Supply Chain Traceability and Performance of County Governments in Kenya

County governments in Kenya continued to record inefficiencies, financial losses, and weak accountability in their supply chains despite the establishment of devolved governance in 2013. Weak product traceability, limited information sharing, inconsistent compliance monitoring, and unclear supplier accountability had undermined transparency and service delivery in devolved units. This study determined the effect of supply chain traceability on the performance of county governments in Kenya. The primary objective of this study was to examine the relationship between supply chain traceability and the performance of county governments in Kenya. The specific objectives were to examine the effect of product traceability, assess the effect of information sharing, determine the effect of compliance monitoring, and examine the effect of supplier accountability on the performance of county governments in Kenya. The study was anchored on the Resource-Based View, Information Processing, Institutional, and Stewardship theories. A cross-sectional survey research design was adopted, targeting a population of 120 procurement and supply chain personnel comprising county supply chain managers, procurement officers, logistics officers, stores officers, and contract management officers. Using Yamane's formula, a multi-stage sampling technique produced a sample of 92 respondents. A pilot study involving 11 respondents drawn from a county not included in the main study was conducted, and all five research constructs returned Cronbach's alpha coefficients above the 0.7 threshold. Data were collected using structured questionnaires and processed in SPSS version 28, using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, and multiple regression analysis. Of the 92 questionnaires distributed, 70 were completed and returned, yielding a response rate of 76.0 percent. The correlation results showed that product traceability, information sharing, compliance monitoring, and supplier accountability were each positively and significantly associated with performance, with compliance monitoring recording the strongest association (r = 0.498, p