Northern Kenya continues to face a major development gap after decades of limited investment left large parts of the region without adequate roads, electricity, water, healthcare and education, the Coordinator of the North and Northeast Development Initiative (NEDI), Mohamed Guleid, has said.
Guleid, a former CEO of the Frontier Counties Development Council (FCDC), said the region had for years been left out of major development efforts, creating wide differences in access to basic services compared with other parts of the country.
Speaking to Radio Generation on Thursday, Guleid said the area historically referred to as the Northern Frontier District was much larger than Garissa, Wajir and Mandera.
He said it also covered Isiolo, Marsabit, Turkana, Samburu, Lamu, Tana River and other areas that have faced similar development challenges.
The World Bank identifies 10 counties covered by the FCDC, namely Isiolo, Wajir, Mandera, Garissa, Lamu, Tana River, Samburu, Turkana, West Pokot and Marsabit. Together, the counties account for about 63% of Kenya's total land area.
Guleid said the extent of the region's historical exclusion was reflected in several development indicators, including maternal and child deaths, access to water and education, security and road networks.
“This area has been very much excluded. The development index, in terms of indicators, maternal and child deaths, in terms of access to water, in terms of access to education, even basic services such as security and roads, were all largely left out. So the idea now behind this initiative is to address those challenges and create the balance that we so much need.”
The World Bank has also documented some of these gaps in its Kenya Poverty and Gender Assessment.
The assessment found that access to improved sanitation was particularly low in the former North Eastern Province and the counties covered by NEDI. It also reported that electricity access among poor households nationally stood at only 21% at the time of the study.
Guleid said insecurity had made the situation more difficult, particularly following an increase in attacks and other security challenges from 2013.
He said the situation contributed to the departure of teachers, doctors and other civil servants, further weakening the delivery of essential services in the region.
The challenges pushed northern leaders to seek a coordinated approach to development, leading to the formation of the FCDC and later discussions with the World Bank on the region's most urgent needs.
The government and the World Bank established NEDI in 2017 to address development gaps in Northern and North-eastern Kenya.
The initiative targets several areas, including water, energy, transport, ICT and agriculture, with a particular focus on livestock development.
Guleid said the programme was designed to respond to the region's large infrastructure deficit through major investments in roads, energy and other basic infrastructure.
“The idea was to have a kind of Marshall Plan to address those gaps, focusing on roads and other infrastructure, as well as energy and electricity. Since extending the national grid is expensive, the discussion centred on establishing mini-grids that can provide electricity to communities in remote areas.”
Water and livelihood projects have also been included in the development efforts.
In Wajir, a NEDI-supported climate-smart agriculture programme helped fund water infrastructure for pastoral communities. One of the projects was the Tawakal Water Pan, which was constructed in 2019 and has a capacity of nearly 45,000 cubic metres.
The facility was designed to provide water for domestic and livestock use during dry periods.
Despite such interventions, transport remains one of the region's major challenges, with the large distances involved making connectivity a key development issue.
In March 2026, the World Bank approved an additional $550 million to finance projects aimed at improving connectivity across the Horn of Africa.
The funding includes upgrading 508 kilometres of the 740-kilometre Isiolo-Mandera Corridor and developing about 1,270 kilometres of new high-capacity fibre-optic connectivity.
According to the World Bank, the investments are expected to cut travel time between Nairobi and Mandera from about three days to one.
However, Guleid said the investments made so far remained far below what Northern Kenya requires given the scale of its development needs.
“The investments, however good intentioned, were still very small, drop in the ocean. We will need much more to be able to address and bring the balance required, so that that region can achieve meaningful level of production.”
He said improved infrastructure would not only address basic service gaps but could also help the region benefit from its location as a gateway to neighbouring countries.
The World Bank has similarly pointed to better transport and digital links as key to expanding trade, creating jobs and connecting the region to domestic and cross-border markets.
Its earlier Horn of Africa Gateway project was designed to benefit more than 3.2 million people living along the Isiolo-Mandera corridor.
Guleid said closing the long-standing development gap would require continued investment in infrastructure and basic services.
He said Northern Kenya's vast land area and proximity to neighbouring markets provide the region with considerable economic potential, but unlocking that potential will depend on addressing the infrastructure and service gaps that have persisted for decades.