A deserted site of the upcoming Nyeri County Aggregation and Industrial parks along the Nyeri-Nanyuki highway near the Naromoru area on March 29, 2024.
The government is now asking counties to fund establishment of industrial parks across the 47 devolved units after one of President William Ruto’s flagship projects ran into a deep funding crisis.
Trade and Industrialisation Cabinet Secretary Lee Kinyanjui told senators on Thursday that regions whose County Aggregation and Industrial Parks (CAIPs) exceed the Sh500 million joint funding threshold, will have to finance the balance.
The revelations laid bare the growing troubles facing one of the Kenya Kwanza administration’s ambitious industrialisation programmes, a project President Ruto marketed during and after the 2022 campaigns as central to reviving manufacturing, reducing post-harvest losses and creating jobs.
But behind the government’s promises lies a programme struggling with abandoned construction sites, massive funding shortfalls, land ownership disputes and counties unable to meet basic infrastructure requirements needed to support industrial production.
The project marketed as one of President Ruto’s key to job creation, was allocated Sh4.45 billion in the financial year ending June 2026. In the year ending June 2025, the programme received a budget allocation of Sh2 billion, but only Sh1 billion was eventually disbursed.
A year earlier, in the financial year ending June 2024, the government allocated Sh4.5 billion for the projects, but only Sh1.15 billion reached counties, leaving a funding hole of more than Sh3.3 billion.
A deserted site of the upcoming Nyeri County Aggregation and Industrial parks along the Nyeri-Nanyuki highway near the Naromoru area on March 29, 2024.
Several project have either stalled or remain far behind schedule. In Tana River County, the Chifiri industrial park stalled after the national government failed to release funds, while in Nandi County, construction had barely progressed beyond a partial perimeter wall.
The plan is also facing structural challenges tied to Kenya’s agricultural economy, where smallholder farmers dominate production with low yields per acre, making aggregation of sufficient raw materials both costly and unreliable.
Audit findings have also exposed land ownership problems in several counties.
In Turkana County, for instance, a 100-acre parcel earmarked for an industrial park reportedly lacked a title deed, leaving the project in limbo.
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