From broken promises to high cost of living and failed reforms: The making of Ruto's scorecard

A year after President William Ruto pledged to make Kenya food-secure, 2.7 million people face crisis-level hunger, inflation and the cost-of-living measure has climbed to 6.8 per cent, and key flagship promises remain unfulfilled, a Standard review of his then Mashujaa Day speech shows.

In his October 2025 Mashujaa Day address at Ithookwe Stadium in Kitui County, Ruto outlined an ambitious agenda centred on four pillars.

They were food security through massive irrigation, industrialisation via special economic zones, energy expansion, and infrastructure development.

Twelve months later, the gap between rhetoric and reality has widened, not narrowed.

This year's celebrations are being held at Kipchoge Keino Stadium in Eldoret, Uasin Gishu County, after the originally planned Kamariny Stadium in Elgeyo-Marakwet could not be completed in time, officials said.

Ruto's most emphatic promise was to end Kenya's reliance on food imports, vowing to build 50 mega dams and bring two million acres under irrigation.

"We cannot speak of prosperity while spending over Sh500 billion every year importing food," he declared.

The numbers tell a story of deterioration. Between July and September 2025, 1.8 million people were classified in IPC Phase 3 or above, the stage at which households face critical food shortages. By July–October 2026, that figure had surged to 2.7 million, with 348,000 people in IPC Phase 4, meaning severe food gaps and acute malnutrition.

The IPC attributed the 55 per cent increase to erratic rainfall, slow livelihood recovery, and insufficient humanitarian assistance.

The October–December 2025 short rains were among the driest on record. A WFP country brief noted that the number of people requiring humanitarian assistance had "nearly doubled since August 2025, rising from 1.8 million to 3.3 million" by early 2026, with the crisis expanding from three counties to nine.

Humanitarian agencies have sounded the alarm. "These figures are a clear warning that Kenya cannot afford to treat acute malnutrition as a standalone nutrition problem," said Dancliff Mbura, Advocacy Coordinator at Action Against Hunger Kenya, in a September statement. "Children and mothers are facing the combined effects of disease, poor diets, unsafe water and sanitation, food poverty, and reduced access to essential health and nutrition services."

More than 810,000 children under five require treatment for acute malnutrition, alongside 116,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women, according to WFP data from February 2026.

The Kenya Food Security Working Group found that 522,547 children in arid and semi-arid lands are acutely malnourished, including 123,856 severe cases.

The Ruto government has acknowledged the shortfall. Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe said in August that Kenya would import 25 million bags of maize to bridge an anticipated deficit, with domestic production estimated at 34–42 million bags against annual consumption of about 75 million.

The admission underscored how far Ruto's food-sovereignty pledge has fallen short, observers say.

The promised 50 mega dams remain largely on the drawing board.

Thwake Dam, the flagship project in the region, received a Sh10.6 billion financing boost in July 2026 and is now 94.2 per cent complete. Thwake is the only one of the 50 planned dams to have secured major financing and entered the final stages of construction, according to a Standard spot check.

In September 2025, on the eve of Ruto's speech, overall inflation stood at 4.6 per cent, with food and non-alcoholic beverages at 8.4 per cent, according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics.

By September 2026 (last month), it had climbed to 6.8 per cent—its highest level since January 2024, driven by food and non-alcoholic beverages at 9.5 per cent and transport at 15.6 per cent.

September marked the sixth consecutive month above the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK’s) 5 per cent midpoint target.

For households, the monthly movements tell a more brutal story.

White wheat flour rose 4.5 per cent month-on-month, fresh packed milk climbed 6.0 per cent, and fresh unpacked milk rose 5.8 per cent between August and September 2026. The annual food inflation rate remained stubbornly elevated.

The Iran conflict has compounded the pain. Transport inflation at 15.6 per cent reflects fuel costs feeding through to every stage of production and distribution. The government's subsidy programmes have provided limited relief, but economists warn fiscal space is shrinking.

Ruto’s pledge to shield Kenyans from the global oil shock has collapsed, after the energy regulator imposed double-digit fuel price increases. The price hikes are expected to push the cost of living close to the government’s inflation ceiling barely 10 months before the General Election.

Last week, the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (EPRA) raised the price of super petrol by Sh12.93 per litre, diesel by Sh9.90 and kerosene by Sh28.49, effective October 15.

In Nairobi, diesel, the fuel that powers more than 90 per cent of the country’s matatus, buses and freight trucks, now retails at Sh227.76 per litre.

The increases come barely five months after Ruto sat down with transport operators at State House Mombasa and explicitly directed that diesel prices be reduced by Sh10 in the June-July pricing cycle.

A majority of Kenyans say they found it hard to meet basic costs, food, medical care, or rent, according to a spot check by The Standard.

The World Food Programme found that 42 per cent of respondents in drought-affected areas reported eating only one or two meals a day, while 79 per cent were restricting adult consumption so children could eat.

Borrowing food or relying on relatives was widespread at 89 per cent, with loss of income and high food prices cited as the primary drivers.

On industrialisation, Ruto promised that "everything Kenya produces must be processed in Kenya," pointing to Special Economic Zones in Vipingo, Dongo Kundu, and Naivasha as engines of job creation.

There has been tangible movement. Afreximbank and KCB signed an $800 million financing deal for the Vipingo SEZ.

In September 2026, the government allocated Sh74.1 billion for enabling infrastructure at the Dongo Kundu SEZ, where more than 90 investors have expressed interest.

Yet the broader goal remains elusive.

According to official economic survey data, manufacturing's contribution to GDP has fallen to just over 7 per cent, despite Vision 2030 ambitions of 15 per cent. Total factory output grew a marginal 2 per cent to Sh3.8 trillion. The promised County Aggregation and Industrial Parks across all 47 counties have been slow to materialise.

The one area where Ruto's promises appear to be materialising in earnest is the dualling of the Rironi–Nakuru–Mau Summit highway.

Workers began laying tarmac on the Rironi–Naivasha section in October 2026, with the government targeting opening parts of the upgraded road to motorists by the end of that month. The wider Rironi–Mau Summit corridor is expected to be completed by June 2027.

But Ruto's other infrastructure pledges have not fared as well, our survey showed.

 The 10,000km of new tarmac roads remain largely unbuilt. On the Standard Gauge Railway extension from Naivasha to Kisumu and onward to Malaba, construction officially commenced on July 1–2, 2026, with the first rails laid in Narok, according to Kenya Railways. Completion timelines remain distant, and financing details have not been publicly disclosed.

Ruto pledged to expand generation capacity from 2,300 megawatts to 10,000 megawatts within a decade. By February 2026, installed capacity had reached 3,272 megawatts. The growth is real but incremental; Kenya would need to add roughly 670 megawatts annually to hit 10,000 by 2035, a pace far beyond current trajectory, analysis shows.

For the millions watching maize prices climb and wondering how to feed their families, the "glory land" Ruto invoked remains a distant promise, a Standard spot check shows.

The education sector, one of the main areas Ruto’s government was keen to work reforms on, is also in limbo. It has been proposal after another, overhaul after overhaul. Now, the big mess is on the university funding model – not to forget the lecturers’ strike. 

“In a transformative shift, we unveiled a new funding model for higher education and technical and vocational training that guarantees needy students free college studies. The funding comprises government scholarships, loans and bursaries. Through this model, we have raised funding per student by 40 per cent,” President Ruto said as he delivered his 2023 Mashajaa Day speech.

Now, concerns have emerged over the proposed overhaul of university funding, with questions being raised over who initiated the new model, how quickly it is being pushed through and what it could mean for students and universities. Sources familiar with the proposals said the Ministry of Education was pushing to have the new system implemented as early as January.

The rush has raised concern among stakeholders who want Parliament to first scrutinise the proposed financing structure and put in place safeguards before it takes effect. Unlike the current student-centred funding model, which followed recommendations by the Presidential Working Party on Education Reform, the latest proposal is understood not to have originated from Cabinet. This has raised questions over who initiated the new financing framework and how it found its way to Parliament.

 The questions are significant because the proposal would change how billions of shillings are raised and distributed to students and universities. It would also create a new authority to take over the functions of the Higher Education Loans Board, Universities Fund and the TVET Funding Board. Another major concern is the interest rate on student loans. The proposal leaves the determination of the interest rate to the Cabinet Secretary, raising questions over how much students will eventually pay. Sources said this was particularly important because the Government plans to raise part of the money from private investors through education bonds.

The latest proposal promises full Government funding for every student admitted to a public university or college, regardless of family background, marking a sharp departure from the means-tested system introduced by the same administration. Ruto is seeking to legislate the new approach through the Tertiary Education, Placement and Funding Bill, 2026, which is undergoing public hearings. But professionals are again raising concerns over the lack of clarity in some proposals.

The Government had categorised 127,591 of 134,029 applications, with students placed in five bands according to assessed need. The appeals exposed a central difficulty of the system: determining a student’s ability to pay through means-testing. Timing question: The pressure was not limited to students. Public universities have continued to face financial difficulties, with a Controller of Budget report putting their combined debt at Sh69.23 billion by June 2025. Against this backdrop, Ruto announced in July that students admitted to public universities and colleges from the September 2026 intake would receive full Government funding regardless of family background. The Government is now seeking to give the new approach a legal foundation through the Tertiary Education, Placement and Funding Bill, 2026.

And barely a year before the next General Election, uncertainty looms over whether the government will deliver on key health sector promises, despite ongoing reforms at the Ministry of Health.

In almost all his Mashujaa Day speeches, Universal Health Coverage (UHC) has taken prominence in the president's speeches. In 2023, he highlighted health sector reforms as a central pillar of the Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda (BETA), detailing the rollout of 100,000 Community Health Promoters (CHPs), digital health systems, and preventive healthcare financing.  In 2024, while addressing the universal healthcare issue, Ruto spoke of the sector transitioning towards the Social Health Authority (SHA) and Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF) to expand healthcare access.

Now, health experts and trade unionists point to unresolved critical bottlenecks, including inadequate health financing, acute shortages of doctors and nurses, sluggish local drug manufacturing, and persistent stockouts in public hospitals nationwide.

Across the country, public health facilities continue to grapple with stockouts of essential commodities. Currently, health facilities face stockouts of key contraceptives, jeopardising family planning programmes.

Concerns have also been raised over shortages of TAFLD—an antiretroviral regimen specifically introduced for people aged above 60 to safeguard kidney and bone health.

These operational gaps threaten to stall the rollout of Universal Health Coverage (UHC). To realise UHC, experts argue the state must ramp up domestic health financing, particularly as foreign donor funding continues to shrink.

Although the Ministry of Health received a Sh37 billion boost in the 2026/27 Financial Year, raising its allocation to Sh175.5 billion, the funding still falls short of international benchmarks.

Kenya Union of Clinical Officers (KUCO) Secretary General George Gibore notes that the allocation falls far below the 15 per cent target set under the 2001 Abuja Declaration, where African Union nations pledged to allocate at least 15 per cent of their national budgets to health.

“The total national budget stands at around Sh4.69 trillion, but allocation to healthcare is about Sh175.5 billion, which translates to just 4.1 per cent. Under the Abuja target, health should receive roughly Sh640 billion,” Mr Gibore said.

“We intend to address the challenge of inadequate human resources in the public hospitals and the poor industrial relations between health professionals and county governments. We are particularly committed to the professional development of health workers. I take this opportunity to assure health workers that we have listened to them and we will propose ways, in collaboration with county governments, of resolving their outstanding issues,” Ruto pledged in his inaugural Mashujaa Day speech.

However, the problems bedevilling healthcare givers are far from over. The never-ending disputes between medics and county governments, as well as the national government, have been dominating headlines in the past three years, with doctors taking industrial action over salary arrears and implementation of collective bargaining agreements (CBAs).

“We have had 150 strikes since devolution. It is mad. This does not seem to bother anyone,” said the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union (KMPDU) Deputy Secretary General Dr Dennis Miskellah. Miskellah warned that the Government cannot achieve UHC by concentrating on financing and equipment while failing to resolve the workforce crisis.