John Allan Namu, right, at the AFIDEP High-Level Dialogue on Public Institutions and Oversight in Africa, Pullman Nairobi Upper Hill, 28 October 2026. The session traced Kenya's Round 13 result - eighth in Africa on 50.4 - and the gap between institutions that produce evidence and institutions that enforce it.

The Africa Integrity Indicators assess governments across transparency, accountability and social development. The latest round covers 55 African Union member states, including the Sahrawi Republic, and uses scores from 0 to 100. A score near 50 indicates moderate performance; below that, countries are weaker on the measures used in the report.

The project's data platform now publishes 58 indicators across 55 countries, with 12 years of data spanning 2014 to 2025 and two rounds of peer review per assessment. Round 13 is the latest release in that series.

The report found that transparency and accountability scores have fluctuated around the middle of the range for years. Countries performing better on integrity include South Africa, Seychelles, Mauritius, Morocco, Namibia and Senegal. Countries performing poorly include South Sudan, Sudan, Equatorial Guinea and Eritrea.

The report's authors said the data is meant to support governments, civil society and media to identify reform areas. Dr Alex Nester Jiya of AFIDEP, who presented the methodology at the dialogue, explained that each indicator now pairs a score with explanatory comments and sources, and that the assessment has shifted from checking whether a law exists to examining how it works in practice. The report is now released every two years rather than annually.

In the Kenya review session, John Allan Namu, CEO of Africa Uncensored, said the ranking should be read carefully. Kenya sits among the continent's top 10 countries on integrity, but that still places it only slightly above the moderate threshold. The country's social development score improved from a low base of about 37.5 in 2014, in the wake of the new Constitution, to 51.9, but the most recent round showed a 1.5-point decline.

Namu pointed to areas where Kenya's institutions are visible but constrained. Appointments to independent offices score well, and the Auditor General's office remains one of the more credible public institutions, yet its recurrent budget was cut. Audit reports are more accessible than they were a decade ago, and recent audits have moved beyond counting shillings to testing value for money: Namu cited the audit of the Western Bypass, a road built at a cost of about KSh23 billion, where value-for-money findings questioned KSh21.5 billion.

But the same session argued that Kenya's problem is what happens after the reports. Public officers are exposed, interdicted and sometimes arrested. The last mile, conviction and consequence, remains weak. The result is a system where institutions can produce evidence but often cannot enforce it.

Kenya is the case study. It has the courts, the Auditor General, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission and a public that reads every report. What it has not consistently had is consequence: the file closes, the officer returns, the finding is shelved. That is the gap the indicators measure, and it is the gap an electorate can close.

The keynote, delivered by John Githongo, Chief Executive Officer of Inuka Ni Sisi, a founding member of Transparency International Kenya and a former Permanent Secretary for Governance and Ethics, put the issue in blunt terms. Africa now has the full set of governance institutions. Courts exist. Commissions exist. Parliaments exist. Anti-corruption agencies exist. Access to information laws exist. Elections are held.

The problem, he said, is implementation. That is a political choice, and in some cases a failure of moral courage.

Githongo also warned that the continent is in a democratic recession. He cited 13 successful coups between 2015 and 2025, 11 of them in the Sahel. He said the share of successful coup attempts rose sharply between 2020 and 2023, the highest rate since the 1980s.

The paradox is that Africans still say they prefer democracy. Afrobarometer data cited in the keynote showed support for democracy declined by seven percentage points over the last decade. In South Africa, support fell by 29 points. In Mali, it fell by 23 points. At the same time, rejection of military rule declined, and a majority expressed willingness to accept military intervention if elected leaders abuse power.

Githongo said young Africans are not rejecting democracy because it is broken in theory. They are rejecting it because it appears incapable of delivering security, dignity and anti-corruption results.

The Commission on Administrative Justice put numbers on the same gap. Dr Mary Kimani, who heads advisory and evaluation of administrative justice at the commission, said CAJ resolved 834,000 complaints directly and indirectly in the 2025/26 year, and determined 1,232 of the 1,406 access to information review applications it received, an accessibility rate of 88 per cent. Yet more than 111 advisories the commission issued have had limited impact where responsible institutions fail to act. Implementation of recommendations, resource constraints and fragmented accountability remain its biggest hurdles, she said.

The youth session made the same point from a governance angle. Young people are not asking only for seats. They are asking whether institutions can act independently, whether public resources are protected, and whether participation leads to power.

Not leaders of tomorrow, she told the room, but stakeholders of today. Abungu, an advocate of the High Court of Kenya, sat on the youth panel, which also carried of the Commission on Administrative Justice, Joseph Tulula of the Office of the Controller of Budget and Caroline Gaita of the Mzalendo Trust. The speakers said the government must recognise youth as decision-makers today. Kenya's youth make up a large share of the population, and their political weight will shape the 2027 election. But advisory councils, youth funds and conference invitations are not enough. Youth need real authority, resources and independence.

Political parties were also pressed to open their doors. The session described politics as expensive, especially for young candidates, women and people with disabilities. Campaign finance rules are part of the answer, but not the whole answer: The panel noted that the financing regulations for the coming cycle, including spending and contribution limits, are currently held up in court, while Gaita argued that stronger civil society consortiums are the surest protection for a shrinking civic space. The deeper issue is the financialisation of politics: when private money dominates public life, democracy becomes harder to defend.

The access to information discussion added that information and participation are linked. Young people cannot participate meaningfully if they cannot access budgets, procurement records, audit reports and public service information. The commission said it is expanding proactive disclosure, youth champions and county-level access to information work, and is preparing a state of openness report to track how far public institutions have come.

The most practical moments came from countries using the indicators to drive reform.

In Sierra Leone, the session described how the government used integrity data during the Millennium Challenge Corporation compact process. The country had strong anti-corruption laws, but international indicators showed a gap between law and practice. That pushed officials to ask harder questions: Were corruption cases reaching court? Were outcomes published? Was the anti-corruption commission acting independently? Were senior political appointees being investigated, or only low-level officials?

Ndeye Sesay of the Sierra Leone Compact Development Unit said the data made the conversation evidence-based. It gave the executive a reason to interrogate performance, not just rhetoric. The result was not a solved problem, but a more serious discussion about case tracking, communication and enforcement.

Egypt presented a different model. Dr Nada Shebl Mohamed Abd Elbak of the Information and Decision Support Center of the Egyptian Cabinet described a permanent committee to monitor and analyse international indicators, bringing together more than 46 ministries and national entities and tracking more than 78 indicators. Egypt distinguishes between performance gaps and information gaps: sometimes the work is happening but is not documented well enough for international assessments to see it.

The Egyptian session pointed to public procurement transparency, the national anti-corruption strategy, digital public services and participatory budgeting as areas where the government is trying to turn indicator pressure into reform. Egypt moved from rank 18 to rank 16 and was among the biggest improvers in the latest round.

The report and the sessions pointed to the same pressure point: elections expose whether institutions can hold power to account. Political finance transparency, asset disclosure, access to information, media freedom, civic space and independent oversight will all be tested before and after 2027.

Kenya's score says the country is not at the bottom of Africa's integrity table. The sessions said something harder: being in the middle is not the achievement. The next test is whether institutions that exist can be made to work.

The scorecard holds a mirror to the continent, and the reflection is a governance discipline problem, not a design problem. The blueprints exist. What remains missing is the will to fund oversight bodies, shield their appointments and enforce their findings. Institutions that cannot act are not institutions; they are alibis. Kenya's eighth place is not a verdict. It is a question, and the 2027 election will answer it.

Round 13 data and country profiles: africaintegrityindicators.org/data

Accountability reporting: Hola 1959 to Central Police Station 2025: Kenya's Custody Death Pattern