With just two years to the general elections, President William Ruto has announced a far-reaching restructuring of Kenya’s grassroots administration, promoting all trained chiefs and assistant chiefs and rolling out a major expansion of security infrastructure across the country.
Addressing more than 15,000 chiefs and their assistants at State House, Nairobi, Ruto said the promotions will take effect on July 1, 2026, describing chiefs as “enablers of our country’s development plan at the grassroots.” The overhaul includes issuing tablets to all chiefs to improve data reporting and accountability, and deploying more than 3,000 new vehicles to boost mobility in remote areas.
In a move likely to draw political attention ahead of the 2027 polls, the President also announced that the country’s more than 106,000 village elders will be put on a monthly stipend of KSh3,000, starting July 1, 2026. He said the government will further operationalise 24 new sub-counties, 88 divisions, 318 locations and 675 sub-locations, and build 900 new police stations to enhance security nationwide.
But the reforms have ignited political backlash. Opposition leaders accused the government of using chiefs to entrench political control and blamed state agencies for rising violence at recent public events and by-elections. They argued that the administration is strengthening grassroots machinery while failing to rein in perpetrators of chaos linked to political actors.
Former deputy president Rigathi Gachagua, weighing in from the sidelines of the day’s announcements, said Kenya’s security failures stem from internal weaknesses rather than administrative gaps. “The police have become the weak link,” he said, accusing security agencies of either being outnumbered or compromised in situations that escalate into violence.
The competing narratives Ruto’s push to fortify local administration and the opposition’s claims of growing state-enabled instability underscore the increasingly tense political climate as the country edges closer to the 2027 elections.
