2009 Assessment

This peer-reviewed country report includes:

Integrity Indicators Scorecard: Scores, scoring criteria, commentary, references, and peer review perspectives for more than 300 Integrity Indicators.

Reporter's Notebook: An on-the-ground look at corruption and integrity from a leading local journalist.

Corruption Timeline: Ten years of political context to today's corruption and integrity issues.

Positive steps toward real governance reform in Kenya following the post-election violence in 2007 have been slow to come. The overall health of the country's transparency and accountability institutions and mechanisms remains poor. In the area of political financing, there are no limitations on individual and corporate donations to political candidates, and there is no agency responsible for monitoring such donations. Procedures for selecting key members of the judiciary are at the discretion of the president with little input from the public or professional bodies. Furthermore, the Official Secrets Act hinders citizen access to government information, although there is pending legislation to create a Freedom of Information bill. Despite these ongoing problems, there are some positive signs in Kenya. One example is the effort to strengthen the independence of the election monitoring agency (the Interim Independent Election Commission) in the wake of the 2007 electoral violence. Although it remains too early to gauge the impact of the Commission's work, the legal provisions mandating that "the chairman and other members of the Commission shall be nominated through a competitive process" appear promising. In addition, the country's audit agency, regulations governing privatization and procurement, and the anti-corruption legal framework represent bright spots.