Kenya Editors Guild opens dialogue on public financing and debt accountability

The Kenya Editors Guild (KEG) convened its inaugural Peer-to-Peer Engagement in Nairobi to address the pressing issue of public financing, debt, and complex financing arrangements. KEG President Zubeida Kananu emphasized the importance of strengthening media scrutiny of these matters to foster transparency and accountability. This initiative marks a departure from traditional forums, positioning journalists as initiators of questions that public institutions must answer.

KEG's partnership with the International Republican Institute (IRI) stems from a June Media and CSOs Roundtable that highlighted challenges in public debt reporting, such as limited access to reliable information, technical intricacies of financing arrangements, and poor disclosure of loan agreements and guarantees. Kananu urged journalists to probe matters like risk allocation, guarantee provisions, procurement processes, and taxpayer repayment obligations, highlighting that these issues have direct consequences on citizens and the nation.

The engagement aims to generate media priorities, identify evidence and information gaps, pinpoint accountability questions, and propose practical recommendations. The findings will culminate in a Media Issues Paper and draft agenda for a forthcoming Institutional Dialogue slated for September 17, 2026. Kananu stressed that the dialogue should be guided by journalist-identified priorities, not generic discussions on public finance.

She encouraged participants to share their experiences from newsrooms, including challenging stories and inaccessible information, with the overarching goal of enhancing the media's investigative capacity in complex public financing and bolstering public-interest reporting. This marks the first of five engagements KEG and IRI will conduct to bolster media coverage and scrutiny of high-risk public financing.