Kenya OpenData

On July 8 2011, President Mwai Kibaki launched the Kenya Open Data Initiative, making key government data freely available to the public through a single online portal. The 2009 census, national and regional expenditure, and information on key public services were some of the first datasets to be released. Kenya is the first developing country to have an open government data portal, the first in sub-Saharan Africa and second on the continent after Morocco. The initiative has been widely acclaimed globally as one of the most significant steps Kenya has made to improve governance and implement the new Constitution’s provisions on access to information.

As of May 2015, there were close to 500 datasets that had been uploaded to the site. Our open data team is working to upload even more data over the next year. The website has received nearly 300 requests for data to date, and is developing tools and dashboards to monitor its effectiveness in responding to these requests. Data hosted on the portal has been downloaded over half a million times, and we’ve received well over 2.5 million views since our initial launch in 2011.