Resources, City Spotlights Mandera County

City Spotlight: Mandera County, Kenya

Mandera County, which sits on the border with Somalia and Ethiopia, is one of 47 counties in Kenya and is home to nearly one million people. The County has been a member of the Strong Cities Network since December 2019.

Categories:

What is the local government concerned about?

One of the main threats that County Government officials in Mandera are concerned about is the porous border with war-torn Somalia. There is particular concern that the impacts of conflict in Somalia will spill over into Kenya and that extremist groups like Al-Shabaab are exploiting the porous border to recruit and commit attacks in Kenya.

Additionally, Mandera has experienced inter-clan conflicts among pastoral communities due to prolonged droughts caused by climate change, which in turn is exacerbating competition over resources between such clans. Ethnicity-based politics is also a significant driver of conflict in the county.

These challenges have contributed to a steady socioeconomic decline, causing an exodus of the local population, including many health, education and construction professionals. This leaves the county with a dearth of qualified professionals to provide essential services, further exacerbating an already volatile local landscape.

Equally important, there is a concern about the lack of practical coordination between national and local authorities, which impedes the City’s ability to effectively address and mitigate these threats. The local government recognises the need for both improved national-local cooperation and support from international partners to build resilience against these threats and safeguard social cohesion.

How is the local government responding?

Mandera County’s prevention efforts are primarily led by its Ministry of Public Service Management, Devolved Units and Community Cohesion, which provides strategic leadership and guidance for county-wide public service delivery. Prevention of hate and extremism is carried out through three key departments within the Ministry, as outlined below.

Prevention of Radicalisation & Extremism

In 2018, the Ministry launched a dedicated Prevention of Radicalisation & Extremism Department, through which the County Government developed its action plan for preventing and countering violent extremism that was mandated by the national government. The plan was developed in consultation with and outlines a role for a diversity of actors, including national government stakeholders, faith-based institutions and civil society. It has a specific focus on youth engagement, recognising that young people remain a particularly targeted demographic amongst extremist recruiters. The plan also seeks to improve coordination among civil society and county government actors, create ‘accountable security’, raise public awareness of extremism and radicalisation and strengthen community-based early warning and incident response.

In line with this strategy and as mandated by the national government, the County also established a County Engagement Forum (CEF) to coordinate the implementation of the County Action Plan (CAP) and the Ministry’s prevention activities more broadly. The CEF ensures that all actors align their interventions with the CAP and operates with five strategic pillars: law enforcement, economy, ideology/faith, politics, and education.

*County Engagement Forum Leadership Training*

Further, to strengthen community cohesion and foster better collaboration between local government, security forces and community members, the CEF hosts regular coordination meetings that focus on:

Bolstering Community Cohesion: Bringing together various community stakeholders to build trust, strengthen understanding about extremist threats and requirements for response, and build an overall sense of having a unified response against extremist threats.
Improving Coordination: Enhancing communication and cooperation between local administrative bodies and security personnel to ensure a coordinated response to the threat landscape.
Addressing Communal Conflicts: Developing effective strategies and solutions to resolve conflicts within the community before they escalate to violence and/or are exploited by extremist groups, and more broadly promote peace and stability.

In addition, through this department, the county government has trained 600 community members to become countering violent extremism ‘champions’, with champions coming from 30 administrative wards across Mandera and being responsible for monitoring local extremist threats and sensitising communities to the dangers of extremism.

Community Engagement, Civic Education & Public Participation

The County Government’s Ministry of Public Service Management, Devolved Units and Community Cohesion additionally has a department responsible for guiding and promoting public participation and civic education programmes, as well as protecting and promoting the interests and rights of minorities and marginalised groups, ensuring their access to public service. This Community Engagement, Civic Education & Public Participation Department is also responsible for ensuring the participation of civil society organisations in county government-led programming.

Among its achievements, the department, with support from the national State Department of Devolution, has developed a guidebook for civic education and public participation called Jukumu Langu. This guidebook outlines standards for public participation and offers a community engagement roadmap against which the County Government can hold itself accountable. Additionally, the department spearheaded the formulation of a participatory and multi-stakeholder-informed blueprint (the Mandera County Integrated Development Plan 2023-2027) for addressing the root causes of insecurity, from climate change to unemployment. Importantly, the plan also identifies key challenges, causes (as identified by community members) and how those challenges were being addressed prior to the plan’s launch. It also outlines priorities per county government department, providing a clear mandate and scope of responsibility per department, which avoids duplication of efforts or a lack of understanding as to who does what. Amongst the identified priorities for addressing hate, extremism and polarisation are:

Resettling internally displaced persons (e.g., displaced due to conflict or climate change);
Enhancing cross-border peace-building initiatives (e.g., with counterparts in Somalia);
Hosting multi-actor peace dialogues to identify and mitigate community tensions before they escalate to violence;
Establishing inter- and intra-village sports tournaments to bring communities together;
Launching more youth-focused programmes, which will complement efforts by the county’s Ministry of Youth, Gender and Social Services to address youth welfare (e.g., addressing substance abuse) and engagement.

Community Cohesion & Conflict Management

Finally, the Ministry has a Department of Community Cohesion & Conflict Management, which takes a broader conflict resolution approach than the Department for the Prevention of Radicalisation and Extremism. This department focuses on the overall peaceful co-existence amongst communities in Mandera County and enhancing capacity for early warning and response to all types of conflict. It also conducts research on local threats and challenges and monitors and evaluates county-led conflict resolution efforts.

Among others, the department has:

Deployed alternative dispute resolution mechanisms that leverage traditional conflict resolution structures. For example, it has institutionalised Conflict Management Committees (CMCs) that help with developing and monitoring the implementation of peace agreements between warring clans;
Organised dialogues between security actors and community members to “enhance trust, information sharing and collaboration”;
Drafted a peace policy bill that seeks to formalise and institutionalise its various peace-building efforts;
Hosted coordination meetings with relevant counterparts in Somalia to prevent, mitigate and respond to cross-border threats.

What’s next?

To effectively tackle hate, extremism and polarisation, Mandera County Government aims to implement a comprehensive approach involving stakeholders from local and national government, civil society, the private sector and international bodies. Key priorities going forward include enhancing cross-border peace and security cooperation and fostering trusted relationships with Somalian counterparts for more effective information sharing on e.g., extremist threats.

To mitigate risks among vulnerable youth, the County seeks to strengthen youth entrepreneurship, including by enhancing Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) opportunities.

The Mandera County Government also shared that it will continue to invest in building trust between communities and security agencies, including to host more regular and consistent dialogues between these two stakeholders.

Furthermore, the County Government seeks greater collaboration with the national government and the governments of Ethiopia and Somalia, particularly to establish a unified border management strategy that would enable regulated cross-border trade and investment, while also creating a County Government-informed strategy for addressing cross-border threats such as cross-border extremist mobilisation.

The County Government is also a member of Strong Cities’ Border Municipalities Working Group, through which it will continue to engage other border towns in Kenya and the wider East and Southern Africa region on the unique challenges that come with being situated on a porous border.

To learn more

Explore or Search for City Spotlights

Search for spotlights by city names or themes

Kenya

Is your city a Strong City?

Strong Cities membership is open to local authorities at the city, municipal or other subnational level. Membership is free of charge.

Join the Network

City Spotlight: Mandera County, Kenya

What is the local government concerned about?

How is the local government responding?

What’s next?

Explore or Search for City Spotlights

Mandera County

Žilina

Bratislava

Novi Pazar

Portsmouth

Agadir

eThekwini (Durban)

Karachi

Delhi Municipal Corporation

The Hague

Brčko District

Sabratha

Is your city a Strong City?