Safaricom launches “My County App”, a citizen engagement & revenue management system for county govts

Safaricom has launched “My County App”, an e-Citizen-like platform to help county governments to streamline revenue collection and enhance citizen engagement and feedback on various issues affecting their counties.

The platform gives each county common services with room for customize solutions to meet each of the different digital needs for each county government.

“We have developed the My County APP,” said Safaricom’s Group IT Director George Njuguna. “A single platform with shared architecture that enables every single county to launch a county digital services platform from Day One: just like the National
Government eCitizen, this is a one stop shop for Citizens for engagement with Counties.”

My Count App provides an open architecture to support services for counties including revenue management, citizen services, that are accessible via the web, mobile or My County App. The app is a follow on of Nairobi County’s My Nairobi Hub, a similar platform built by Safaricom for the Nairobi City County Government. “My Nairobi Hub” digitally provides all Nairobi County services on web, mobile and a “My Nairobi App”.

The “My Nairobi” hub was said to be available through all major digital channels including on the M-PESA Super App, a website and through a USSD shortcode for feature phone users. Nairobi County users will be able to engage their governor and get feedback and improvement on services via the hub’s citizen engagement channel known as “Bonga na Sakaja.”

The two-year deal with Nairobi City County is expected to help bolster the county’s revenue collection efforts, digitise the county’s services and operations and up citizen engagement in the county. Safaricom will run the apps design digital channels, integrates county backend services, and manage the county’s payment gateway and infrastructure to ensure high availability of services. In the My Nairobi Hub, Safaricom will give the county calling and data solutions at discounted rates for calls between employees.

The telco also aims to run smart water systems under the smart city initiative, WiFi hotspots in low-income settlements and around bus stops, an Integrated Traffic and Parking Management Solution and a Disaster Recovery Site for the county for the next two years.

“We are working closely with the Council of Governors to pilot these Digital Solutions including Elgeyo who’s governor has been supportive and challenges us to partner in transforming the lives on communities across his county and indeed the country,” said Nuguna at the Connected Summit 2023 adding that Safaricom has the capability, the knowhow, the experience, and the knowledge to support counties to extend services to all Kenyans in all facets of technology.

“We can build and accelerate deployment in less than a month partly due to our Agile ways of working and by coming together, we can harness our expertise to deliver solutions that improve access to public services,” Njuguna said.

Eight years ago, Safaricom partnered with West Pokot County to launch an automated method of collecting revenue. According to the then governor, Simon Kachapin, Safaricom was to install the infrastructures and manage the county revenue collection system and salary allocation to boost revenue collection, as well as ensure maximum utilization of all the avenues for revenue collection.

“We have already awarded Safaricom the contract to undertake the automation and at the moment, we are working out on the contracting agreement before the programme begins soon,” Kachapin said at the time. It’s this deal plus the Nairobi Hub deal that would have probably led to the birth of Safaricom’s My County App, albeit years later.