Kenya raises 20% of GDP in tax revenue. Tax revenues are the biggest source of long-term financing for sustainable development and the Kenyan constitution clearly specifies equity as an expected outcome. With the positive economic growth and investment opportunities, Kenya has a great potential to mobilise more tax revenues, provide public services to its people, and reduce inequality. In order to realise this, there is need to improve governance and accountability within civil society organisations so that they and citizens can influence progressive tax mobilisation, gender responsive allocation and effective utilisation of resources for public services.

Through our Governance and Accountability programming, Oxfam in Kenya is working with partners to ensure equitable raising, gender-responsive allocation and spending of financial resources at national and county level and a vibrant and dynamic civil society that is maximising its space and effectively mobilising citizens, 
advocating for citizen’s rights and holding government to account on equitable raising, allocation and spending of financial resources.

What does success look like?

  1. National and County Governments increasingly prioritise the specific needs and priorities of vulnerable and marginalised women in the allocation, raising and spending of Government resources by 2030.
  2. Citizens are actively engaged and significantly influence decision making on resource raising, allocation and spending by the National and County Government by 2030 .
  3. National and local Civil Society Organisations have improved transparent and accountable governance system and are able to influence and hold National and County governments to account to effectively deliver their responsibilities. 
 

GLOBAL INEQUALITY INFLUENCING PROGRAMME

Just Economies is one of four key pillars in Oxfam’s Global Strategic Framework 2020-2030 with Ending Inequality and Reducing Poverty being at the very core of Oxfam’s work. In cognizance of this, Oxfam in Kenya is currently implementing a pilot Global Inequality Influencing (GINI) Programme which is advocating for Improved Access to Public Services as a Key Foundation for Reducing Inequality and Enabling Economic Empowerment in Kenya. This Programme, which is being implemented in Kenya, Vietnam, and Columbia, recognizes that high and rising inequality represents a major challenge to Kenya's development. Inequality is fueled by unequal tax policies, crippling public debt, privatized health and education services, decreased government investment and spending in essential public services which denies impoverished people the opportunity to improve their quality of life or escape poverty. Extreme inequality can create new pockets of poverty and entrench cycles of poverty. Further, it undermines democracy and breeds distrust, crime, instability, political capture, poor governance, and divides citizens. 

The GINI Programme demonstrates how taxation policies, budget making processes, public spending investments, public finance management and public service delivery influence outcomes on economic inequality, growth, and development. Currently, there is lack of a national discourse or progressive policies on inequality in Kenya. The aim of the GINI Programme is to make Reducing Economic Inequality the focus of Government policy interventions. This is a critical moment to agitate for an increased demand against inequality, and champion for improved quality, availability, and accessibility to free public services. The Kenyan Programme is aptly themed From Austerity to Prosperity: Elevating Public Services for All and is being implemented between December 2024 and December 2025 in collaboration with local civil society partners.

The overall objective of the GINI Programme is: To advocate for reduced inequality in access to public services by demanding for prudence, transparency, good governance, inclusion and equity in how the government spends and distributes public resources.

Expected outcomes of the GINI Programme include:

  • Increased recognition among citizens and in the political system that extreme levels of economic inequality is a key national problem that requires urgent action.
  • Commitment by policymakers to embed targets to reduce the extreme levels of economic inequality in national development plans and policies.
  • Inclusive, pro-poor budget allocations and expenditures that prioritize access to quality public services that is freely available to all, funded by highly progressive taxes.
  • Enhanced transparency and accountability to reduce elite-capture of public resources.  

STRENGTHENING PROGRESSIVE DRM AND ACCOUNTABILITY STAKEHOLDERS TO IMPROVE THE SOCIAL CONTRACT IN AFRICA

Governments strive to deliver public services and programs, improve the quality of life for people and enable sustainable development for their citizens. To achieve this, they primarily depend on two main funding streams: foreign aid and domestic resource mobilization to fund the delivery of public services to promote social welfare and cohesion. In the quest to deliver public projects, Governments impose taxes primarily to generate revenue necessary for funding public services and infrastructure, such as healthcare, education, energy, water & sanitation, utilities, and transportation systems. The Strengthening Progressive Domestic Resource Mobilization (DRM) to Improve the Social Contract in Africa Project aims to strengthen the demand side for progressive DRM by supporting civil society coalitions and journalists to play a stronger role as accountability stakeholders around DRM to contribute to a strengthening of the social contract between state and citizens around taxation, and on the need for taxation to be progressive.

The project is directly linked to Oxfam International’s Fiscal Accountability for Inequality Reduction (FAIR) global programme and accompanying Inequality campaign. These efforts aim to lift people out of poverty by strengthening transparency, accountability and citizen participation in public finance and public resource decision making. Oxfam’s vision puts active citizens, particularly women and young people, and the CSOs that represent them at the heart of our approach. The Project is being implemented between January 2025 and December 2025 in collaboration with local implementing partners. 

The overall objective of the project is: Increased progressive Domestic Revenue Mobilization (DRM) through strengthened accountability stakeholders.

Outcomes of the project include:

  • Strengthened local and national civil society organizations and coalitions in Kenya, Uganda and Ghana to promote and advocate for progressive and fair DRM in dialogue with other accountability stakeholders.
  • Changing the narrative and strengthening the social contract on DRM and Fiscal Justice through Media work and collaboration with investigative journalists.
  • Increased participation of African civil society in regional and international advocacy to ensure compliance with ATI commitments and promote progressive DRM and action against Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) as key for achieving the SDG’s.

TAX FOR DEVELOPMENT: STRENGTHENED CIVIL SOCIETY AND MEDIA FOR FISCAL JUSTICE 

Oxfam in Kenya’s Governance and Accountability pillar is implementing a 3-year project on Strengthened Civil Society and Media for Fiscal Justice. The project aims to have civil society and media in Kenya, Uganda and Ghana promote transparency, accountability, and increased domestic resource mobilization through including but not limited to strengthening the capacity of investigative journalists to demand fiscal justice, push for progressive and gender sensitive DRM and help raise awareness on these issues, as well as challenge austerity and unsustainable debt practices.The project aims to have civil society and media in developing countries promote transparency, accountability, and increased DRM.  It also seeks to put African countries on the path to sustainable and inclusive development by expanding progressive and gender sensitive domestic resource mobilization (DRM) that is invested in the realization of basic rights and the SDGs. The project implementation is between January 2023 and December 2025.

The main objective of the Tax for Development project is; Tax revenue and public budgets are expanded and made significantly more progressive and gender sensitive in the target countries (Uganda, Kenya, and Ghana).

The expected outcomes of the Tax for Development Project are:

  • The capacity of civil society and investigative journalists are strengthened to demand fiscal justice at subnational and national level and to challenge economic, social and gender-based inequalities.
  • Civil society and investigative journalists advocate for progressive and gender sensitive DRM and address the growing inequality at national and subnational levels.
  • Civil society and investigative journalists challenge austerity and unsustainable debt practices to expand funding for achieving the SDG's, basic rights such as education, health and gender justice.
  • The capacity and coordination of civil society and media based in the global south are strengthened in global and regional tax spaces, discussions, and negotiations.
  • African civil society and investigative journalists - particularly in Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda - are increasingly contributing to addressing and mitigating regional and global barriers to equitable DRM, particularly on fiscal austerity, rising debt service obligations, the climate crisis, and Illicit Financial Flows.

FROM THE GROUND UP - REALISING RIGHTS BY MOBILISING FAIR EXTRACTIVE SECTOR REVENUES

Across the East Africa region, one of the world’s richest natural resource regions and attracts significant attention in the extractive and energy sectors, discoveries of oil and other natural resources present opportunities but also potential grounds for challenges to human rights violations and exploitation relating to sustainable land use, fair, transparent, and accountable revenue and benefit sharing among communities among other things. In Kenya, the counties of Kwale, Kilifi and Taita Taveta among others, are endowed with natural resources, which are extracted but fail to provide a commensurate benefit to these counties inform of revenues generated from mining and mining related activities. Despite the vast natural resources, statistics indicate that the overall poverty rate remains extremely high. 

While county governments have three major sources of revenue to finance their budgets, including own source revenue (OSR), Analysis into the revenue collection in Kwale, Taita Taveta and Kilifi Counties for three fiscal years (2019/20 to 2021/22) reveals that these counties are struggling with meeting their targets. The Commission on Revenue Allocation shows that the three counties have been collecting less than 1 percent of OSR as a percentage of Gross County Product and below that for which they have the potential. In addition, natural resources account for 6 percent of the counties’ OSR. Shortfalls in own source revenue collection by county governments is a major public finance issue since revenue shortfalls compromise budget allocation to key sectors and subsequently affect the way services are delivered to citizens. Improved OSR not only increases absolute revenues for a county but also improves the fiscal autonomy of county governments and allows them to better manage their public finances in manner more appropriate to their own economies. 

To promote equitable benefit sharing of natural resources, it is crucial that stakeholders especially host communities understand these benefits, that their capacity and that of civil society actors is strengthened to demand for more progressive, transparent, and accountable mobilization and use of extractive sector revenues from the local and national governments. From July 2023 to December 2025, Oxfam in Kenya and partners will work with the community and local governments of Kwale, Kilifi and Taita-Taveta counties to ensure greater accountability from the government for the mobilization and use of extractive resources among the communities. 

Overall Objective:  Contribute to more progressive, transparent, and accountable revenue generation in the extractive sector and increased public spending in Sub-Saharan Africa that contributes to the realization of human rights, and inequality reduction, and a just transition (increasing public spending for marginalized groups)

Specific Objective: To strengthen the ability of CSOs and marginalized communities, particularly women and youth, to influence and hold to account local, national, and regional decision-makers in Mozambique, Kenya and South Africa to change policies and practices on extractive sector revenue management in order to benefit marginalized communities.

DEMOCRACY, CLIMATE JUSTICE & PUBLIC EDUCATION FOR ALL

Developing countries currently find themselves in the worst financing situation in decades.[1] Still reeling from the global Covid pandemic, rising food and energy costs, intensifying climate crisis and a worsening of the global economy, the likelihood of realizing the Sustainable Development Goals is looking increasingly difficult due to deepening austerity and a growing debt crisis. 43 of the African Union’s member states plan to cut their public spending by a cumulative 5.4% of GDP in 2021-26, totaling $186bn, and African governments now spend almost three times more on debt servicing than on education, and six times as much as their health spending. Beyond the potentially devastating effects on poverty, the effect of years of austerity amidst growing poverty risks also undoing the social contract and undermining democracy and political stability.

To avoid austerity and instead increase investments in pro-poor and gender just development there is a pressing need for countries to increase progressive DRM. Nowhere are the challenges and needs more pressing than on the African continent, where countries on average only collect 29% of the taxes implied by its tax rates and the continent’s tax systems increase inequality by 1% on average. Wealth taxes (taxes on property, inheritance, capital gains etc.) hold a promising role to solve these challenges as they are both highly progressive and highly underutilized in Africa, collecting only 0.35% of GDP, the lowest of any region. The project which is being implemented between January 2022 and December 2025 aims to improve oversight on government expenditure, advocate for stronger commitments on free, public quality education, challenge privatization of essential public services in education and champion climate justice for a sustainable future for present and future generations.

The overall objective of the Project is: The space and capacity of accountability stakeholders is increased in order to promote progressive Domestic Revenue Mobilization.

The main outcomes of the Project are:

  • Just Societies: This objective seeks to improve governance in Kenya by engaging diverse civil society groups to make public finance management at both county and national levels more democratic, accountable, and inclusive. It focuses on gender responsiveness and quality, pro-poor public services while promoting collaboration among stakeholders, including community organizations and government entities. The aim is to enhance transparency in resource allocation, ultimately leading to better service delivery and improved citizen welfare.
  • Climate Justice: This objective seeks to establish a green economy in Kenya led by women, youth, and civil society alliances. It aims to address the negative impacts of climate change while promoting social justice through the development of strong legal frameworks for a fairer just society.

DIGITAL RIGHTS AND CIVIC SPACE 

The internet and other digital technologies are critical tools to advance human rights and help address some of society’s most pressing problems. But digital technologies can also be used in ways that curtail rights and deepen inequality. The urgency of protecting and promoting human rights in the digital age cannot be overlooked. Similarly, the centrality of digital spaces and tools for advocacy, campaigns, movement building, mobilization and civic engagement cannot be gainsaid which buttresses the critical intersection of protection of digital rights and safeguarding civic space. 

It is upon this background, that we are implementing the ReCIPE Project: Recentering the Civic Internet through Partner Engagement. ReCIPE aims to cultivate a rights-respecting digital ecosystem that is values-based, human-centric and safe for civil society actors and human rights defenders. The project is built around three main specific objectives that complement each other to help bring about the desired change:

  • Increasing collaboration between organizations in the Global South and Global North to create vibrant and safe online civic spaces.
  • Improving digital rights mechanisms and policies that hold governments and corporate actors to account.
  • Fostering equitable resources for and access to safe and secure online social and political activities for people and communities at risk of digital harm.

The project uses intersectional, feminist, and anti-racist principles to center the experiences, voices, and priorities of at-risk people, especially women and girls, and the organizations supporting them, in digital rights debates at the national, regional, and global levels. The project targets civil society organizations, civic activists, and community members from 10 focus countries that constitute or represent at-risk communities to improve their digital literacy, capacity for influence in decision-making spaces, and ability to partner with other stakeholders on digital rights threats and opportunities. The project also targets tech companies and government authorities to foster the creation and enforcement of effective laws and policies on digital rights.

ReCIPE involves 10 focus countries, which are Bolivia, El Salvador, Cambodia, Kenya, Senegal, Somalia, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Tunisia, Uganda, and Vietnam-between 2024 to 2027. 

For more information and updates on the project, please visit the ReCIPE Project Website: ReCIPE 

 

 

Vincent's Plight: Taxes for essential services

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