Garissa County

Garissa County is an administrative county in Kenya. It is located in Eastern Kenya bordering Somalia to the East, Wajir County and Isiolo County to the North, Tana River County to the West and Lamu County to the South. Its capital and largest urban area is Garissa.

The county was created by the 2010 Constitution of Kenya as a new unit of the devolved government. Prior to the 2010 constitution, Garissa County was part of the North Eastern Province which was one of the former provinces of Kenya. The North Eastern Province was carved out of the then Northern Frontier District (NFD) prior to independence.

The county had a population of 841,353 at the 2019 Census, and a land area of about 44753 km2. The district is primarily inhabited by the Absame, Marehan, and Facaye Sade clans. After the Shifta War primarily fought by the Marehan who were given the title Shifta, the tribe were forced to either migrate to Jubaland or claim neighboring clans and thus a huge contingent can now be found in the Absame living as far as the west of the county.

Political leadership
Nathif Jama Adam was elected as the pioneer governor of Garissa in March 2013. Ali Bunow Korane became the second governor in 2017 however Nathif was re-elected in 2022. Nathif is currently deputised by Abdi Dagane Muhumed.

The current elected Senator of the county is Sen. Abdul Mohammed Haji while the current County woman representative is Hon. Amina Udgoon Siyad.

County Executive Committee (CEC)
Every County Government in Kenya has a County Executive Committee (CEC) who are persons the Governor appoints, with the approval of the assembly. The CEC implements and coordinates the development projects of the County. The committee also implements the laws the County Assembly passes and ensures compliance from the various county departments. Below is a list of the current CECs of Garissa County:

Administrative units
Garissa County has 6 constituencies. The below is the list of all Constituencies and the current elected Member of Parliament (MP) for each constituency.:

Electoral Wards
Garissa County is further subdivided into 30 electoral wards. Each ward is represented by a Member of the County Assembly (MCA) or also known as Ward Representative whose main roles are legislation, representation, and oversight. The current speaker of the County Assembly is Abdi Idle Gure.

The list below shows all the wards of the county and the current elected MCA for each Ward:

Demographics
Garissa county has a total population of 841,353 persons of which 458,975 are males, 382,344 females and 34 intersex person. There is a total of 141,394 household with an average size of 5.9 persons per house hold. It has a population density of 19 persons per square kilometre.

Distribution of Population, Land Area and Population Density by Sub-County Source

Religion & Ethnicity
Most of the inhabitants of Garissa County are ethnically Somali and are predominantly Muslim.

Education
The county has 347 ECD centres, 224 primary schools, 41 secondary schools, 2 teachers training colleges and 2 public universities.

39.7 per cent of the population can read and write and 57.9 cannot read and write. There is an average of 8.2 per cent literacy level and 74 per cent are illiterate.

Health
There are a total of 111 health facilities distributes across the county, one level 5, 14 other hospitals, 29 health centres and 67 dispensaries.

Source

HIV/ADS is at the 1 percentage as compared to the national prevalent rate of 5.6 percentage.

Transport and communication
A total of 2,700.6 km is classified as road network coverage comprising 1,637.84 km under county government and 1,062.76 km under national government. Of the total road network 420 km is covered by gravelled surface, 2,245.1 km earth surface and .5 km of bitumen surface.

There are 6 postal services with 2,600 installed letter boxes, 2,496 rented letter boxes 104 vacant letter boxes.

Trade and commerce
The main crops grown are maize, greengrams, sorghum, rice, cowpeas, bananas, mangoes, pawpaw, water melon, tomatoes, capsicum and onions. Farmers have an average size of 1.5 hectares for small scale and 20 hectares for large scale. cattle (boran), goats (galla), sheep (black headed Persian) and camel (dromedary one humped) are kept as the main livestock for producing key products of meat, milk, hides and skins.

Services and urbanisation
Source: USAid Kenya