Wanga reframes Homa Bay's dusty roads as symbol of historical neglect, not failure

Senator Edwin Sifuna arrived in Homa Bay on a Sunday with the Linda Mwananchi team, a political convoy moving through the county to hold rallies. The roads forced them off the main highway. Sections were blocked with stones. Dust coated everything. Sifuna, covered in it himself, posted a photograph holding the Kenyan flag with a message that cut: the shiny things people claimed to see in Homa Bay were really just corruption, and the dust was relentless. The post spread online. Kenyans made memes. The infrastructure of the county became a punchline.

Governor Gladys Wanga did not let the moment pass. She issued a statement titled "Beyond the Dust: Homa Bay's Long Road from Marginalisation to Transformation," and in it she reframed what Sifuna had seen. The dust on the Mbita–Sindo–Kiabuya–Sori corridor, she argued, was not evidence of failure by the people of Homa Bay. It was evidence of a region that had waited decades for the infrastructure it deserved. The roads told a story, but not the one Sifuna was telling. They told the story of a place systematically neglected across four decades and four presidents—Jomo Kenyatta, Daniel Arap Moi, Mwai Kibaki, and Uhuru Kenyatta. For the people who lived along those roads, the dust was not a symbol or a metaphor. It was a daily fact that determined whether they could reach markets, whether their businesses could survive, whether their communities could grow.

Wanga pointed to the Mbita road as the clearest example. Seventy-four kilometers long, it was first awarded as a project in 2016 under Kenyatta's administration. It stalled. Only seven kilometers were completed. In 2020 it was re-awarded. Again, little happened. Only in the last two years, under President William Ruto, had real progress been made—twenty-eight kilometers tarmacked, with work still ongoing. The governor was clear about why: major trunk roads like this one could not be fixed with county budgets or Constituency Development Funds. They required national resources. They required the center to invest in the periphery.

But Wanga's response went deeper than infrastructure timelines. She invoked the political history of the region itself. Tom Mboya, the Cabinet minister, was dead. Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, the Vice President, was dead. Their absence from power, she suggested, had shaped Homa Bay's trajectory. Many residents believed that if Raila Odinga had become president, the region would have received the development it was owed. Devolution itself—the system of county government that had been championed for decades by leaders like Odinga—was finally giving places like Homa Bay a voice in their own development, a share of resources that had once been hoarded at the center. Wanga was not embarrassed by that history. She was angry about it, and she was determined to move past it.

She listed the projects now underway: the Mbita corridor, roads across Suba South, the Lala–Ruga, Nyalkinyi–Imbo, Gor Mahia Ring Road, Rangwe–Oboke, Rangwe–Ndiru, Kadel–Kanyadhiang–Kilusi–Opanga–Ramba, Kadongo–Lida, Adiedo–No. Karabok, Agolo Muok–Seka–Otati, Lwanda–Osodo–Kanyakiamo, Nyabera–Corner Koguta, Njeri–Pala, and the Sindo Town road network. Beyond roads, there was the Homa Bay Pier, a Modern Fish Market, Raila Odinga Stadium, Economic Stimulus Programme markets, Rusinga Road, and Mfangano Ring Road. The dust was real, she said. The historical deficit was real. But so was the transformation now underway. The question was not whether Homa Bay had been neglected—that was beyond dispute. The question was whether anyone was paying attention to what was being built now, and whether that work would be allowed to continue without being reduced to a photograph and a joke.