By Beatrice Kivindyo and Kiarie Irene Wambui
Kenya’s public debt is usually reported in billions and trillions of shillings. A new loan is announced, the figure makes the headlines, and the public moves on to the next borrowing story. But that is only the beginning of the debt trail.
Who decided Kenya needed to borrow? What problem was the money supposed to solve? Who provided it and on what terms? In what currency? Who got the contracts? What was delivered? And did the country get value for the money it will eventually have to repay?
Those questions were at the centre of a media engagement held in Nairobi on Thursday, where journalists and editors examined how the media can better scrutinise public borrowing and follow what happens to the money after a loan is approved. The Kenya Editors Guild, in partnership with the International Republican Institute, convened the Second Peer-to-Peer Engagement on the Media’s Role in the Oversight and Reporting of Complex and High-Risk Public Financing Instruments at the Sarova Stanley Hotel.
Alexander Riithi, Head of Programmes at the Institute of Social Accountability (TISA), argued that scrutiny should begin before the borrowing itself. “Our debt problem does not start with implementation. It starts with formulation,” Riithi said. “Debt information is sometimes hidden in plain sight.” That means a debt story should not begin and end with the amount Kenya has borrowed.
The borrowing is only the beginning
Kenya’s Public Debt Management Office publishes information on the country’s debt stock, including domestic and external debt and debt-service obligations. But figures alone do not tell citizens what the borrowing means. KEG Vice President Francis Openda said journalists should establish why the government is borrowing, what the money is intended to achieve and what the borrowing will ultimately cost taxpayers.
“The issue we are discussing today is our public financing, the debt. How we borrow, how we spend, and how we account for it,” Openda said. “Basically, borrowing is not a bad thing. It is how you spend the money, and the transparency of the funds.” The terms of a loan can also change the eventual cost to the country.
Journalists should establish who is providing the money, the interest rate, repayment period, fees and other conditions, Openda said. The currency in which a loan is denominated also matters because exchange-rate movements can increase the amount Kenya has to repay. “Every time the shilling takes a beating, the amount that we are expected to repay goes up. It is not constant,” he said.
For the public, that means a loan described simply as “KSh100 billion” may tell only part of the story. The cost depends on the terms attached to it and what happens to the money after it enters government accounts.
Follow the money after the announcement
The next stage is procurement and implementation. Was the contract competitively awarded? Was it single-sourced? Who won it? What was delivered? Was the project completed within the approved budget and timeframe? And is it delivering the public benefit used to justify the borrowing?
“These are the tough questions” journalists must ask when covering public borrowing and spending, Openda said. The point is not simply whether a government project exists. It is whether citizens can trace the money from the borrowing agreement through procurement and implementation to the outcome.
The information exists. Finding it is another matter.
For journalists trying to follow these questions, one of the biggest obstacles is access to usable information. KEG member Peter Wakaba, who presented findings from group discussions during the engagement, identified limited access to information, technical language, delayed or inconsistent data, bureaucratic barriers and weak follow-up on official reports as some of the challenges facing reporters.
“Accountability reports and documents must be consolidated and made accessible to the public,” Wakaba said. He said some important documents are effectively buried on government websites, making them difficult for journalists and members of the public to find and use.
The problem, therefore, is not always that information does not exist. Sometimes it is that the information is difficult to locate, difficult to interpret or released too late to support meaningful scrutiny. Participants proposed stronger links between public institutions and newsrooms, including a centralised portal for debt information and more consistent publication of accountability reports.
Debt is a year-round story
Wakaba also challenged newsrooms to stop treating public debt as a story that appears only when the Treasury presents the Budget. “The debt season now extends across the whole year, so there should be something to cover, not just during the budget reading session,” he said.
A borrowing story can therefore continue long after the announcement. Journalists can return when procurement records are released, when contracts are signed, when projects begin, when payments are made, when audit reports are published or when oversight institutions raise questions about implementation.
That approach would also allow the media to move away from reporting debt primarily as a series of large numbers and instead show what those numbers mean for citizens. “Technical jargon is not translated into something that can get us to ordinary Kenyans,” Wakaba said. “The challenge is not only access to information, but also making that information understandable and usable.”
Accountability applies to the media too
The engagement also turned scrutiny towards the journalists themselves. Openda said accountability reporting requires reporters to ask specific questions, establish allegations against facts and give institutions a fair opportunity to respond. “Our responsibility as media is to undertake institutional accountability, it also requires us to examine our own practices,” he said.
For journalists, that means going beyond repeating government figures or opposition claims. It means finding the underlying documents, checking the numbers, understanding the borrowing terms, seeking responses from the institutions involved and clearly separating established facts from allegations and unanswered questions.
Facilitator Newton Ndebu said journalists should also consider the wider public impact of the information they report. “We cannot be sent to websites with numbers that don’t make sense to anybody. We are not just gathering information to guide our reporting; we are shaping the national agenda on public debt,” Ndebu said.
Kenya’s debt story, therefore, does not end when a loan is approved or when the Treasury announces how much the country has borrowed. The more important story begins afterwards: where the money goes, who spends it, what it buys, what Kenya ultimately pays for it, and whether citizens receive the value they were promised.
