Gov’t spending Ksh.115M monthly to run eCitizen platform

The government spends about Ksh.115 million to Ksh.120 million every month to maintain the eCitizen portal, Immigration Principal Secretary Belio Kipsang said on Tuesday.

In an interview with Nation FM, Kipsang said the payments are made to ECS (Electronic Citizen Services) LLC, the three-member consortium of companies contracted to manage the system.

Dr Kipsang said the charges are based on a band system agreement, with fixed costs up to a certain number of services and incremental charges as more services are onboarded since the government acquired the portal in 2023.

“There was a band system agreement on how we would be charged for the services; for up to 2,000 services, the cost would be fixed, which would increase when they went up to, say, 5,000,” he said.

Currently, the platform offers about 22,000 services, ranging from registration to licensing and payments for government agencies.

“We collect between Ksh.750 million and Ksh.1 billion daily on the platform, up from Ksh.60 million daily when we took over the system,” the PS said, adding that it translates to over Ksh.1.1 billion annually in operating costs for the platform, compared to the billions it helps mobilise for government services every year.

ECS comprises Webmasters Kenya Limited, the company providing eCitizen customer care and related services; Pesaflow, which handles cash collection; and Olive Tree Media, in charge of bulk messaging and security support for notification services.

Webmasters developed eCitizen in 2014, and then-President Uhuru Kenyatta’s government adopted it as part of its push to digitise county and national government services.

The Directorate of eCitizen Services is responsible for the portal’s management, and all requisite payments are transmitted directly to the National Treasury. 

However, there has been a lot of controversy over the accountability of money paid through eCitizen, and the Auditor-General’s office has repeatedly flagged

Just last month, Nancy Gathungu’s office flagged over Ksh. 9.6 billion in questionable transactions, and expressed concern that the National Treasury never signed formal agreements with the companies collecting this money.

She said it has left Ksh. 7.05 billion just sitting in limbo, and another Ksh. 2.57 billion in receipts that could be linked to any invoices in the Pesaflow system.

Last year, she flagged unverified receipts worth Ksh.15.5 billion, but ECS has maintained that the system is foolproof and that all the transactions are verified before the company invoices the government.

President William Ruto’s government has been pushing for the onboarding of all government-related payments on eCitizen, some of which have been met with hostility.

For instance, Friends of Karura Forest (FKF), the community trust that has co-managed the forest in Nairobi for over a decade, is in court to challenge the Kenya Forest Service’s recent move to make all entry and parking payments paid exclusively through the government’s eCitizen platform.

The trust says the decision violates a joint management agreement, which provided for shared operational responsibilities and revenue collection through a joint bank account to fund staff salaries, conservation projects, and maintenance.

“The abrupt disruption of the revenue collection mandate without consultation or fiscal substitution,” FKF submits, threatens the livelihoods of over 122 staff and 300 community members relying on forest activities for income.

Previously, a similar attempt to mandate school fee payments via eCitizen failed after the High Court declared the directive unconstitutional in April 2025, citing a lack of public participation and an illegal Ksh.50 convenience fee imposed on each transaction. 

The court ruled the government's directive – aimed at boosting transparency and curbing illegal levies in schools – lacked legal basis and was an irrational attempt to force citizens to use a platform they did not ask for.