Busia County is among Kenya’s poorest counties. The County’s Human Development Index (HDI) stands at 0.43, which is below the national average of 0.60 and lower than that of neighbouring counties of Bungoma (0.48), Siaya (0.44), Kakamega (0.48) and Vihiga (0.50). The poor HDI scores affect all segments of the County’s population, but with particularly severe consequences for children, the youth and women. In response to the poor HDI scores, Busia County has attracted numerous development initiatives aimed at alleviating poverty across various sectors by agencies at county, national and supranational levels.

Despite these initiatives, the County’s poverty remains largely unchanged. This not only indicates that the initiatives are having minimal impact in transforming lives in the County but also that the government is not facilitating a positive transformation in the lives of the residents. The main reason for the minimal impact of the government in Busia is the prevalence of corruption. Indeed, since its inception, the County Government of Busia has featured prominently in reports of corruption. Corruption is facilitated by the personalisation of systems, ethnicisation of politics, weak technical capacity in the County Government and weak civic competence among most of the County residents. Together, these factors have affected the government’s ability to improve the lives of Busia residents. As a result, the residents have been subjected to ineffective and wasteful poverty alleviation initiatives and inadequate and/or non-existent public services in County facilities.

Through this Strategy ‘Busia for People: Waking to serve People’, Abenengo for Development (ABEDEV) offers to contribute towards improving Busia County’s HDIs. ABEDEV was established in 2018 to contribute to solutions aimed at resolving problems of persistent poverty among the youth in Busia County. Our purpose is to promote good governance by influencing institutions in the county towards serving the interests of the common people.

Through this Strategy, we set out to influence the government and related institutions in Busia towards effectiveness, accountability and responsiveness. This will be through four main interconnected clusters of interventions. These are mobilising the youth in the County through offering income generating opportunities, building their civic awareness, encouraging them to participate in government decision-making processes and facilitating them to carry out citizen-driven accountability across the County.

Through the four interventions, residents of the County should be able to consistently demand for optimal performance from the government and related institutions. This should ultimately lead to improved performance by the government, thus improving the County’s HDIs. ABEDEV developed this Strategy in a consultative manner involving different stakeholders in Busia County and beyond. To fully execute the Strategy, we shall improve our internal capacity, systems and finances.

We shall also expand and deploy our volunteering approach to tap into the contribution of our three types of volunteers, namely volunteering by our youth members, community volunteers and friends of the youth in Busia.
In addition, we shall seek strategic partnerships with key stakeholders including citizen groups, state agencies, the private sector, learning institutions, donor agencies, faith-based institutions and media organisations among others to achieve the objectives of this Strategy. We expect that by the end of this Strategy, our desire for a Busia County where all indicators of human progress improve and residents, especially the youth, enjoy better living conditions shall have been achieved.

By the end of this strategy, we desire a Busia County where all indicators of human progress have improved and residents enjoy better living conditions