As Kenyans settle into the new year, the government says it is shifting from policy design to real results, but what should citizens demand so this does not become another promise that sounds good and delivers nothing?
Development Diaries reports that at a recent cabinet committee meeting on governance and public administration, senior figures described the move as a ‘strategic reset’, one that will finally make public money follow performance rather than promises.
Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi said Kenya already had good policies on paper, but citizens have not felt their impact in daily life. That admission matters, as it confirms the weak execution of policies that Kenyans experience every day.
It is understood that the proposed fix is performance-based budgeting, with Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi warning that funding decisions in 2026 will increasingly depend on measurable outcomes, not intentions.
While in theory, this is how public finance is supposed to work, in practice, Kenyans have heard similar promises before.
For decades, Kenya has operated under the Public Finance Management Act, annual programme-based budgets, and constitutional guarantees to education, health, water, and social protection.
Yet schools still reopen without enough teachers or textbooks. Hospitals struggle with staffing gaps and unpaid suppliers, while youth empowerment funds are announced with fanfare, only to disappear into opaque bureaucratic pipelines. Auditor-General reports repeatedly document waste, underperformance, and poor value for money, but consequences are rare.
This history makes the 2026 promise fragile, and the biggest risk is not that performance-based budgeting is a bad idea, but the risk is weak accountability.
Kenya already has oversight mechanisms on paper, such as parliamentary committees, internal audits, external audits, and performance contracts. Yet ministries, departments, and agencies routinely miss targets without losing funding or leadership positions. When failure carries no cost, ‘performance’ becomes a political label rather than an enforceable standard.
If budgets are truly going to be performance-based, the people of Kenya must be able to see how performance is defined and judged. The following questions are therefore crucial: Which ministry committed to what outcomes? What indicators are being used? Who verifies the data? And what happens when targets are missed?
Without publicly available performance scorecards, independent verification, and automatic sanctions, funding decisions will remain discretionary and vulnerable to political bargaining.
This is not a technical debate. It is a rights issue that aligns with the argument that when budget allocations do not translate into services, constitutional rights are violated, with children losing learning time, women facing preventable health risks, and informal settlements remaining without water, sanitation, and basic infrastructure.
One thing is clear. These failures are not evenly distributed, as women, rural communities, persons with disabilities, and the urban poor absorb the worst consequences of budget inefficiency.
Responsibility, therefore, sits clearly with three institutions. The National Treasury controls releases. Cabinet Secretaries control execution. Parliament controls approval and oversight. If money continues to flow to non-performing ministries in 2026, the failure will not be administrative but political.
Kenyans should not treat the government’s announcement as reassurance. They should treat it as an opening. This is the moment to demand that ministry performance data be published in plain language, not buried in technical reports.
It is the moment to insist that the auditor-general’s findings trigger funding consequences, not press statements. It is the moment to question MPs during budget hearings about outcomes, not just allocations.
Kenya does not need more plans. It needs visible delivery and enforceable accountability. If 2026 ends with the same excuses and the same gaps between budgets and lived reality, then the so-called strategic reset will have failed not because it was impossible, but because it was never allowed to challenge power.
