County development fund absorption tracker — powered by Controller of Budget data.
Hesabu /hesɑːbu/ — Kiswahili: accounts, arithmetic, reckoning.
Kenya's 47 county governments collectively manage KES 400+ billion annually in devolved funds. The Controller of Budget publishes absorption rates for every county every year. Budget Sentinel turns those PDFs into a searchable, comparable dashboard that answers: Where are development funds going unspent — and by how much?
| Metric | Source |
|---|---|
| Development fund absorption rate | COB Annual County Budget Implementation Review |
| Unspent development funds (KES) | Derived from COB data |
| Health, education, infrastructure as % of total | COB sector breakdowns |
| Per-capita allocation by county | COB × KNBS 2019 census |
| County own-revenue vs national transfer dependence | COB revenue data |
- Civil society / NGO monitors — track county performance on key sectors
- Journalists — identify counties with persistent low absorption for investigation
- County assembly members — compare peers and benchmark performance
- Diaspora Kenyans — understand where their home county's resources go
- Researchers — download clean, cited COB data for policy analysis
- All figures are from COB published reports (public domain). Source column in every CSV.
- Low absorption is a factual observation, not an accusation. Multiple causes exist.
- This tool does not name individuals or make forensic accounting conclusions.
- Verify originals at cob.go.ke.
git clone https://github.com/gabrielmahia/budget-sentinel.git
cd budget-sentinel
pip install -r requirements.txt
streamlit run app.pydata/allocations/county_budgets_fy2223.csv — 46 counties, FY 2022/23.
All figures in KES millions. Each row has source and verified columns.
Annual updates will be added as COB publishes new reports.
Owner: Gabriel Mahia | contact@aikungfu.dev
License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 — share with attribution, no commercial use, no derivatives.
Not affiliated with the Controller of Budget or any county government.
See SECURITY.md. Report errors to contact@aikungfu.dev — do not open public issues.
Part of a suite of civic and community tools built by Gabriel Mahia:
| App | What it does |
|---|---|
| 🌊 Mafuriko | Flood risk & policy enforcement tracker — Kenya |
| 💧 WapiMaji | Water stress & drought intelligence — 47 counties |
| 🏛️ Macho ya Wananchi | MP voting records, CDF spending, bill tracker |
| 🌾 JuaMazao | Live food price intelligence for smallholders |
| 🏦 ChaguaSacco | Compare Kenya SACCOs on dividends & loan rates |
| 🛡️ Hesabu | County budget absorption tracker |
| 🗺️ Hifadhi | Riparian encroachment & Water Act compliance map |
| 💰 Hela | Chama management for the 21st century |
| 💸 Peleka | True cost remittance comparison — diaspora to Kenya |
| 📊 Msimamo | Macro risk & trade intelligence terminal |
| 🦁 Dagoretti | Alumni atlas & community hub for Dagoretti High |
| ⛪ Jumuia | Catholic parish tools — church finder, pastoral care |
Kenya's Public Procurement Regulatory Authority publishes OCDS (Open Contracting Data Standard) data:
- Bulk download: https://tenders.go.ke/ocds
- Data registry: https://data.open-contracting.org/en/publication/147
- Makueni County (historical, stopped 2022): https://data.open-contracting.org/en/publication/13
A future version of Hesabu will correlate county budget execution data with actual procurement contracts — showing not just what counties planned to spend, but what they contracted for.
Data source: Open Contracting Partnership (OCP). Thanks to the OCP team for pointing to these resources.