The Kenyan government is planning to monetise non-personal data collected through the eCitizen platform and other state digital systems, in a move aimed at creating a formal data marketplace and generating additional revenue for the exchequer.
According to a proposal reported by Business Daily, the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Digital Economy (MICTDE) intends to establish a National Data Governance and Emerging Technologies Council to aggregate government data and oversee its commercial use.
Under the plan, the council would coordinate the sale of at least 1,000 anonymised datasets over the next five years to researchers, businesses, non-governmental organisations, and innovators seeking insights from public sector information.
The datasets would be drawn from multiple government systems, including eCitizen, and are expected to cover areas such as business registration trends, passport and immigration application volumes, civil registration statistics on births, deaths and marriages, vehicle registration data, and land transaction records. Additional data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics and other state agencies would also be integrated into the system.
Beyond eCitizen, the government is also considering monetisation of broader datasets such as traffic flow patterns and agricultural production statistics by region.
Authorities have, however, emphasized that personal data—including names, national identification numbers, phone numbers, and images—will be excluded from the marketplace in compliance with Kenya’s data protection laws.
The proposed data marketplace is expected to cost up to Sh396 million to develop and operate over a five-year period. The ministry argues that the growing volume of data generated through digital government services justifies the investment.
Under the National Data Governance Policy, the government plans to introduce structured licensing models and pricing tiers. These would include free access for public interest and research purposes, alongside paid access for commercial and specialised data use cases, with clear guidelines on revenue sharing and data ownership.
Officials note that the expansion of digital public services, particularly through eCitizen, has resulted in significant volumes of structured data across government institutions, creating an opportunity for economic utilisation.
If implemented, Kenya would join a small group of countries that have formalised public sector data marketplaces. Singapore, for instance, provides open access to selected datasets while charging for advanced or specialised data, while the United Kingdom’s Ordnance Survey generates billions of shillings annually from the commercialisation of geospatial data.
The government estimates that Kenya’s emerging data economy could stimulate investment in data centre infrastructure worth more than Sh104 billion by 2031 and support the growth of the artificial intelligence sector, currently valued at around Sh31 billion, according to projections cited in the policy.
The proposed National Data Governance and Emerging Technologies Council will be supported by a dedicated Data Governance Office tasked with managing the marketplace and implementing the broader policy framework.
The policy also formally recognises data as a strategic national asset, aligning Kenya with a growing global trend in which governments are seeking to derive economic value from public data while balancing privacy and regulatory safeguards.
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