The winning team,Technicians, developed FedhaWatch Kenya, A real-time civic tech platform combining citizen reporting with data dashboards to expose suspicious campaign spending and visualize financial irregularities. [Courtesy]
Young Kenyan innovators have been rewarded for developing technology solutions that enhance transparency in political financing.
The Campaign Finance Watch Tool Hackathon 2026, hosted by iLabAfrica at Strathmore University in partnership with Transparency International Kenya, brought together students, developers, and civic tech enthusiasts to tackle opaque campaign financing ahead of the 2027 General Elections.
The hackathon challenged multidisciplinary teams to design platforms that track political campaign spending, visualise financial flows, and monitor the misuse of public resources during elections.
Sheila Masinde, Executive Director of Transparency International Kenya, highlighted the importance of tech-driven tools in empowering citizens, journalists, and watchdog organisations to follow the money in politics.
Over the course of the event, teams developed innovative prototypes. The winners, Technicians, received Sh500,000 for FedhaWatch Kenya, a real-time platform combining citizen reporting with interactive dashboards to flag suspicious campaign spending.
First runner-up, Kweli Networks, won Sh300,000 for the Reality Check Engine, which uses open-source intelligence to analyse social media and estimate actual campaign expenditures.
Second runner-up, Kovela, received Sh100,000 for a solution that extracts and structures political finance data from fragmented sources like PDFs, gazettes, and court documents, creating a searchable system to detect anomalies.
Kweli Networks introduced the Reality Check Engine, an Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)-powered tool that analyses social media to estimate actual campaign spending and flag discrepancies against declared budgets. [Courtesy]
Dr. Joseph Sevilla, Director of iLabAfrica, praised participants for their creativity, noting that such partnerships bridge innovation with real-world governance impact.
Gibson Mwaita, Head of Programs at Transparency International Kenya, emphasised that the hackathon is only the beginning, with winning teams moving into mentorship and incubation phases to scale their solutions.
Linda Eunice Oloo, Anti-Corruption Advisor at the British High Commission Nairobi, added that these civic tech tools could significantly close the gap between declared and actual campaign spending, strengthening accountability in Kenya’s democratic processes.
Kovela addressed a critical data gap by developing a solution that extracts and structures political finance data from fragmented sources such as PDFs, gazettes, and court documents. [Courtesy]
The hackathon forms part of ongoing efforts under the Kenya Institutional Strengthening Program (KISP) to improve oversight of political financing and counter the use of illicit funds in elections.