Elgeyo Marakwet County (EMC), which is among the least funded counties in Kenya, surprised many when it emerged as one of the best performing counties in productivity in a groundbreaking report released by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS).
EMC was ranked the second County in Kenya with the highest Gross County Product (GCP) per capita (per person) after Nyandarua County which topped the list. Nairobi County was placed third.
The report also listed Nyandarua, Elgeyo Marakwet and Busia as the top three most improved Counties in productivity, thus generating wealth for their people since 2013 when devolution started. The findings thus ranked Governor Alex Tolgos as the second best performing governor in Kenya.
The KNBS findings lends credence to a report released in October, 2015 by the World Bank which said Elgeyo Marakwet was the second fastest growing County in Kenya in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) with a growth of 8.8 percent per annum.
In the KNBS report released in February, 2019, Elgeyo Marakwet’s agricultural productivity increased by 151 percent as at 2017 placing the County’s agricultural output at Ksh 34.7 billion.
Surprisingly, EMC agricultural output was more than neighbouring Uasin Gishu County which is traditionally part of the Kenya’s food basket.
KEY DRIVERS
The findings can largely be attributed to various strategies the County put in place when Governor Tolgos assumed office in 2013. Top among them being promotion of cash crops under the ‘buy-one-get-one free’ seedlings subsidy programme, distribution of drought tolerant cash crops along the Kerio Valley and the subsidized Artificial Insemination (AI) programme.
In the AI programme, the County so far been able to carry out 17,468 inseminations with a 80 percent success rate. This was achieved through employment of inseminators and purchase of motorbikes for their mobility in the wards. The County also constructed 10 milk coolers and installed 13 coolers in wards and this is ongoing until all wards are covered.
The County further constructed 9 sale yards in nine wards, 23 new dips, 10 vaccination crushes and rehabilitated 106 dips.
This is in addition to vaccinating over 592,000 livestock for various diseases to keep our animals healthy and productive.
In breed improvement, the County facilitated farmers in the County to improve their breeds by purchasing and distributing 261 pedigree heifers, 16 dairy goats, 45 wool sheep ewes and 125 rams, 30 dorper sheep and 75 rams, 103 galla bucks goats, 14, 038 improved chicken, 28 sahiwal bulls and 157 bee hives and their accessories.
CASH CROPS
Since 2013, the County embarked on promotion of cash crops including tea, coffee, mango, macadamia, avocado, tissue culture bananas, pyrethrum and temperate fruits. The County further purchased and distributed 1 million tea seedlings and established 72 hectares of tea farms, 109,514 coffee seedlings planted on 44 hectares of land, 283, 300 pyrethrum splits on 460 hectares of land and 38,800 mango seedlings grown on 50 hectares of land.
It also distributed 5, 400 temperate fruit seedlings planted on nine hectares of land, 24,000 tissue culture bananas covering 29 hectares, macadamia seedlings now grown on 20 hectares.
The County government further introduced interventions in dry land areas of the County where it purchased and distributed drought tolerant seeds to farmers in Kerio Valley including groundnuts, peas, beans, sorghum, water melon and pigeon peas. This also included infrastructure support for irrigation through purchase of pipes for water furrows water distribution.
OTHER ACCOLADES
Elgeyo Marakwet County was the first to enact the Equitable Development Act (EDA) that gives citizens in all the 20 wards in the County power to decide their development priorities through open and structured public participation forums.
In April, 2015, Ipsos Synovate which is a top research company in Kenya ranked Governor Tolgos at number six nationally in a report titled “Top of the Cream; Kenya’s best Governor named in national poll”.
The survey conducted in all counties in Kenya said Elgeyo Marakwet had done well in roads, agriculture, hospitals, transformed former polytechnics and improved the general quality of life for the people.
In August the same year, the Ethics and Anti Corruption Commission (EACC) released another survey titled The Corruption and Ethics Survey in Devolved Services which rated Elgeyo Marakwet as among the least corrupt counties in Kenya.
Out of this rating, the County was chosen to host the North Rift region celebrations to mark the International Anti Corruption Day in December 9th, 2016, a function graced by EACC Deputy CEO Mr Michael Mubea.
The World Bank in another report, released in October 2015, placed Elgeyo Marakwet as the second fastest growing county in Kenya in Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
In the report, titled ‘Bright Lights, Big Cities; Measuring National and Subnational Economic Growth in Africa from Outer Space, with an Application to Kenya and Rwanda’, the World Bank said the County posted a GDP growth of 8.8 percent per annum.
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