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Digital lockout: Why e-GP betrays bottom-up strategy
E-procurement is one of the most promising innovations this country could embrace.
Digitising public procurement can be a good thing: fewer middlemen, cleaner audit trails, faster payments. But Kenya’s forced transition to the Electronic Government Procurement system (e-GP) is the wrong reform at the wrong speed. It presumes universal connectivity, affordable devices, and reliable power—assumptions that do not hold for millions of Kenyans, especially those that the “bottom-up” agenda promised to prioritise.
Global guidance on e-procurement—from the World Bank to the OECD—cautions against “big bang” digital rollouts. Best practice stresses phased deployment, human-centred design, and capacity-building before compulsion.
By imposing e-GP hurriedly and forcibly, without even having the requisite infrastructure to embrace a digital-only system, Kenya risks ignoring these lessons and repeating old mistakes under a new digital banner.
First, Kenya’s infrastructure and access gaps are not theoretical. Coverage is not the same as meaningful access. Large parts of the country contend with patchy or slow internet, and a sizeable share of households lack dependable power. Even in towns with decent signal, blackouts and local outages interrupt work. Procurement deadlines, time-stamped submissions, and invoice approvals cannot survive an unreliable grid or unstable networks.
If the government makes a digital portal the single point of entry, every outage becomes a gatekeeper, and every power cut becomes an exclusion event.
Backup power
Two, affordability widens the gap. A digital-only regime imposes new, ongoing costs on the smallest players: smartphones or laptops, data bundles, scanners, cyber-hygiene tools, and backup power. For a youth group in Suba, a women’s cooperative in Tiaty, or a micro-supplier in Marsabit, these expenses are unpredictable. Larger firms in Nairobi can absorb them, centralise compliance, and hire specialists.
The playing field tilts toward the already connected—the very opposite of what a people-centred procurement system should do. It is a system that works for the well-to-do, not for hustlers building businesses at the margins.
Third, Kenya’s inclusion policies underline the danger. The Access to Government Procurement Opportunities framework reserves a 30% share of tenders for youth, women, and persons with disabilities. That commitment only works if the doorway remains genuinely accessible. If the doorway moves entirely online while the digital divide persists, the set-aside shrinks from a ladder to a mirage. A portal that privileges Upper Hill over Sololo is not inclusion; it is filtration by bandwidth and postcode.
Most of all, a compulsory e-GP contradicts the spirit of Bottom-Up Economic Transformation. Bottom-up means designing for the last mile first: places where power flickers, where a data bundle competes with school fees. A reform that targets the already connected, that builds for Nairobi’s fibre backbone and hoping the periphery catches up, flips the promise of bottom up on its head. It is trickle-down in digital disguise.
Abandon digitisation
The path forward is not to abandon digitisation but to redesign it for inclusion. Keep the transparency gains while protecting participation. Maintain hybrid channels during a clearly defined transition, with sunset criteria tied to adoption and readiness, not arbitrary dates. Run county-level readiness tests on power reliability, device affordability, and lived user experience for MSMEs before the Nation goes e-only. Pair the platform with device-financing and targeted data support for registered small suppliers and AGPO groups. Put serious training in every county, in local languages, with simple visual guides that demystify bidding, invoicing, and dispute resolution.
Resilience must also be designed in from the start. Outages, fibre cuts, and software failures will happen. Procurement rules should automatically extend deadlines during disruptions, mirror servers across regions, allow offline contingency submissions, and broadcast SMS alerts so suppliers are not punished for problems they cannot control. A reliable platform is not one that never fails; it is one that fails safely and predictably.
It behoves us to accept that no reform succeeds by decree; it succeeds when real users can participate reliably and affordably. Until connectivity, affordability, and reliability gaps are narrowed, a compulsory, purely online e-GP will entrench exclusion. That’s not what President Ruto promised. It’s not what the law requires for disadvantaged groups. And it’s not how you build trust in public procurement. Digitise, yes. But do it the way that works for Kenya: inclusive, phased, and truly bottom-up.
Mr Dida is County Chief Officer, Marsabit County
