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

Kenya’s Constitution mandates public participation in fiscal decision-making, yet participatory processes remain opaque, costly, and skewed toward organized elites. Citizens—especially women and informal-sector workers—lack timely information on when, where, and how to engage, struggle to interpret technical fiscal documents, and rarely receive feedback on whether their input mattered, reinforcing perceptions of the process as legal “box ticking”. This pilot develops and tests digital infrastructure to make participatory budgeting more accessible, informed, and accountable at the subnational level. The intervention experimentally varies and layers three digital bundles: (1) targeted alerts and plain-language briefs on upcoming budget forums; (2) AI-enabled civic education modules that build practical fiscal understanding and participation skills; and (3) standardized tools for logging citizen inputs, verifying attendance, and delivering post-event decision summaries. Baseline survey respondents in eight Kenyan counties will be randomly assigned to one of these bundles or pure control to assess feasibility, uptake, and effects on verified participation, fiscal knowledge, perceived procedural fairness, and overall tax morale. The pilot tests whether layered transparency, civic education, and feedback can shift participatory budgeting from symbolic consultation toward meaningful citizen voice, particularly for underrepresented taxpayers. The pilot is co-developed with the Institute for Public Finance, a Kenyan think tank.