics in Kenya 2020 by Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) and the University of Nairobi (UoN), says Turkana County has a Gini co-efficient of 0.559 in 2015/16, up from 0.418 in 1994, which means that income was not well distributed in the county in that period.

A Gini co-efficient is a measure of the distribution of income across a population whereby a greater Gini index denotes a higher rate of inequality.

In general, the report ranks Turkana as the poorest and most unequal devolved unit in Kenya.

The report notes that counties with annual expenditure below Sh28,000 in 1994 were Marsabit, Turkana and Samburu but this has changed.

“With the promulgation of the Constitution of Kenya in 2010, and with county governments now in place, the county has become a key region for policy making,” notes the report, released yesterday.

Turkana County also falls under those region with the least number of households with access to internet in the same pool as Marsabit, Wajir, Garissa and Garissa. 

“This implies that internet connectivity is skewed in favour of counties with large urban population.”

Data gleaned from the County Revenue Allocation (CRA) website for the financial year 2019/20 indicates that Turkana, with a population of 926,976 (2019 Census) received Sh10.5 billion as equitable share for the period under review, in addition to Sh825.5 million in total loans and grants, in contrast to Nairobi County, whose equitable share for a similar period was Sh15.9 billion with total loans and grants standing at Sh194.7 billion.

Highest reduction

On the other side of the scale, the county with the highest reduction of inequality over the period was Nairobi, whose Gini index dropped from 0.531 to 0.340, with Wajir County having the lowest Gini coefficient of 0.272. 

The estimates show that 35 counties experienced a reduction in inequality between 1994 and 2015/16 while 12 counties experienced an increase in inequality over the same period.

Other counties that ranked high in inequality in 2015/16 were Samburu, Kajiado, Kisumu, Tana River and Kilifi counties.

County governments are allocated finances by the National government, in addition to having their own source revenue (OSR).

Data by the National Treasury indicates that for the financial period 2019/20, county governments’ actual OSR collection stood at Sh35.8 billion against a target of Sh54.9 billion, representing 65.2 percent of the annual target.

This was a drop in absolute terms from Sh40.3 billion collected in 2018/19 fiscal year which was 74.8 per cent of the annual OSR target.