Editor's note: Read "Who Owns Kenya" here, and "The Economics of Repression" here.

The Kenya Human Rights Commission has released two new reports showing how Kenya’s current economic direction is stripping resources from essential services, worsening inequality, and allowing historical injustices, especially those tied to land, to fester.

Economics of repression

The first report, “The Economics of Repression,” reveals that Kenya’s public finances are now structured in ways that harm ordinary people.

Today, 68 percent of all ordinary revenue goes into paying public debt and government salaries, leaving less than a third of the budget for health, education, food security, water, sanitation, housing, and social protection.

The report traces how this crisis has grown. In just four years, interest on public debt has jumped to 25 percent from 18 percent of total spending, draining money from essential services.

Programmes meant to protect vulnerable citizens are shrinking when they are needed most, according to the report. For example, support for older persons has decreased to Sh15 billion from Sh18 billion, funding for orphans has reduced to Sh5 billion from Sh7 billion, and resources for persons with severe disabilities continue to decline in real terms.

The health sector is also suffering. In Nairobi alone, real health spending has dropped to Sh7 billion from Sh8 billion, despite a population of over 5.7 million residents.

Meanwhile, the county’s pending bills have exploded, now 300 times higher than the county’s total expenditure, and the wage bill consumes nearly half the entire budget, leaving very little for services that citizens depend on.

According to the report, these financial choices have painful consequences.

Families told KHRC about hospitals without medicine, patients being turned away for lack of insurance, and school learning disrupted because the national government delays sending capitation funds.

Youth reported job losses as businesses struggle under relentless taxation. Persons with disabilities wait years for support, while single mothers and families in informal settlements say they have been completely abandoned.

Who owns Kenya?

The second report, “Who Owns Kenya?”, shows that Kenya’s economic crisis is also rooted in land inequality.

Land remains the country’s most valuable resource, but its ownership is extremely unequal, as fewer than two percent of Kenyans own more than half of the country’s arable land, much of it held idle or acquired irregularly.

Meanwhile, 98 percent of all farm holdings, mostly small and averaging just 1.2 hectares, occupy only 46 percent of farmed land, while 0.1 percent of large-scale landholders occupy 39 percent.

This skewed ownership denies millions of Kenyans access to livelihoods, the report says, as it limits agricultural productivity, fuels food insecurity, and locks out young people and women from opportunities to build wealth.

It is also tied to Kenya’s ongoing hunger crisis, where 2.2 million people are currently facing acute food insecurity, as Kenya scores 25 on the Global Hunger Index, placing it in the “serious” category.

The report shows that community land remains especially vulnerable to exploitation. Delays in registration, forged titles, boundary manipulation, and politically engineered evictions continue to displace communities.

In the Coast region, for example, more than 65 percent of residents in counties such as Kilifi, Kwale, and Lamu lack formal land titles, leaving generations trapped as squatters on ancestral land. These counties consistently score below the national average in health, education, and income.

However, despite land’s enormous economic value, land-based taxes contribute less than one percent of total county revenue across most counties. Large landowners continue to benefit from weak taxation, outdated valuation rolls, political interference, and deliberate under-assessment of property values.

Some high-value areas, such as Karen and Muthaiga in Nairobi, and Diani, Mtwapa, and Watamu in the Coast region, have been undervalued for decades, allowing the wealthy to pay far less than they should.

The report finds that Kenya operates two economic systems: one for the wealthy, who enjoy access to land, political protection, and minimal taxation, and another for ordinary citizens, who pay high taxes on basic goods and income while receiving fewer public services.

Despite this, the report states that land remains at the heart of the solution. Introducing a strong and progressive land value tax could transform Kenya’s revenue system.

Taxing idle and speculative land could reduce land hoarding, bring down prices, promote productive land use, and unlock resources for counties.

A well-implemented land tax system could raise significant revenue. Estimates suggest that wealth taxation in Kenya could generate up to Sh125 billion, nearly double the current budget for social protection.

KHRC is calling on the William Ruto regime to rethink how the country raises and spends its resources.

“Kenya needs economic decisions that put people first, protect rights, and ensure fair distribution of national resources,” KHRC executive director Davis Malombe said during the launch. “This includes reducing waste and corruption, managing debt responsibly, strengthening transparency, reforming land taxation, and supporting communities who have been ignored or displaced.”