Military-led urban governance and urban county capacity: Assessing the Nairobi metropolitan services experiment in Kenya (2020–2022)

Abstract

Urbanisation has raised governance pressures in many developing countries, especially in terms of service provision, infrastructural development, and crisis response, occasionally revealing the lack of capacity of civilian agencies. The Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) deployed a military-led urban governance arrangement in 2020, the Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS), which brought an opportunity to study the contribution of military leadership in enhancing the capacity of Nairobi County. This study examined the impact of NMS on urban county capacity in Nairobi City County through the lens of what is happening in the city under military-led governance. The study used a convergence parallel mixed-methods research design comprising structured questionnaires for 350 residents and semi-structured interviews for 35 purposively selected government officials and county leaders guided by Civil-Military Relations Theory and State Capacity Theory. Descriptive and inferential statistics were employed in analysing quantitative data, while thematic analysis was used for qualitative data. Pearson correlation and multiple regression analysis were employed for quantitative data, while thematic analysis was used for qualitative data. The results showed that the respondents observed better service delivery (74.0%), faster pace of building infrastructure (69.8%) and better capacity for responding during crisis (65.5%) during the NMS period. The inferential analysis also showed a strong positive and significantly stronger relationship between military-led urban governance and urban county capacity (r = 0.742, p < .001) and accounted for 55.1% (R² = 0.551) of the variation in urban county capacity. The study finds that military-led urban governance can significantly contribute to urban administrative capacity through better coordination within the institutions, effective mobilisation of resources, and swift decision-making. However, it is essential to make these gains concrete within civilian accountable governance systems. The findings support the debate about urban governance and civil-military relations, and the evidence will be used when considering governance reforms to improve urban service delivery and institutional capacity in fast-growing cities.