Here Are The Top 5 Richest Counties In Kenya

The new Kenya National Bureau of Statistics report released on Thursday ranks Nairobi as Kenya’s richest county with a contribution of 27.5 percent to the overall GDP.

The capital city is more than three-and-a-half times larger in economic terms than Kiambu the second-richest county with a 5.9 percent share of the GDP.

Mombasa (5.2 percent, Nakuru (4.9 percent), and Machakos (3.5 percent) complete the list of Kenya’s top five wealthiest counties in GDP terms. The number of ships docking at the Port of Mombasa rose from 1,621 in 2020 to 1,635 in 2021.

At the same time, the volume of exports handled at the Port of Mombasa increased by 9.7 percent from 4,205 thousand metric tonnes in 2020 to 4,612 thousand metric tonnes in 2021. According to KNBS, Nakuru contributed 4.9% to the GDP in 2021, with the city’s economic output hitting 480 billion shillings. On the other hand, Machakos’s economic output was valued at 313 billion shillings during the period under review.

The heavy concentration of economic power in the five counties indicates inequality in the country’s economic development, which has partly been attributed to the previous centralized system of government that guided sharing of resources since independence.

The report also highlighted some of the poorest counties with Isiolo, Lamu, Tana River, and Samburu leading the list contributing 0.3 percent each to Kenya’s national output. Wajir, Mandera, and Marsabit complete the list of Kenya’s bottom five counties each contributing a paltry 0.5 percent to Kenya’s national output.

“The bottom 10 counties in terms of contribution were majorly those from arid and semi-arid areas,” KNBS said.

“The main economic activity in these areas is animal production, while the contribution while the contribution of gross value added of other activities such as growing of crops, manufacturing, transportation and real estate was insignificant.”

The 2021 rebound in GDP marks the highest one-year growth that the country has recorded in the last five years.

In 2017, for instance, the growth rate was 3.85 percent; in 2018, it was 5.65 percent; in 2019, it, however, contracted by 0.5 percent to 5.1 percent.

The report indicated the key role that the agricultural sector has played in the economy of various counties in the country, with Nairobi and Mombasa exempted from the list.

The Agriculture sector, however, posted dismal performance in 2021, contracting to a negative 0.2 percent from 5.2 percent in 2020. The decline was attributed to poor rainfall and poor harvest of tea, maize, wheat, and coffee.

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