Thirteen tools. Zero institutional users. Here's why that's the right place to start.
There is a gap in East African information infrastructure that I've been trying to close for the past year.
It's not a data gap. Kenya has more public data than most people realise. The Controller of Budget publishes quarterly budget execution reports for all 47 counties. The National Drought Management Authority issues regular county-level drought alerts. The World Food Programme tracks food prices across Kenyan markets in near-real time. Parliament publishes MP attendance records and bill status. SASRA, the Sacco Societies Regulatory Authority, publishes SACCO performance data.
All of this is public. All of it is free. Almost none of it reaches the people it's meant to serve.
The gap is what I call opacity: information published in formats that require a university education, a reliable internet connection, and several hours to navigate — formats that were never designed to be used.
What I built
Over the past year I've built 13 tools that bridge that gap. They're free, they require no login, and they work on a 3G connection on a basic Android phone.
For farmers and NGO field staff:
WapiMaji monitors water stress and drought conditions across all 47 counties, updated daily from NDMA data. When stress levels cross a threshold, it can send an SMS alert — to any phone, no internet required. The SMS pipeline is built and tested. It's waiting on a registered shortcode, which costs about Ksh 1,500 per month.
JuaMazao shows live WFP crop prices from Kenyan markets — maize, rice, sugar, cooking oil. When the price of maize in a particular market spikes more than 20% above its 12-month average, the tool shows a red alert. A farmer deciding when to sell, or an NGO deciding where to source emergency food, can get this information in 30 seconds without navigating the WFP data portal.
For citizens and local government:
Macho ya Wananchi shows MP attendance records, CDF utilisation by constituency, and bill status for Kenya's 13th Parliament. This data is public — it's just buried in parliamentary reports that nobody reads.
Hesabu shows county budget execution for 46 of Kenya's 47 counties (one county is excluded due to data gaps). Which counties are spending their development budget? Which are sitting on unspent billions? The Controller of Budget publishes this. Nobody makes it readable.
Jibu answers questions about your constitutional rights, employment law, and land rights — in Kiswahili and English. It's grounded in the Constitution of Kenya 2010, the Employment Act, the Land Act, and access-to-justice resources from LSK, FIDA, and Kituo cha Sheria.
For diaspora families:
TumaPesa shows the cost of sending money to Kenya across seven providers — including the hidden margin buried in the exchange rate that providers don't always advertise. Restoration note (2026): the original piece cited a single Kenya-specific average cost figure from the World Bank that could not be independently confirmed. What is documented is that the World Bank's Remittance Prices Worldwide programme, which TumaPesa's benchmark is modelled on, tracks costs that vary considerably by provider and corridor, with a globally reported average around 6.36 percent of the amount sent. The tool lets you see where a specific provider and route falls against that kind of benchmark, rather than asserting one fixed number for every transaction.
What I got right
Working on 3G matters. Every tool is tested on a slow connection. They load in under 10 seconds on a standard Safaricom data plan. No video, no heavy graphics, no JavaScript frameworks that stall on mobile.
Kiswahili matters. Several tools have Kiswahili interfaces and Kiswahili content. Jibu answers civic rights questions in Kiswahili. The WapiMaji SMS alerts are in Kiswahili. This is not a translation afterthought — it's a first-class design requirement.
Not recommending is a feature. None of these tools tell you what to do. They show you the data and let you decide. A farmer looking at JuaMazao sees what maize is selling for in Eldoret, Nakuru, and Kisumu right now. They decide whether to wait or sell. The tool doesn't issue recommendations because the tool doesn't know their situation.
What's still missing
The SMS shortcode. WapiMaji can send drought alerts to farmers on basic phones the moment a registered shortcode is in place. The code is written. The Africa's Talking integration is tested. The shortcode costs about Ksh 1,500 a month. I haven't pulled the trigger because I want a county NGO partner to validate the alert thresholds and language before I start sending messages to farmers I've never met.
Real civic data coverage. Macho ya Wananchi currently covers about 4% of parliament. The data is from Mzalendo, and expansion is straightforward — but I want to do it right rather than fast. Partial coverage without prominent disclosure is worse than no tool at all.
Institutional trust. A tool that shows budget data is only as trustworthy as the institution that endorses it. A county government office pointing citizens to Hesabu is a fundamentally different proposition than a diaspora developer running it from Germany. I haven't built those institutional relationships yet.
What I want to hear
If you work with an NGO, a county government office, a cooperative, or a parish community in Kenya or East Africa — and one of these tools is close to something you need but not quite right — I want to talk.
Not to sell you anything. To understand what's actually missing.
The tools exist. They work. The question I can't answer from outside Kenya is: do they fit the real contexts in which decisions are being made?
contact@aikungfu.dev · All tools · GitHub
Gabriel Mahia is a diaspora engineer based in the US. He builds decision infrastructure for East Africa.
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