Why Kenya Must Sue to Stop the State from Turning Citizens into a Data Mine

The State now wants Kenyans to believe that the sale of government data is harmless because the data will allegedly be “anonymised” and “non-personal.” That is the language being used to soften the blow. The plan, as reported, is to create a State-run marketplace where data collected through platforms such as eCitizen and other government agencies can be packaged and sold to businesses, researchers, non-governmental organisations and innovators. The stated justification is familiar: the government wants to raise revenue, support planning, and make public data useful for development.

But beneath that polished explanation lies a dangerous constitutional question. When a citizen gives information to the State, that citizen is not entering a commercial contract with a data broker. A Kenyan using eCitizen is not donating their life to be mined, cleaned, aggregated, priced and sold. They are complying with the machinery of government because they need a passport, a business name, a birth certificate, a death certificate, a land service, immigration processing, company registration, driving services or access to public administration. That information is given under necessity, not commercial consent.

That is why this proposal must be resisted in court and in the court of public opinion. It is not enough for government to say that names and ID numbers will not be included. The real issue is not only whether a spreadsheet contains a column called “Name” or “ID Number.” The issue is whether data drawn from identity-based public systems can still reveal patterns, locations, demographics, economic behaviour, family events, land activity, migration habits, business formation trends and service demand in ways that can expose citizens, communities, markets and vulnerable groups.

There is no magic wand called anonymisation. Data does not become morally clean merely because a name has been removed. In the modern data economy, re-identification is a real risk. A dataset stripped of obvious identifiers can still be matched with other datasets to reveal the people, households, businesses or communities behind the numbers. Location, age band, transaction timing, service type, region, rare events, land records, business filings and civil registration patterns can become fingerprints. The more detailed the data, the easier it becomes to connect the dots.

This is why the government’s argument is weak. If the data is genuinely anonymous, broad and harmless, why sell it through a controlled marketplace as a valuable revenue product? If it is valuable enough for businesses and foreign-linked entities to buy, then it likely contains insight powerful enough to influence markets, target communities, profile behaviour, predict demand, shape credit decisions, plan campaigns, price services or identify opportunities. That value does not come from thin air. It comes from citizens’ lives.

Kenya must therefore ask a hard question: who gave the State permission to turn compulsory citizen interaction with government into a commercial raw material? Public data can be used for public planning, public research, transparency and service delivery. But commercial sale is a different purpose. A citizen who submitted information to obtain a passport did not consent to their data traces being used later to build a State data marketplace. A business owner who registered a company did not authorise government to turn registration patterns into a private-sector intelligence product. A parent registering a birth did not agree to become part of a monetised civil-registration dataset.

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The Constitutional Case Against the Move

The constitutional case begins with Article 31 of the Constitution of Kenya. Article 31 protects the right to privacy, including the right not to have information relating to one’s family or private affairs unnecessarily required or revealed, and the right not to have the privacy of communications infringed. Government cannot defeat that right by clever labelling. If a dataset can expose private affairs, enable profiling, permit re-identification, or reveal sensitive patterns about people and communities, then privacy concerns remain alive.

Article 10 is also implicated. The national values and principles of governance bind every State organ, State officer, public officer and all persons whenever they apply or interpret the Constitution, enact law, or make and implement public policy decisions. These values include the rule of law, democracy, participation of the people, human dignity, human rights, good governance, integrity, transparency and accountability. A data sale policy built in boardrooms without meaningful public participation would be constitutionally suspect from birth.

Article 35 strengthens the case. Every citizen has the right of access to information held by the State. Before the government sells public datasets, Kenyans have a right to know what data is being packaged, which agencies collected it, the original purpose of collection, who will buy it, how prices will be set, how revenue will be accounted for, what safeguards wil