Garissa County


Garissa County is an administrative County in the former North Eastern Province of Kenya. Its capital and largest urban area is Garissa. The county had a population of 841,353 at the 2019 Census, and a land area of about. As of 31 August 2016, Garissa County had more than 260,000 Somali refugees in refugee camps at Dadaab, which is located in Garissa County.

Demographics

Garissa county has a total population of 841,353 persons of which 458,975 are males, 382,344 females and 34 intesex person.Thare is a total of 141,394 household with an average size of 5.9 persons per house hold. It has a population Density of 19 persons per square kilometre.
Garissa County is mostly inhabited by ethnic Somalis.

Administrative and Political Units

Administrative Units

The are seven counties with 30 county assembly wards. There are 22 divisions sud-divided into 96 locations and 142 sub-locations.
It has six constituencies:
Ali Bunow Korane is the second governor for Garissa county and is deputised by Abdi Dagane Muhumed and assumed office in 2017. Mohamed Yusuf Hajj has been the senator since 2013 he was the first to be elected as senator. assumed office in 2017 as the second elected women representative on a Jubilee Party ticket.

County executives

According to the new Constitution that was enacted in 2010,Garissa County has an assembly whose members are elected from single member constituencies known as wards. There are also nominated members to ensure two-thirds gender rule is followed. There are six nominated members to represent marginalised groups and a speaker who will be an ex-official member of the assembly.
A County Assembly member is elected for a term of five years. The Speaker is elected by the assembly members from among people who are not members of the Assembly. The Speaker presides over all sittings of the assembly and in his absence is deputised a deputy speaker who is elected from members within the assembly. The County assembly exercises an oversight over the County Government and makes laws that are necessary to ensure the smooth performance of the county government.

Education

The county has 347 ECD centres, 224 primary schools, 41 secondary schools, 2 teachers training colleges and 2 public universities.
39.7 percent of the population can read and write and 57.9 cannot read and write. There is and an average of 8.2 percent literacy level and 74percent are illiterate.
CategoryNo of PublicNo of PrivateTotal
ECD210137347
Primary School17351224
Secondary School251651
Youth Polytechnic202
Teachers Training Colleges202
Technical Institutions101
Universities121
Source

Health

There are a total of 111 health facilities distributes across the county, one level 5, 14 other hospitals, 29 health centres and 67 dispensaries.
DiseasesPercentage
Upper Respiratory Tract Infections30.9
Urinary Tract Infection15.2
Diarrhoeal diseases9.5
Diseases of the skin7.4
Pneumonia6.7

Source
HIV/ADS is at the 1 percentage as compared to the national prevalent rate of 5.6 percentage.

Transport and Communication

A total of 2,700.6 km is classified as road network coverage comprising 1,637.84 km under county government and 1,062.76 Km under national government. Of the total road network 420 km is covered by gravelled surface, 2,245.1Km earth surface and.5 Km of bitumen surface.
There are 6 postal services with 2,600 installed letter boxes, 2,496 rented letter boxes 104 vacant letter boxes.

Trade and Commerce

The main crops hrown are maize, greengrams, sorghum, rice, cowpeas, bananas, mangoes, pawpaw, water melon, tomatoes, capsicum and onions. Farmers have an avaergae size of 1.5 hectares for small scale and 20 heactes for large scale. cattle, goats, sheep and camel are kept as the main livestock for producing key products of meat, milk, hides and skins.

Services and Urbanisation

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