The cost of maintaining a team advising President William Ruto will cross the Sh1 billion mark, underscoring the burden of hiring consultants in government.
Budget documents tabled in Parliament show the six advisory units will spend Sh1.14 billion in the year starting July, up from Sh977 million in the current financial year.
Prominent advisers, including David Ndi, Henry Rotich and Monica Juma, will spend the bulk of the hundreds of millions on salaries, travel and entertainment.
This appears in an era in which the country is racing to cut unnecessary expenses, such as trips abroad and spending on hospitality, to curb the growing fiscal deficit.
Advisers and their support staff will consume Sh759 million on wages, travel and entertainment, highlighting the outsized role of advisers under a Ruto presidency compared to his predecessors Mwai Kibaki and Uhuru Kenyatta.
While a series of advisors under Kenyatta and Kibaki preferred to operate in the shadows of Cabinet ministers and chief secretaries, the advisors attached to Dr. Ruto were public and influential, and Dr. Ndi was the poster boy of the reorganization.
This group of advisors, with offices in the State House, exerts enormous influence over the policy-making process, but is subordinate to only one person: President Ruto.
Advisers have been heavily involved in executive decisions, particularly those affecting economic policy, with Kenya modeling its presidential advisory role after the United States.
The rationale is that in the presidential systems Kenya adopted under the 2010 Constitution, the president sits at the top of policy making and, therefore, his advisors assume executive roles.
But this came with an additional burden on taxpayers: the six consulting units will spend Sh280.5 million on salaries and benefits for the year starting July, up from Sh207.8 million this year, a 35 percent jump.
The advisers' budget falls under the State Council's Policy Analysis and Research Unit, which has increased its allocation more than tenfold from Sh87.2 million in the last year of Uhuru Kenyatta's presidency to Sh977 million currently.
Kenyatta had loose advisory arrangements regarding his advisors' budget that were not clearly spelled out in the state's financial statements.
Under Ruto, three of the six advisory units dealing with the economy – the Office of Economic Transformation, the Council of Economic Advisers and Finance and Budget Policy – accounted for more than half the budget.
Dr. Ndi is the Chairman of the Presidential Council of Economic Advisers, and is the most prominent of the six advisors.
Its other members are prominent investment banker Mohamed Hassan and Nancy Liboni, formerly of the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPRA), a leading policy research and analysis group.
Aside from salaries, Dr Ndi's team has been allocated Sh194.5 million for the year starting July. They will spend Sh88 million on travel, Sh23 million on entertainment, and Sh9.4 million on communications such as mobile phones and airtime.
Dr Ndi urged budget cuts, especially on non-essential items as Kenya seeks to achieve a balanced budget in the next three years.
Over the past decade, Kenya has been running wide-ranging fiscal deficits to fund a range of ambitious infrastructure projects, but the situation almost backfired when markets began to doubt the government's ability to repay debts.
Aside from cutting spending and shrinking the budget deficit, Dr. Ruto's government, which took power in 2022, has also imposed new taxes, angering some individuals and groups who have challenged the taxes in court.
Aside from the Board, Henry Rotich, who served at the National Treasury for six years as Cabinet Secretary, serves as Senior Advisor and Head of the Office of Finance and Budget Policy.
Mr Rotich was appointed to the position in February after the courts ended his graft case, which saw him sacked for fraud in tenders worth Sh63 billion to build two dams.
His office was allocated Sh100 million with travel consuming Sh41 million.
Not only were these individuals responsible for the president's recent love affair with economic talk, they also played a key role in shaping and formulating Kenya Kwanzaa's controversial political decisions, including taxation.
The little-known Augustin Cheruiyot is a senior adviser and head of the Economic Transformation Secretariat, and has been pulling the strings largely behind the scenes.
His office received the largest allocation of Sh239.4 million, with travel and entertainment consuming Sh107 million and Sh35 million respectively.
Dr Ruto, who was Deputy President in the last government, took power in 2022 after portraying himself as Prime Minister. a fraudHe pledged to reduce the financial burden on the bases. He has put the economy at the center of his presidency amid high unemployment, high inflation and rising public debt.
But he faced mass protests after cutting budgets, eliminating subsidies and imposing new taxes in an attempt to raise revenues after the sharp decline in the Kenyan shilling against the US dollar.
Besides the core team of economic advisers, there are other advisers who specialize in the areas of security, women's rights and climate change, Dr Ruto's other favorite topic.
Monica Juma, former Cabinet Secretary in the Uhuru Kenyatta government, heads the Office of the National Security Adviser. Her office has been allocated Sh109 million.
The Office of the Women's Rights Adviser is under the management of Harriet Shigai and she will receive Sh129 million to run her office.
While President Ruto has emerged as a major voice for climate goals in Africa, the office that advises him on environmental matters received the smallest allocation.
Under the leadership of former Principal Secretary Ali Mohammed, Sh55 million was allocated to the Office of the Climate Change Adviser.
Dr. Ruto's drive to galvanize the continent's climate goals has endeared him to the West, the crowning glory being Kenya's hosting of a summit last September that attracted leaders from around the world.
