Counties win bigger contracts than the totals suggest
Where Kenya's published contract awards go: counties vs national bodies, with and without the biggest 1%
1 official source (PPIP) · Data through 4 Oct 2026 · Human reviewed
In 30 seconds
About 99% of dated awards were signed between January 2024 and September 2026. National bodies account for 71% of published award value, counties 21%. Leave out the largest 1% of awards and counties account for 45%, national bodies 43%.
The signal
45%
County governments' and assemblies' share of published award value when the largest 1% of awards are left out (with the largest awards included: 21%)
In 3 minutes
Who is affected
Suppliers and contractors deciding which public buyers to bid to, and anyone comparing county and national procurement from totals alone.
What to watch next
Whether counties keep this share when awards from the 2026/27 financial year are published, and how far any single very large award moves the totals.
Kenyan public bodies published 15,419 contract awards worth a combined KES 86.5 billion in the data available on 2026-10-04. The median award was KES 499,650.
Measured by total value, national bodies lead. Ministries, state departments and other national bodies, such as state corporations and authorities, account for 71% of the value. County governments and county assemblies account for 21%.
A small number of very large awards drive much of that difference. The largest 1% of awards (154 awards of KES 59.5 million or more) hold 69% of all published value. A single large award can move a total by billions, so totals alone can mislead.
Without those awards, the picture changes. Counties account for 45% of the remaining KES 27.0 billion and national bodies for 43%.
Excluded record. One record of about KES 42.5 billion, the Talanta Sports City stadium financing arrangement of the Sports, Arts and Social Development Fund (SASDF), is left out of every figure here because it records financing, not a purchase of goods, works or services. Including it would raise the national bodies' share of published award value from about 71% to about 81%.
By buyer type
| Buyer type | Buyers | Awards | Value (KES bn) | Share of value | Share without the biggest 1% | Median award (KES) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Other national bodies (state corporations, authorities, agencies) | 141 | 5,397 | 60.5 | 70% | 40% | 409,500 |
| County governments and assemblies | 72 | 4,724 | 17.8 | 21% | 45% | 1,598,250 |
| Universities, colleges and schools | 96 | 4,324 | 5.3 | 6% | 8% | 128,174 |
| Water and sanitation companies | 15 | 156 | 1.5 | 2% | 2% | 628,640 |
| Ministries and state departments | 20 | 641 | 0.9 | 1% | 3% | 495,000 |
| Constituency development funds | 25 | 177 | 0.5 | 1% | 2% | 1,793,912 |
What this means for suppliers
- Most awards are small. Half of all published awards were worth KES 499,650 or less. Only 154 awards, the largest 1%, were worth KES 59.5 million or more.
- County awards are typically larger. The median county award was KES 1,598,250, 3.2 times the median across all buyers, over 4,724 awards from 72 county buyers.
- Universities, colleges and schools buy often, in small amounts. They published 4,324 awards, 28% of all awards, with a median of KES 128,174.
What this shows and what it does not
- These are contract awards that buyers published on the Public Procurement Information Portal (PPIP). They are not payments and not total government spending, and some buyers publish more completely than others.
- Buyer types are assigned from the buyer's name using published rules (see the methodology page). PPIP does not classify buyers.
- The "biggest 1%" are the 154 largest awards, each worth at least KES 59.5 million.
- 179 awards were signed before 2024, 164 of them in 2023. The other 15 carry older dates, back to 2005, which are likely mis-keyed. 93 awards have no signing date. All of these are included in the figures.
- The dataset has 15,617 contracts. 198 are left out: 173 with a value of zero, 24 with a value below KES 1,000, 1 excluded after review (see the note above). Zero and very small values are treated as data-entry errors (see the methodology page).
Source
Source: Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA), via PPIP / Open Contracting Data Registry. Data from tenders.go.ke through the Open Contracting Data Registry, snapshot of 2026-10-04.
Deep dive
Read with care
- Published awards in PPIP, not payments or total procurement spending; coverage differs by buyer.
- Award dates are contract signing dates; PPIP publishes no award date.
- The top 1% of awards hold most of the value; compare totals excluding them, medians and counts.
- Categories are only goods, works and services.
- Buyer types come from name rules (published here), not an official classification.
- The figures come from the data snapshot of 2026-10-04. Later changes in the source data are not included.
Show me the evidence
- Sources used
- 1 (PPIP)
- Data through
- 4 Oct 2026
- Figures checked
- 16, each recomputed from the data before publication
- Public Procurement Information Portal (PPIP), published by the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA): tenders.go.ke/
- Open Contracting Data Registry, publication 147 (PPIP records in the Open Contracting Data Standard), published by the Open Contracting Partnership: data.open-contracting.org/en/publication/147
How the figures were produced: methodology. All sources: sources.