A Kenyan Web portal called I Paid A Bribe (IPAB), a replica of India’s a renowned I Paid A Bribe (IPAB) version, is one of Kenya’s online initiatives fighting corruption, which is reportedly costing the country billions of shillings.
Launched in partnership with Wamani Trust, a non-profit in Kenya, in December last year,IPAB hopes to prompt Kenyans to rise against corruption by enabling victims to share their experiences.
The portal hopes to provide much needed statistics on the real market price of corruption with users of the portal indicating how much they were forced to pay.
IPAB has also introduced anSMS service that will capture the incidences of corruption among those who do not have access to the internet.
“When setting up the website, we realized that millions of Kenyans are neither internet savvy nor have access to an internet connection. Hence it was important for us to find a channel that would offer penetration to the remotest parts of Kenya and there is no better tool than the mobile phone,” Anthony Ragui said, the founder of the portal.
Those using the SMS service have to share their bribe experience using I Paid a Bribe Kenya’s SMS short code 2025 indicating county, department and amount demanded as bribe.
Thus far, the portal has seen 1,169 bribes reported worth KSh49 million ( approx. $571,800) with top counties in bribery being highlighted as Nairobi, Mombasa, Nakuru, Kiambu and Baringo.
A report by IPAB shows that only 12 of the counties in the country have missed out with 24 departments also mentioned.
InNairobi alone, the report shows that KSh1.26 million (approx. $14,700) was paid in 445 reported incidents. Of the departments mentioned, the police led with 196 incidents followed by municipal services with 119 and immigration departments involved in issuing passports and ID cards had 33 cases.
It is hoped that the statistics can be collated to be applied in giving proof of the level of corruption in various state departments and in the long-term, lead to decreased corruption incidents in the entire country.
The Kenyan portal shares similar features to India’s Ipaidbribe.com, which was launched in 2008. The Indian site boasts of close 16,000 reports valued at about US$8.5 million lost.
