Kenya’s new National Artificial Intelligence Strategy 2025–2030 was launched in March 2025 with pomp by the government—but behind the fireworks is a sobering reality: This isn’t a roadmap to the future. It’s a glossy distraction from the present.

Nelson Amenya, a Kenyan whistleblower and activist put it bluntly: “This is not a strategy but a research paper.” He’s right. At 82 pages, this document reads more like an academic essay than a national action plan.

There’s no blueprint for the farmer in Bomet, no vision for the girl in Kibera learning Python on borrowed Wi-Fi, no policy muscle for the climate tech hubs trying to build AI tools to predict floods and beat drought with data. Just a pile of lofty ambitions floating miles above the ground.

The budget alone is staggering—Sh152 billion over five years. In a country battling ballooning debt, underfunded schools, and stretched hospitals, this number should come with a hard hat. Yet there’s no cost breakdown, no delivery mechanism, and no accountability framework.

Amenya rightly warned that without equity built into deployment, this billion-shilling dream could deepen digital inequalities—leaving rural and marginalised communities further behind. But the bigger issue isn’t money. It’s intent. Who is this strategy really for?

It doesn’t feel written for everyday Kenyans. It doesn’t speak to the informal sector, youth-led community hubs, or indigenous innovation ecosystems. 

Strathmore University’s Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law (CIPIT) called out the strategy’s failure to anchor itself in African values or local realities.

There’s barely any mention of community-driven tech, indigenous languages, or ethical pluralism. Without that, what we’re looking at is digital colonisation—packaged in state logos.

The silence on surveillance is deafening. At a time when facial recognition is quietly expanding and biometric data flows freely into corporate black boxes, the strategy has no red lines, no accountability protocols, and no teeth. Moses Kemibaro, the CEO, Dotsavvy Limited noted its glaring absence of legislative guardrails. In a world where AI is being weaponised to suppress dissent and track citizens, this omission is more than oversight. It’s negligence.

Then there’s the question of skills. Yes, Kenya has talent—but not enough to match the hype. The strategy waves vaguely at “capacity building” without a national curriculum, teacher training roadmap, or budget for widespread digital literacy.

Throwing a few coding bootcamps at a billion-shilling problem won’t cut it. We need AI literacy in public schools. We need Swahili datasets. We need teacher incentives and rural broadband, not workshops in hotels.

Even the fundamentals of data governance are missing. The strategy calls local data a “national resource”—but who owns it? Who profits from it? And what protections are there against data scraping by foreign platforms?

CIPIT was clear: Unless Kenya asserts data sovereignty, we risk handing over the crown jewels of our digital economy to whoever builds the infrastructure first. This is not just about tech. It’s about power, justice, and agency.

If we don’t build AI grounded in equity, ethics, and environmental intelligence, we will hardcode inequality at scale. We will digitise land injustice. Algorithmically amplify bias. And automate exclusion under the pretense of innovation. But there’s still time to change course.

This strategy must be rewritten—not by consultants, but by the communities it will shape. Involve educators, activists, disabled communities, data scientists, market vendors, and frontline workers. Centre indigenous tech. Mainstream ethics. Decentralise deployment.

Build accountability into the code. Make AI tools transparent by design. Require regular audits of public sector AI. Penalise misuse. Protect whistleblowers. Establish a national digital ethics commission that’s independent, well-funded, and people-centered.

Fund homegrown innovations. The kids building chatbots and robots at Coding with Kids, Kibera. The AI-powered system by Lilian Wanzare that is translating English into Kenyan Sign Language (KSL) to bridge communication gaps for the deaf community.

The team behind the PlantVillage: An AI-powered platform that assists Kenyan farmers in diagnosing plant diseases through image analysis and provides real-time satellite data to monitor crop health.  The Swahili coders preserve endangered languages with machine learning. These are not just side stories—they are the strategy.

And above all, stop rushing. AI is not a race. It’s a responsibility. Kenya doesn’t need to be the fastest adopter. We need to be the most just, inclusive, and sustainable. That’s how we lead.

Because at the end of the day, a strategy that ignores justice and context isn’t a roadmap—it’s just another shiny PDF. And Kenya deserves better.

The writer is a Data Scientist at UNEP and an AI and Climate Policy Strategist