Advancing Citizen Engagement in Kenya's Participatory Budgeting System through Fiscal Transparency and Digital Tools

Kenya's 2010 Constitution and Public Finance Management Act (2012) mandates public participation in county budgeting, yet participatory processes remain opaque, costly, and skewed toward organized interests. Citizens, especially women, youth, and informal-sector workers, often lack timely information on when and how to engage, struggle to interpret technical fiscal documents, and rarely learn whether their input mattered, reinforcing perceptions of participation as a legal "box-ticking" exercise. In partnership with the Institute of Public Finance, a Kenyan public finance think tank, researchers are evaluating whether digital tools can make county participatory budgeting more accessible, informed, and accountable.

Approximately 1,000 citizens across five counties will be randomly assigned to one of three groups. A control group receives neutral tax-filing reminders. An informational group receives WhatsApp-delivered alerts about upcoming county budget forums along with plain-language summaries of the budget documents under discussion. An educational group additionally receives short interactive civic education modules, an AI-assisted assistant grounded in approved public finance materials, and structured templates to help citizens prepare specific, actionable budget proposals. Half of treated respondents are further randomly selected to receive a structured post-forum summary reporting what citizens raised and how officials responded, testing whether closing the feedback loop sustains engagement. 

The intervention is timed to live county budget consultations in five counties during the 2026/27 fiscal year. Results will be available in early 2027 and will inform the design of inclusive participatory tools for county governments and civil society in Kenya.