Download Your Copy: The Chronicle Weekly August 10, 2026
Two years of data, and still not one “A.” That’s the number this issue of The Chronicle Weekly turns on.
The Parliamentary Budget Office has finally given the Senate, and the rest of us, a standardised way to score how counties spend public money, built under the constitutional oversight mandate Article 96 hands the Senate, but which, until now, it had no real tool to exercise.
What it found should unsettle anyone still treating devolution as a settled success. The national average composite score barely moved between the two financial years measured, and the “bottom nine” counties PBO now wants the Senate to scrutinise more closely include some names that will surprise readers and some that won’t.
What’s more instructive than the ranking itself is what it demolishes. Nairobi, sitting on the country’s largest county budget, cannot manage its pending bills any better than counties a fraction its size.
Embu, rarely part of the devolution conversation, produced the report’s only genuine turnaround story, leaping from mid-table obscurity to the top of the national ranking in a single year.
Neither fact fits comfortably into the narrative that either side of the devolution debate usually reaches for, which is exactly why we’ve led with it this week.
We have paired that scorecard with two pieces reading the same instinct for institutional accountability into national politics.
One asks why “not Ruto” still isn’t a governing programme for the opposition, 12 months out from an election, it insists it can win.
The other traces how State House has quietly become what Karen once was for the President: a delegation machine for building political capital ahead of a vote, only now with the convening power of the presidency and a Treasury line attached to it.
Elsewhere in this issue: what DP World’s Jomvu bet says about whether Mombasa can finally convert a port into an economy, and why Kenya’s track record on Special Economic Zones gives every reason for caution about how quickly that happens.
We also look at how the “side hustle” quietly stopped being a hustle and became infrastructure for how Kenyan households actually get by, and what three gold medals in Glasgow reveal about how narrow, and how fragile, Kenya’s competitive sporting base has become beyond distance running.
As always, The Chronicle. Weekly rather ask an uncomfortable question early than a convenient one late. We hope this issue does that for you.
