Six powerful regional development authorities are staring at the possibility of legal extinction.
But the biggest question is not whether the six agencies will survive.
It is who will inherit what they leave behind.
Behind the proposed abolition of the Coast Development Authority, Kerio Valley Development Authority, Lake Basin Development Authority, Tana and Athi Rivers Development Authority, Ewaso Ng’iro North River Basin Development Authority, and Ewaso Ng’iro South River Basin Development Authority lies a potentially much bigger story—a massive transfer of public land, buildings, investments, contracts, records, and liabilities.
This is not, at this stage, a government announcement to sell those assets.
But it is a proposal to dismantle the legal structures that currently hold them.
And once the institutions disappear, who will hold the keys?
That is the question Parliament, counties, and the Kenyan public must confront.
Six agencies. One enormous question.
The Regional Development Authorities Laws (Repeal) Bill, 2026, sponsored by National Assembly Majority Leader Kimani Ichung’wah, proposes to repeal the laws establishing the six authorities.
The bill was published on June 5 and received a first reading on July 1.
The government's argument is familiar: eliminate duplication, align government functions with the Constitution's Fourth Schedule, reduce pressure on public finances, and improve efficiency.
On paper, it sounds like ordinary public-sector rationalization.
But the fine print changes the character of the story.
If enacted, the authorities' land, buildings, investments, contracts, records, liabilities, and other assets would be transferred to a State Department designated by the Cabinet Secretary responsible for the National Treasury.
Their employees would be transferred to the Public Service Commission.
So the question becomes:
Who gets the land?
Who gets the buildings?
Who gets the investments?
Who assumes the contracts?
Who inherits the liabilities?
And perhaps most importantly:
Who will account for everything after the transfer?
The KSh4.9 trillion backdrop
The questions become even more significant when placed against the broader picture of Kenya's public wealth.
Parliamentary records indicate that public sector agencies and departments collectively hold assets estimated at about KSh4.9 trillion.
Treasury has been developing systems for asset valuation, tagging, optimization, and leasing.
The six authorities are therefore entering a national public-asset management environment in which every parcel of government land, every building, and every investment has potentially significant financial value.
The proposed restructuring should consequently trigger a simple rule:
Know what you own before deciding what to do with it.
The first mystery: What exactly do the six authorities own?
This is where the investigation begins.
Before the first title deed changes hands, Kenyans should be presented with a comprehensive asset register for each authority.
For CDA, what land and buildings are on its books?
For KVDA, what are the assets connected to its extensive development and water-related programs?
For LBDA, what happened to the land, infrastructure, and investments accumulated through decades of development programs around the Lake Victoria basin?
For TARDA, what assets have been accumulated through its work in the Tana and Athi river basins?
And what property is held by the Ewaso Ng’iro North and South authorities across their respective regions?
The public should not have to discover the answers years after an agency disappears.
WHO GETS WHAT?
The Bill points to a transfer rather than an immediate sale.
But transfer to whom?
The proposed recipient is a State Department designated by the Cabinet Secretary responsible for the National Treasury.
That means the ultimate destination of each asset becomes a crucial accountability issue.
A transparent process should therefore produce an asset-by-asset trail:
Asset → valuation → legal ownership → receiving institution → intended use → responsible officer → audit trail.
Anything less creates room for confusion.
And confusion is dangerous when public land and billions of shillings are involved.
The land question
Land is likely to become the most sensitive component of the restructuring.
Government land can sit quietly on a title deed for decades before its value suddenly becomes enormous because of urban expansion, infrastructure development, or commercialization.
An office block that once served a regional authority may today occupy prime urban real estate.
A parcel acquired for a development project decades ago may now be worth many times its original value.
That is why the government should not rely solely on historical book values.
Every significant property should undergo an independent valuation before transfer.
The public should know whether the asset is freehold or leasehold, whether it has encumbrances, whether there are disputes, whether it is occupied, whether it is leased to third parties, and whether there are outstanding obligations attached to it.
The second question: Who owes whom?
Assets are only one side of the balance sheet.
There are also liabilities.
The Bill provides for the transfer of liabilities alongside assets.
That raises another accountability question:
Who inherits the debts?
Who takes responsibility for pending court cases?
Who assumes contractual obligations?
Who pays outstanding suppliers?
Who handles employee-related claims?
Who settles disputed obligations?
A clean transfer cannot mean that assets move seamlessly while liabilities become somebody else's problem.
Employees: another transfer
The proposed restructuring also provides for employees to be transferred to the Public Service Commission.
That creates a second major transition involving hundreds of workers, their careers, pensions, contracts, and institutional knowledge.
These employees possess information that may be critical to understanding the authorities' property portfolios.
Before institutional memory is lost, the government should ensure that records, inventories, title documents, contracts, and financial information are secured and independently verified.
The people who know where the files are should not disappear before the files are accounted for.
The public hearings matter.
Public hearings scheduled for October 9, 2026, in Elgeyo-Marakwet, Narok, and Isiolo provide an opportunity to move the debate beyond institutional survival.
Citizens should be asking hard questions.
Not merely:
Should this authority exist?
But:
What does it own?
What is it worth?
Where is it?
Who will receive it?
For what purpose?
Who will manage it?
Who will audit it?
And what happens if the receiving institution later decides to lease or dispose of it?
The danger of the disappearing institution
There is a recurring danger in government restructuring.
An institution can disappear administratively while its property remains very real.
The signboard comes down.
The offices change hands.
The board is dissolved.
Officials are transferred.
But the land remains.
The buildings remain.
The investments remain.
The contracts remain.
And the taxpayer still owns them.
That is why abolition should never be allowed to become an accountability blind spot.
The Smoking Gun: the asset register
The most powerful safeguard may be deceptively simple.
Publish the register.
Before the six authorities are finally dismantled, Kenyans should have access to independently verified inventories showing what each authority owns and owes.
Then conduct an independent valuation.
Then publish the receiving institution.
Then document the transfer.
Then audit the process.
And, where an asset is subsequently leased, commercialized, or disposed of, publish the transaction and its justification.
That would create an unbroken chain of accountability.
This is bigger than six agencies.
The proposed law may have been introduced as a public-sector efficiency measure.
But the political and economic significance goes much further.
The six authorities have existed for decades, operating across some of Kenya's most economically and geographically significant regions.
Their institutional structures may change.
Their mandates may be redistributed.
Their employees may move.
But their accumulated public wealth does not belong to the institutions being abolished.
It belongs to Kenya.
And that leads to the defining question of this restructuring:
When the six authorities disappear, who gets what—and who will be watching?
The government has a legitimate case for eliminating duplication and improving efficiency.
Parliament has a legitimate role in deciding whether the six statutory frameworks remain fit for purpose.
But neither argument eliminates the public's right to know what happens to every acre, building, investment, contract, and shilling.
The real test of the proposed reform will therefore not be how quickly six agencies can be abolished.
It will be whether or not a single public asset disappears into the administrative fog created by their abolition.
That is where agency reform ends—and the investigation into Kenya's public wealth begins.
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