CABRI Regional Peer-Learning and Exchange Workshop with a theme Digital PFM in Action: Digital Tools for Transparent, Inclusive, and Resilient Public Finance that was held between 9th-10th, March 2026, Kigali, Rwanda spotlighted digital public financial management (PFM) reforms across Africa.
The workshop further highlighted innovations such as Kenya’s REFORMiS, Rwanda’s Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS), Liberia’s Project Dashboard, and digital tools for transparency in public finance. The workshop brought together officials from ministries of finance, budget, planning, information and communication technology (ICT), and representatives of civil society, alongside continental partners – the African Development Bank (AfDB), African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF), Gates Foundation, ODI Global and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
Through this peer-learning, Kipkorir Biegon, Senior Programmes Officer, Research and Innovation Lead | Bajeti Hub, Kenya; explored how digital reforms is strengthening accountability, efficiency, and inclusive growth through budget debates confinement through; WhatsApp groups, women only Budget Cells, and Facebook Live sessions with governors, and on interactive maps that show where every shilling of borrowed money is supposed to land. This is the quiet revolution that Bajeti Hub and its partners are engineering in public financial management (PFM) reforms.
In Kenya two levels of government share responsibilities, counties run about 94% of public health facilities, and nearly four in ten Kenyans live below the poverty line. At the same time, the national government consistently underspends by around 14%, cash releases arrive late, and most funds are disbursed in the final quarter. Devolution promised that public money would follow real local priorities; weak accountability now risks discrediting that promise.
This is where civil society’s new digital muscle matters. Bajeti Hub, a Kenyan non profit, has spent the last decade training over 100 Budget Facilitators across all 47 counties and knitting them into Regional Budget Hubs. These hubs turn abstract numbers into concrete conversations: they mobilize residents for budget hearings, link line items to water points, clinics and boreholes, and translate community experiences into evidence based demands on government.
Budget Cells, including women only cells, meet in villages to monitor projects; the same citizens then use WhatsApp and Facebook Live to question officials, share photos, and track promises in real time. Governors can now convene regular live “round tables” with CSOs to review policies and the County Integrated Development Plans, with commitments captured as follow up actions rather than polite minutes.
Kenya scored 55/100 on budget transparency at national level in the 2023 Open Budget Survey and 64/100 in the 2024 County Budget Transparency Survey. Yet public participation remains painfully low: 31/100 nationally and just 12/100 in counties, with almost no openings during implementation and audit stages. Oversight is stronger on paper than in practice; it is weakest precisely where money turns into or fails to turn into—services.
Bajeti Hub’s answer is not simply “more data”. In fact, one of the biggest risks now is data overload. Governments and donors are publishing more budget and debt information than ever before, and more citizens want to engage but volume without synthesis creates confusion, not clarity. Meanwhile, CSOs, communities, assemblies and researchers often work in parallel, missing each other’s insights and duplicating effort.
Enter Bajeti Ufahamu, a digital tool designed as a kind of “PFM brain”. It aggregates feedback memos, budget documents and community data into one coherent analysis; it synthesizes what citizens are saying across counties and aligns it with national level decisions. Done well, this kind of synthesis can make sure that when citizens speak, they are heard at the right time, in the right forum, with the right evidence on the table.
Bajeti Hub is building an interactive public debt accountability map that geolocates externally funded capital projects, shows funding sources, costs and disbursement status, and links them back to national debt obligations. For the average citizen, this is a radical shift: debt stops being an abstract number in a policy paper and becomes a road, dam or borehole they can see and question on a map.
Digital tools cannot magically fix late cash releases, political interference or weak institutional incentives. The digital divide still excludes many rural and poorer Kenyans; hybrid models that combine online tools with face to face organizing remain essential. Governments must also play their part, keeping platforms updated and treating civil society as partners rather than adversaries.
PFM reforms in Kenya are no longer just about upgrading financial systems inside treasuries. They are about connecting those systems to citizens’ phones, to community scorecards, to interactive maps and live dialogues. When civil society brings lived experience, and digital tools bring structure and speed, public money starts to feel less like a mystery and more like a shared project.
Dr. Yusuf Muchelule is a Senior Lecturer & a Consultant
