Governing Water Service Delivery Under Devolution in Kenya

Abstract

Kenya's 2010 Constitution introduced a devolved governance system that reassigned water service delivery responsibilities to county governments while retaining water resources management, regulation, and policy oversight at the national level. Although devolution aimed to improve responsiveness, accountability, and equity, water service delivery outcomes remain uneven across counties, raising concerns regarding institutional coordination, governance capacity, and intergovernmental relations within the sector. This study adopts a qualitative, institutionally grounded research design based on systematic analysis of publicly available constitutional provisions, policy and legal frameworks, regulatory assessments, sector reports, and county- level planning and budgeting documents produced between 2010 and 2025. Documentary materials analyzed included Water Services Regulatory Board (WASREB) reports, county integrated development plans, county budget documents, sector implementation reports, and national water governance frameworks. The analysis examines how formal responsibilities are interpreted and operationalized across national and county levels of government. The findings show that devolution has increased the political salience of water services at county level and enabled more locally responsive investment in some historically underserved areas. However, water service delivery outcomes remain highly uneven across counties. Persistent challenges include overlapping institutional mandates, weak intergovernmental coordination, disparities in technical and administrative capacity, fragmented investment planning, uneven regulatory compliance, and misalignment between county political incentives and long- term governance requirements. The analysis further demonstrates that formal constitutional assignment of functions has not eliminated negotiated authority or governance tensions within the sector. The study concludes that the effectiveness of devolved water service delivery depends less on formal allocation of functions than on the quality of institutional coordination and intergovernmental interaction. Strengthening governance coordination, clarifying operational roles, improving regulatory alignment, and investing in county- level institutional capacity are critical to achieving equitable and sustainable water service delivery under devolution.