Kenya’s journey to digitisation on public services has been turned into a cartel playground where little success is registered with those who have benefited from the porous manual processes leading opposition to the reforms.
Over the last couple of week’s, a war of words has erupted in the country over the e-Government Procurement (e-GP) system with MPs and Governors being at the forefront of opposing the rollout.
This kind of opposition is not new and complicates Kenya’s pursuit of digitisation in public services, a key pillar of its Vision 2030, which aims to revolutionise governance through transparency, efficiency, and accessibility.
Initiatives like the National Land Management Information System (NLMIS), the Social Health Authority (SHA), the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS), and the newly launched e-Government Procurement (e-GP) system are designed to curb corruption and streamline operations in land management, healthcare, and public procurement.
However, these efforts face persistent setbacks, driven by opposition from powerful cartels and exacerbated by judicial interventions that delay or derail reforms.
The Promise of Digitisation
Digitisation offers a pathway to modernise Kenya’s public sector by reducing human intervention, enhancing accountability, and combating corruption. In land management, platforms like Ardhi Sasa aim to eliminate fraudulent titles and land grabbing.
In healthcare, the transition from the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) to SHA leverages digital systems to ensure universal health coverage (UHC). In procurement, IFMIS and the e-GP system seek to ensure transparent tendering.
Yet, these initiatives are consistently undermined by cartels, networks of politically connected individuals, bureaucrats, and private entities, who thrive on opaque systems.
The judiciary, intended to uphold accountability, often enables these failures through rulings that stall progress.
Land Records: Cartels and Judicial Roadblocks
The digitisation of land records through NLMIS and Ardhi Sasa aims to create a transparent database to address fraud and land grabbing, long perpetuated by cartels manipulating manual registries.
These cartels, comprising politicians, land brokers, and corrupt officials, resist digitisation, which threatens their illicit profits. Delays in scaling Ardhi Sasa, incomplete data migration, and sabotage by ministry insiders have slowed progress.
The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) reported in 2021 that cartels exploit partially digitised systems to perpetuate fraud, with fraudulent titles remaining undetected due to stalled reforms.
The courts have compounded these challenges. Lawsuits, often backed by influential figures, have led to injunctions halting data migration.
In 2022, a High Court ruling temporarily suspended Ardhi Sasa’s rollout in Nairobi, citing inadequate public participation, a move critics argue was orchestrated by cartels to preserve manual systems.
Such judicial interventions delay reforms, allowing cartels to maintain their grip on land registries.
NHIF to SHA: Healthcare Digitisation Stymied
The transition from NHIF to SHA, supported by a Sh104 billion healthcare IT system, aimed to streamline claims, detect fraud, and achieve UHC. However, SHA inherited NHIF’s legacy of corruption, with over Sh50 billion lost to ghost hospitals and fake claims.
Cartels involving healthcare providers, IT contractors, and bureaucrats resist digitisation, which exposes their schemes.
The Auditor General’s 2023/24 report revealed that the government does not own SHA’s IT system, raising concerns about cartel influence in its procurement.
SHA’s rejection of Sh10.6 billion in fraudulent claims in 2024, including payments to a “hospital in a phone,” highlights the persistence of these networks.The judiciary has further hindered progress.
In 2024, private hospitals and contractors secured court injunctions delaying SHA’s registration process, arguing that the digital system disadvantaged smaller facilities.
These rulings slowed public adoption, with only 1.9 million Kenyans registered by October 2024, giving cartels room to exploit loopholes and perpetuate fraud.
Procurement: IFMIS and the e-GP System Under Siege
Public procurement, historically a hotbed of corruption, has been targeted for reform through IFMIS and the new e-Government Procurement (e-GP) system.
IFMIS, introduced to digitize government spending, aimed to enhance transparency but has been plagued by cartel-driven sabotage, including system downtimes, data manipulation, and bypassing via emergency procurements.
The EACC’s investigations into the Kenya Medical Supplies Agency (KEMSA) revealed inflated tenders during the COVID-19 pandemic, facilitated by cartel-controlled loopholes.
The e-GP system, launched in 2024 by the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA), represents Kenya’s latest effort to fully digitise procurement.
Designed to replace manual and semi-digital processes, e-GP enables real-time tender tracking, supplier verification, and automated audits, promising to curb practices like overpriced contracts and ghost suppliers.
The system integrates all stages of procurement, from tender advertisement to contract management, into a single, transparent platform accessible to all registered suppliers.
By March 2025, the PPRA reported that over 5,000 suppliers had registered on e-GP, with 1,200 tenders processed, saving an estimated Sh15 billion through competitive bidding.
However, the e-GP system has faced fierce opposition from cartels accustomed to manipulating procurement for profit.
Politically connected contractors, who thrived under manual systems, resist the system’s transparency, which requires digital registration, real-time bidding, and compliance with strict eligibility criteria.
Reports in 2025 highlighted deliberate sabotage, including incomplete supplier data uploads and orchestrated system downtimes, aimed at discrediting e-GP.
Cartels have also exploited supplier unfamiliarity with the platform, lobbying for exemptions or a return to manual processes under the guise of “technical challenges.”
The EACC flagged cases where non-compliant firms, excluded from tenders, pressured the PPRA to relax digital requirements, undermining the system’s integrity.
The judiciary has played a significant role in stalling e-GP. In mid-2025, a group of suppliers filed a High Court case challenging the system’s mandatory digital registration and real-time bidding, arguing that it excluded small businesses lacking digital literacy.
The court issued a temporary injunction halting certain e-GP functionalities, pending “public sensitisation.”
Critics argue that such lawsuits, often backed by cartel-linked entities, are strategic efforts to delay transparency and preserve opportunities for tender manipulation.
The PPRA estimates that these delays have cost taxpayers Sh10 billion in 2025 alone, as fraudulent tenders continue under manual fallbacks.
The Courts’ Role: Enabling Failure
The judiciary’s role in Kenya’s digitisation failures is critical.
While courts are tasked with upholding justice, their frequent injunctions, often secured by cartel-linked litigants, delay or derail reforms.
In land digitisation, court orders citing “public interest” have halted data migration. In healthcare, injunctions have slowed SHA’s rollout.
In procurement, judicial interventions, such as the 2023 IFMIS upgrade suspension and the 2025 e-GP injunction, preserve the status quo, allowing cartels to exploit loopholes.
The judiciary’s susceptibility to influence, slow case resolutions, and lack of technical expertise in handling digitisation disputes exacerbate these failures. For instance, procurement cases often languish in court for years, emboldening cartels to resist reforms without fear of prosecution.
Cartel Strategies and Systemic Weaknesses
Cartels employ consistent tactics to oppose digitisation including system sabotage through deliberate glitches, incomplete data migration, and downtimes, as seen in IFMIS and e-GP, ensure digital platforms remain unreliable.
They also leverage political influence by using those connections to shield their operations, with minimal prosecutions of high-profile figures.
There has also been, what critics call judicial manipulation through the use of strategic lawsuits and injunctions, as seen across all sectors, delay reforms and preserve manual systems.
Cartels have also been exploiting public resistance. Low awareness and infrastructure gaps, such as SHA’s registration challenges or e-GP’s supplier onboarding issues, allow cartels to discredit digital systems.
The failure of digitisation has profound consequences.
Fraudulent land titles fuel conflicts, healthcare fraud leaves patients without care, and procurement scams divert funds from critical services.
The e-GP system’s delays alone have led to losses estimated at Sh10 billion in 2025 due to uncompetitive tenders. These failures erode public trust and hinder Kenya’s development goals.
Kenya must address cartel resistance and judicial bottlenecks by strengthening accountability and the swift prosecutions of cartel leaders by the EACC and Directorate of Criminal Investigations are essential.
There could also be a case for specialised courts or fast-tracked processes for digitisation disputes can reduce delays and frivolous injunctions even as the government works on robust awareness campaigns and user-friendly platforms can boost adoption, as seen in SHA and e-GP’s low uptake.
Competitive bidding and public scrutiny of digital system contracts can prevent cartel monopolisation.
