Kirinyaga County, Kenya – Once known as Kenya’s agricultural heartland, Kirinyaga is rapidly transforming into an urban powerhouse but at a cost that has planners and environmentalists worried.
Towns like Kerugoya, Kutus, and Kianyaga are expanding fast, with improved road networks, new housing estates, and commercial developments replacing what was once rich, arable farmland. The pace of urbanization is breathing new life into local economies, yet also threatening the region’s vital food production systems.
“People are subdividing land into small plots for development, especially around Kerugoya and Kutus,” said a local official. “The demand for housing is high, but we are losing prime agricultural land.”
Agriculture, long the backbone of Kirinyaga’s economy, is being pushed to the margins. Coffee and rice fields are disappearing under concrete. Former factory hubs like Kaitheri and Kathera once processing centres for local produce now stand idle or repurposed for non-agricultural use.
The shift, while inevitable in a growing county, is being driven by uncoordinated development. Experts point to a lack of enforced spatial plans and land-use policies that could balance growth with sustainability. Without intervention, Kirinyaga risks becoming a classic case of urban sprawl unregulated, uneven, and ultimately unsustainable.
“We are not against growth,” said one urban planner. “But without proper zoning, infrastructure development, and environmental safeguards, we will create more problems than we solve.”
Governor Anne Waiguru’s administration has embarked on infrastructural upgrades tarmacking roads, improving drainage, lighting streets and is in the final stages of developing a county spatial plan. However, critics argue that these efforts must go further to protect farming communities and maintain food supply chains.
“If we lose our agricultural land, we don’t just lose food we lose livelihoods, history, and the self-sufficiency of our county,” said a farmer in Mwea, home to Kenya’s largest rice irrigation scheme.
As Kirinyaga stands at this urban crossroads, the challenge is clear: how to harness growth without eroding the land and livelihoods that made the county thrive in the first place.