Inside eCitizen: The origin, controversies and deals behind Kenya’s gov’t service portal

Kenya’s government first introduced eCitizen in 2014. Since then, it has expanded to be the main online gateway for over 20,000 State services.

The platform is managed by ECS (Electronic Citizen Services) LLC, a consortium of three companies that built and piloted it until the Kenyan government acquired it in 2023.

“To date, eCitizen has never been funded by the exchequer. The convenience fee is what we pay for cybersecurity licences, certifications, bandwidth, salaries and the company’s bills,” David Kiprono, ECS’ Director of Government Relations, says of the Ksh.50 ‘convenience fee’ one is charged when paying for services on the platform.

It is now domiciled under the Interior Ministry's Department of Immigration and Citizen Services.

“We grew from making Ksh.100 million a day to Ksh.1 billion. It oscillates such that on some dry months we go to Ksh.900 million,” Kiprono says.

Citizen Digital goes inside ECS for an inside story on one of the region’s biggest software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions and responses to the several concerns around its operation.