Marsabit County is located in the extreme part of northern Kenya and lies between latitude 02°45’ North and 04°27’ North and longitude 37°57’ East and 39°21’ East. The county has a total area of 70,961.2 km2, it is thus the biggest county in Kenya by land mass. It has an international boundary with Ethiopia to the north, borders Turkana County to the west, Samburu County to the south and Wajir and Isiolo counties to the east.
The county headquarters is at Marsabit town which is approximately 531Km from Nairobi city. The county has two main towns i.e. Moyale and Marsabit, and other smaller urban centers such as Sololo, Loiyangalani, and Laisamis, North Horr, Maikona, Turbi , Logologo, among others.
The County is a member of Frontier Counties Development Council (FCDC) regional economic block and host 14 distinct communities, these includes: Borana, Gabra, Rendille, Burji, Turkana, Dasenach, Konso, Samburu, Garre, El Molo, among others. There are also other Kenyan communities who have settled in the county because of their employment or for purposes of doing business.
Although agricultural production in the county includes diverse activities – livestock keeping, crop production, bee keeping, fishing and agroforestry is the main economic activity in the County, the livestock keeping predominates. Approximately 81%, 16%, and 3% of the population is engaged in pastoralism, agro-pastoralism, and other livelihoods respectively.
Demographic Features
Population Size, Composition and Distribution
Over the years, Marsabit county have experienced rapid population growth. In 2009, the total population of Marsabit county was 291,069 persons that is 151,061 males and 140,011 females, while in the last census of 2019 the total population was 459,785 persons, comprising 243,548 males and 216,219 females. Over the period of 10 years, the total population grew by 168,716 constituting a growth rate of almost 58%. From the demographic summary of the population, the proportion of male to females is still high across most of the cohorts. The youthful population of the county below the age of 19 is more than half the total proportion of the population accounting to 58% of the total population.
Health
The health sector envisions to provide quality, accessible, affordable health services to all residents of Marsabit county. Although doctor patient ratio has not improved overtime (1;13.000), Access and quality of health care services delivery improved due to mass Human Resource for Health recruitment and deployment carried out across all cadres. It increased from 545 to 1257 for all the cadres. Medical specialists increased from 1 to 10, consequently this reduced referral of medical cases from 152 to 24 cases and maternal cases from 67 to 25 cases. Surgical cases reduced from 83 to 30 cases (2022)
Marsabit county is vast with a land mass of 70,960sq.km with health facilities placed at average of 100kms apart and to improve access to health services, the primary health care facilities increased from 95 to 140 and tertiary health facilities increased from 2 to 4.
Improvement of RMNCAH indicators is one of the departmental priorities and with support of key stakeholders, the skilled Birth attendants improved from 37.6% to 69.0% and this was attributed to demand generation for services through Procurement and distribution of Mama kits, CBRA, and transport advocacy, construction and equipping of maternity blocks which increased from 26 to 96. Marsabit County is one of the counties with high burden of maternal mortality rate at 1127/100,000 (KDHS 2014). Facility-based maternal mortality reduced from 12(2017) to 4(2022) and this was a result of proven of quality service delivery, through infrastructural development, advocacy and demand generation, Integrated, outreach services, capacity building of Health care workers and strengthened referral services from the community, inter facilities and across the county.