Kenya has signed a five-year Memorandum of Understanding with the Emerging Markets Working Group of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University to strengthen the country’s capabilities in artificial intelligence, data governance, digital transformation, and innovation.
The agreement was signed on the sidelines of the 81st Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York by Kenya’s Prime Cabinet Secretary and Cabinet Secretary for Foreign and Diaspora Affairs, Dr. Musalia Mudavadi, and Dr. Jendayi Frazer, Co-Director of the Emerging Markets Working Group at the Hoover Institution.
The partnership aims to move Kenya from data to insight, and from insight to action, according to Eng. John Tanui, Principal Secretary for the State Department for ICT and the Digital Economy. The collaboration arrives amid a rapid global shift towards using AI to enhance strategic foresight, enabling governments to analyse emerging global trends and translate them into economic growth strategies.
The MoU is anchored on the Growth, Resilience, and Investment Platform, designed to enhance investment readiness, policy coordination, and development intelligence for Kenya.
An immediate focus of the partnership will be the development of an El Niño Impact Monitoring and Response System. The platform will integrate climate, geospatial, water, agriculture, and infrastructure data to generate intelligence at the county level and support faster coordination during climate-related events.
The collaboration will also support the development of three additional tools:
- Digital Trade Readiness Index: To strengthen digital trade readiness and provide data-driven insights for trade policy.
- PPP Governance Tracker: To improve public-private partnership governance and oversight.
- Sectoral Resilience Scorecard: To support risk-informed policy and investment decisions across key sectors.
Beyond these specific tools, the partnership’s strategic objective is to build lasting institutional capability in evidence generation, analytics, monitoring, evaluation, and policy development. The ICT Authority CEO, Jessy Kiveu Maruti, joined the Kenyan delegation for the engagement alongside Principal Secretary Tanui and other government officials and partners.
“Our ambition is not simply to digitize existing processes, but to build a government and economy that can use technology and intelligence to anticipate challenges, allocate resources effectively and create new opportunities for citizens and businesses,” Tanui said.
The agreement forms part of Kenya’s broader efforts to strengthen its digital economy by building institutional capacity in data, AI, and innovation, and translating research and data into actionable policy. The partnership builds on earlier engagements between Kenya’s Ministry of ICT and the Hoover Institution, including discussions in July 2025 on infrastructure financing, AI-powered capacity building, and research collaboration.
Kenya has also been active in global AI capacity-building initiatives, joining the Global Network of Centers for Exchange and Cooperation on AI Capacity Building in Geneva in July 2026, supported by UNITAR, UNODET, and the Stanford Hoover Institution, among other partners.
