By Anchor Writers
Kenya’s rapidly expanding public debt, now beyond the KSh13 trillion mark, has emerged as a major public-interest accountability issue.
Today, Kenya Editors Guild Vice President Francis Openda (Pictured Below) challenged the media to scrutinise not only how much the country borrows but why it borrows, on what terms and what value citizens ultimately receive.
Mr. Openda said the growing debt burden requires a more systematic engagement between the media and public finance institutions, warning that public debt may appear technical but its consequences are felt directly by citizens.
Openda was speaking at a Peer-to-Peer Engagement organised by the Kenya Editors Guild in partnership with the International Republican Institute in Nairobi.
The engagement, themed “Developing the Institutionalisation Agenda,” is part of a broader initiative aimed at strengthening the media’s capacity to interrogate public finance and hold institutions accountable for decisions involving public resources.
Openda said the media must move beyond reporting the size of Kenya’s debt to examining the entire lifecycle of public borrowing.
“Our responsibility is to help citizens understand not simply how much the country owes, but why the obligation was incurred, on what terms, what value was created and who is accountable for the outcome,” he said.
Kenya’s Public Debt Management Office reported total public debt at KSh12.32 trillion as of March 2026, comprising KSh6.78 trillion in domestic debt and KSh5.54 trillion in external debt. The debt-to-GDP ratio stood at 65.7 per cent. But the figures have continued to spiral, now well beyond Ksh 13 Trillion.
The Treasury classifies the debt as sustainable but with a high risk of debt distress.
The debt burden has significant implications for public finances because government borrowing has to be serviced alongside funding essential public services.
The Central Bank of Kenya’s latest economic review shows that debt servicing remains a substantial fiscal pressure, with external debt service alone amounting to Ksh163.3 billion in the second quarter of the 2025/26 financial year.
Openda said the media therefore needed to interrogate public borrowing from the point at which a decision is made to borrow until the debt is finally repaid.
The Media Issues Paper developed during the Guild’s first Peer-to-Peer Engagement on August 20 identified six stages requiring scrutiny: the decision to borrow, the financing instrument selected, the agreement entered into, procurement, implementation and repayment.
“This framework recognises that accountability cannot begin after money has already been borrowed and spent,” Openda said.
He said journalists should be able to interrogate the justification for borrowing, the terms attached to loans, how borrowed funds are procured and implemented, and whether the promised value is eventually delivered to citizens.
The initiative follows an Institutional Dialogue held on September 8, which examined parliamentary oversight, macro-fiscal policy, financial markets, access to information and debt transparency.
Openda said the dialogue produced 19 priority accountability questions requiring responses from key public finance institutions.
The institutions are expected to participate in a second Institutional Dialogue scheduled for October 8, when editors and journalists will engage them directly on the outstanding questions.
Today’s engagement was intended to prepare the media for that meeting by refining Issues, Referral and Follow-up Matrix and identifying questions requiring institutional responses.
Openda said the proposed framework should include regular technical briefings, designated institutional focal points, clear timelines for responses, proactive disclosure of information and mechanisms for tracking unanswered questions and commitments.
The approach is intended to move media-government engagement on public finance away from one-off interventions towards a structured and sustained accountability process.
“Public debt may appear technical, but its consequences are very real,” Openda said, pointing to its impact on the taxes citizens pay, the public services they receive, infrastructure delivered or not delivered, and the fiscal choices available to future generations.
The scale of Kenya’s borrowing has consequently placed greater importance on transparency over the use of borrowed funds, particularly as the government continues to borrow both to finance fiscal deficits and refinance maturing obligations.
The National Treasury says government borrowing is undertaken to finance fiscal deficits and repay maturing debt, while its debt management strategy seeks to balance the cost and risks of borrowing over the long term.
For the media, Openda said, the challenge is therefore not simply to report new borrowing announcements or headline debt figures but to follow the money and establish whether borrowing decisions produce measurable public value.
The institutionalisation agenda being developed by the Guild and IRI seeks to create mechanisms through which that scrutiny can continue beyond individual news cycles.
Openda urged editors and journalists participating in the process to be candid about gaps in access to information while also examining areas where the media itself can strengthen its reporting practices.
“Where information remains difficult to access, let us identify what is required and from whom,” he said.
“Where commitments are made, let us determine how they should be tracked. And where the media itself can strengthen its practice, let us be equally open about that.”
The initiative comes as Kenya faces the difficult balance of financing development and government operations while containing the rising cost and risks associated with public burrowing.
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