Kenya opens government data portal

Kenya’s President Mwai Kibaki

Kenya has launched Africa’s first government open data portal. President Mwai Kibaki announced the new portal at the Kenyatta International Conference Center in Nairobi, Kenya.

The new portal will enable Kenya to release data for research purposes, which the government hopes will empower the nation’s information economy. According to the ministry of communications, the data in digitized electronic format will be available through the web address opendata.go.ke

Kibaki says this portal contains data in a flexible and user-friendly format that will allow users to view and compare information at national, province and county level.

The Open data portal provides information on six main categories: education, energy, health, population, poverty as well as water and sanitation.

“I call upon Kenyans to make use of this Government data portal to enhance accountability and improve governance in our country,” says Kibaki.

Janan Yussif