Kitui County is fast gaining notoriety as the home of ghost projects — not because they don’t exist, but because nobody hears about them until it’s too late. A government with more than 20 PR officers and a small army of WhatsApp bloggers-for-hire has become a laughingstock in Kenya’s devolution story. Instead of inspiring confidence, Governor Julius Malombe’s administration has perfected the art of last-minute gimmicks, poorly planned launches, and taxpayer-funded propaganda that dies as soon as it hits the public domain.
The much-trumpeted Kitui Tourism Circuit Launch is the latest example. A supposed flagship project to position Kitui as a tourism hub has been reduced to a one-day circus at Nzambani Rock. Instead of structured branding, media campaigns, and sustained visibility, the county rushed out a poster days before the event and leaned on celebrity endorsements such as the Nehema TV series cast from Citizen TV to drum up interest. A taxpayer-funded project now hangs in the balance — destined to sink millions with little to show beyond celebrity selfies.
This script is familiar. Kitui is also racing to launch a Kenya Utalii College campus on a 26-acre site. Council Chair David Wamatsi and CEO Mark Rachuonyo, together with Deputy Governor Augustine Kanani, were paraded around the grounds earlier this month. But insiders whisper what residents already know — this is a rushed project cooked to align with Mashujaa Day celebrations ahead of President Ruto’s October visit. Public participation? None. Branding? Weak. Another “development” destined to be a bullet point on speeches, not a real tool for transformation.
And then there is the Ksh 840 million Kangu Kangu Water Project — by all measures, a game-changer. With a 224km pipeline, 13 tanks, 52 kiosks, and over 100,000 beneficiaries, it is one of the most ambitious undertakings in Kitui’s history. But instead of being celebrated as a county-defining flagship, it was launched with little fanfare, poorly branded, and barely communicated to residents. Already cases of vandalism are emerging, a direct result of lack of awareness and ownership. How does a government spend nearly a billion shillings and fail to even tell its own people what has been delivered?
Channel 15 News has also established that another county project had to be embarrassingly rescheduled at the last minute due to zero preparation and chaotic planning. If Kitui was a company, shareholders would have sacked the PR department by now. But here, taxpayers keep footing the bill for a government talking only to itself.
Here’s the scandal: Kitui County employs over 20 PR officers, each pocketing taxpayer-funded salaries. Yet the county’s communication is a disaster. Worse still, insiders reveal that the government has contracted low-level bloggers at Ksh 5,000 a week to flood WhatsApp groups with praise-singing messages. No training, no strategy, no influence. Just recycled posters and shallow captions. This is not public communication — it is cheap propaganda, and even that fails to land.
Compare Kitui with Makueni, where Kivutha Kibwana built a legacy through constant grassroots forums and accessible messaging. Or Murang’a, which turned a yoghurt machine into a countywide “County Fresh” milk brand. Kitui spends more on PR than some of these counties — yet residents remain in the dark. At the heart of the chaos is a government that has chosen insults, secrecy, and WhatsApp forwards over genuine communication. Malombe’s team calls critics names instead of engaging them, hides behind bloggers instead of professional journalists, and rushes projects instead of branding them.
The message to Kitui people is loud and clear: you don’t matter until a President is coming or a celebrity can be hired. Unless something changes, Kitui risks being remembered not for its projects, but for its failures in communication. Billions in development, zero in branding. A county where flagship projects vanish into thin air because the government never bothered to tell its own people. A government that fails to talk to its people is a government that has already failed.
