His Excellency Alex Tolgos EGH is the current Governor of Elgeyo Marakwet County serving his second five-year term since ascending to the position in 2013. He also serves the Council of Governors (COG) as Chief Whip.
He is an astute leader with an entrepreneurship and engineering background.
Governor Tolgos is a holder of BSc Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Nairobi. He went to St Patricks High School Iten and Kiptabus Primary School in Elgeyo Marakwet.
Prior to assuming office as Governor, he has served in various managerial positions in the Energy Sector namely, Kenol/Kobil where he was Assistant Operations Manager – Mombasa and later Depot Inventory Manager – Eldoret. He also served at Kobcom Petroleum as Operations and Marketing Director.
Governor Tolgos has also undertaken professional training at the East African Portland Cement, Kenya Railways (Now Rift Valley Railways) as well as CPA Section 1 & 2.
Engineer Tolgos aims to better the livelihoods of his constituents through implementation of sustainable and equitable development projects at the grassroots level.
His areas of interest include infrastructure improvement, education promotion, agribusiness and irrigation development, sports and culture development, entrepreneurship promotion and markets development as well as women and youth empowerment.
He is the recipient of the National Campaign Against Drugs Abuse (NACADA) Champion Award for the empowerment of women having rehabilitated over 2,000 women who were once brewers of illicit brews and who now live meaningful and productive lives.
Governor Tolgos is a strong advocate of accountability and transparency in the management of public resources and led the County in signing up to the global Open Government Partnership (OGP) making Elgeyo Marakwet one among three regional governments in Africa to enlist into the partnership.
A strong believer in equitable distribution of public resources, Governor Tolgos is among the first governors in Kenya to implement a law that shares out County resources equitably to the County’s 20 wards under the Elgeyo Marakwet Equitable Development Act (EDA). Under EDA and in the spirit of devolving resources to the grassroots, each ward gets an equitable share of the County’s development budget.
Governor Tolgos has strengthened citizen participation in governance by ensuring the EDA budgets in the wards are decided by the citizens themselves in public participation forums held before the budgets are appropriated. The County has received commendation from the International Budget Partnership (IBP) for this model of budgeting.
In opining polls conducted by national research firms such as InfoTrack, Governor Tolgos has been rated among the top 10 best performing governors in Kenya.