Since 2014, Webmasters Kenya Ltd. has partnered with the government to transform e-Citizen from a pilot platform with 10 services into a national digital hub.
Today, the platform hosts 22,000 government services, enabling seamless payments through a single Treasury account and simplifying access for citizens across multiple government agencies.
Despite legal hurdles along the way, e-Citizen has become central to Kenya’s push for efficient, citizen-focused digital services.
James Ayugi, CEO of Webmasters Kenya Ltd. and founder of e-Citizen, told Radio Generation on Tuesday that the platform’s success stems from addressing real challenges faced by citizens.
“The idea creation process of e-Citizen… it starts with a problem. At that time, government was a mess when it came to accessing government services… everything was manual. Majority of the services were manual,” he explained, describing long queues and complex processes that frustrated users.
Ayugi traced the roots of e-Citizen back to his earlier work with World Bank in 2008.
“Back in 2008, we got an opportunity to work with IFC World Bank, and this is when we were exposed to the world of investment climate and ease of doing business,” he said.
He noted that most government systems were then imported and expensive to maintain, creating a need for a sustainable local solution.
“Most of the World Bank projects… need to be sustainable. It was very expensive importing expertise from outside to come in to Kenya to support our system. The World Bank wanted a local vendor, and you were already in existence. We had experience,” Ayugi added.
Ayugi emphasized that Webmasters Kenya Ltd. created and continues to support e-Citizen, ensuring efficient onboarding of services and smooth operations. “We are the creators. We were actually supporting it,” he said.
The platform began with just 10 services, including NTSA, immigration, marriages, and business registration, chosen for their wide-reaching impact on citizens.
He recalled that NTSA was the first anchor customer, as driver’s licenses affect almost every Kenyan.
“For example, when you go to NTSA, a driver’s license is just not one service. There’s a driver’s license, there’s interim, you know, provisional driver's license. These are services that you pay to the government,” Ayugi explained.
From these beginnings, e-Citizen has expanded to integrate thousands of government services, requiring collaboration with hundreds of service providers and thousands of government employees.
Legal disputes with some providers caused delays, but renewed government focus on digitization accelerated growth.
Ayugi highlighted that their motivation is innovation rather than politics: “These are just young Kenyans, yeah, in the few hundreds, who just want to innovate, not in politics like, wow, this is what we want, an opportunity.”
From its origins addressing a manual, inefficient system to a fully integrated platform hosting 22,000 services, e-Citizen has transformed how Kenyans interact with government services, demonstrating the country’s commitment to digital transformation and citizen-centered service delivery.
Through a gazette notice dated December 20, 2022, Former Treasury Cabinet Secretary Njuguna Ndung'u said the digital payments platform is integrated with all available electronic payment platforms in Kenya, including mobile money telephone payment services.
“The Government of the Republic of Kenya has developed the e-Citizen digital payments platform through which citizens and all persons will be able to pay for government services,” he said.
Currently, all government services are paid via a single pay bill number 222222, which was introduced in 2022.
Services provided under the portal include motor vehicle ownership, land searches, birth and death registrations, tax payment, and NHIF, among other services.
In August 2023, President William Ruto directed all ministries to terminate all non-designated payment platforms and migrate to the newly designated Paybill Number 222222 in line with his administration’s plan to digitize government services.
