Al Kags
Al Kags is a Kenyan civic-tech entrepreneur, writer, and open-government strategist whose work is reshaping how citizens and states use data to solve problems. He founded Nairobi-based Open Institute in 2012 to help African governments, civil-society groups, and communities adopt transparency and participatory practices. Through flagship initiatives such as SABASI (Smart African Basic Statistics Interface), village volunteers collect and visualise local data on health, water, and livelihoods; the information now feeds into 14 County Statistical Units and Kenya’s national planning dashboards, influencing budget allocations worth more than KES 12 billion.
Kags advises the Kenyan Treasury on open-contracting policy and co-drafted the 2023 Public Participation Regulations that mandate data-driven citizen input in county budgets. Internationally, he chairs Publish What You Fund, serves on the Technical Advisory Committee of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, and sits on the UN Statistics Division’s Working Group on Citizen-Generated Data.
A prolific columnist and author of Loud Governance, he lectures on data governance at Strathmore University and mentors civic hackers through the DataFest Africa boot camp. Recognised as an Ashoka Fellow in 2024 and a Quartz Africa Innovator in 2025, Al Kags continues to champion the idea that “development works best when citizens own the numbers”, proving that open data can power accountable, people-centred governance across the continent.