Private firms whose owners and shareholding structures are mysterious pocketed Sh1.45 billion from eCitizen in the 12-month period ended June 2024.
This comes as concerns rise over who actually owns the eCitizen platform that has been offering public services, storing public data and collecting billions of money from the public on behalf of the government.
According to a report by the Auditor General Nancy Gathungu, the private firms pocketed Sh591.9 million from charging the convenience fee of Sh50 per service done on eCitizen, and an additional Sh857.2 million for the maintenance of the eCitizen systems.
“The statement of revenue collections and transfers reflects revenue from commission (convenience fees) of Sh591,988,503 and total transfers in Kenya shillings and United States denominated amounts of Sh857,210,458,” the report stated.
Apparently, the primary firm among the trio is Pesaflow which is officially gazetted to collect money from Kenyans seeking services on the platform. This firm was registered on August 24, 2017.
According to a report that appeared in the Business Daily newspaper on Friday, Pesaflow Limited acknowledged billing the government between Sh100 million and Sh200 million per month.
This firm’s beneficial owners and the type of contracts it has with the government, the newspaper reported, are unknown. It is however associated with software developer James Ayugi who is also associated with Webmasters Kenya and Olivetree Limited, companies that also have ties to eCitizen.
“eCitizen is run by a consortium of three companies. Webmasters Kenya offers technological support, maintenance and onboarding services. Pesaflow Limited is the payment aggregator handling payments to the government. Olivetree Limited is in charge of communications including bulk SMS services,” the newspaper quoted Ayugi.
In 2022, the shareholders of Pesaflow were listed as Evid Araka Sibi and Frank Lawrence Weya with 3,000 shares each. Further, Charles Wambani Sewe and Larry Ochieng Agoro have 2,000 shares each in the firm. The Business Daily reported that these individuals had also been working for Webmasters.
Who owns eCitizen? Questions emerge after puzzling revelations
The first red flag on the ownership of eCitizen was raised by Ms Gathungu in a February 2024 report, one year after the government had claimed to have taken control. According to the report, eCitizen was owned by private firms who had in turn allowed the government to use its services.
“Preliminary review of operations of the eCitizen Government Digital Payments (GDP) platform indicate that, despite the strategic importance of eCitizen, the government does not have full control of the system and [relies] significantly on the vendor for some critical functions,” the Auditor General stated in the report.
