Kenya Unveils National Communication Policy to Fix “Discordant” Government Messaging

Cabinet Secretary William Kabogo Gitau gazettes a new framework meant to make government “speak with one voice,” tackle misinformation, and modernize how ministries talk to citizens

Gazette Notice No. 13926, Kenya Gazette Vol. CXXVIII, No. 152 — 28 August 2026

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Kenya has, for the first time since independence, an approved national policy dedicated solely to how government communicates with its citizens. The National Communication Policy, titled “Enhancing Trust in Government,” was published in Gazette Notice No. 13926 by William Kabogo Gitau, Cabinet Secretary for Information, Communications and the Digital Economy, under the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Digital Economy (MICDE), through the State Department for Broadcasting and Telecommunications.

The policy closes a gap that has existed for six decades: despite a raft of laws touching on media, ICT, and access to information, Kenya has never had a single, overarching policy setting out how government itself should communicate — and it shows. The document is candid about the consequences, citing inconsistent messaging, poor crisis response, weak professional capacity, and eroding public trust as the direct costs of operating without one.

Why now: a government that speaks with many voices

The policy traces its origins to a 2019 taskforce report, Winning Public Trust, which examined why government communication in Kenya kept falling short. That report — and the years of experience since — identified recurring problems that the new policy sets out to fix, including:

• Different agencies issuing conflicting or contradictory messages
• Communication officers lacking professional training
• Weak institutional capacity and outdated infrastructure
• Poor crisis and emergency communication
• Declining public trust, fed by misinformation and slow official responses

The situational analysis in the document is unusually frank about the scale of the shift government communicators now face. It notes that new media platforms — Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), WhatsApp, Instagram, and more recently TikTok — have overtaken radio, television, and newspapers as Kenyans’ primary source of news, yet government messaging has largely stayed anchored to traditional media. That mismatch, the policy argues, has widened the gap between the state and an increasingly young, digitally fluent population, some of whom use the same platforms to challenge official narratives.

The goal: “One Government, One Voice”

The policy’s overarching goal is for government to speak with one voice through coordinated, well-managed, and responsive public communication. It sets out six objectives:

1. Provide a framework for coordinated, harmonized and unified government communication
2. Establish a strategic, operational, institutional and regulatory system for administering communication
3. Allocate dedicated resources for communication across all government policies, programmes and projects
4. Promote and sustain the government’s brand and reputation, locally and globally
5. Guide government communication during crises and emergencies
6. Harness the full media ecosystem — traditional, digital and social — in public communication

The policy applies across the entire national government. All ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) are expected to adopt it, and all state and public officers are bound by it when interpreting or carrying out public communication. Designated government spokespersons — including technical and subject-matter experts — are required to communicate according to guidelines issued by MICDE, and to reinforce the “One Government, One Voice” principle by helping set the communication agenda across MDAs.

Six pillars of the new framework

The policy sets out concrete interventions grouped under six thematic areas:

1. A coordinated, harmonized communication framework. At the centre of this is a new National Communication Centre, envisioned as the repository and central coordinating body responsible for receiving, validating and preparing government information before it is released. The framework also calls for partnerships with media houses, civil society and private entities to help amplify official messaging, plus a multi-agency mechanism to track communication effectiveness using key performance indicators.

2. A stronger institutional and regulatory setup. This includes a high-level, multi-agency task force to oversee a National Communication Strategy, standardized operating guidelines for communication officers across MDAs, elevation of the communication function to a strategic level within each agency, a centralized digital platform for government information and updates, and a legal and regulatory framework for ethical, professional communication practice.

3. Dedicated funding. The policy flags government communication as chronically under-resourced — often among the first budget lines cut during austerity — and proposes mandatory budgetary allocations for communication in every MDA, plus a required communication-spending percentage built into all government projects and programmes.

4. A crisis communication framework. A new Crisis Communication Standing Committee is to be established to develop and implement plans for managing communication during emergencies, aiming for faster, more accurate information flow and reduced panic and misinformation during crises.

5. Government brand and reputation management. The policy notes there is currently no deliberate effort to build a unified national government brand, and proposes developing one, alongside training communicators in reputation management and more deliberately publicising government achievements.

6. Harnessing the media ecosystem. Recognising that one-way, top-down messaging has left many citizens feeling shut out of national dialogue, the policy calls for a comprehensive media engagement strategy and a dedicated strategy for adopting new and emerging media technologies.

Legal foundations

The policy is anchored in the Constitution of Kenya, particularly Article 33 (freedom of expression), Article 34 (freedom of the media) and Article 35 (access to information), alongside broader provisions on public participation (Article 10(2)), accountability (Article 232) and devolution (Article 6(3)).

It also maps itself against a wide body of existing law that will need review or closer alignment, including the Kenya Information and Communications (Amendment) Act, 2019; the Data Protection Act, 2019; the Access to Information Act, 2016; the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act, 2018; the Media Council Act, 2013; the National Cohesion and Integration Act, 2008; and the Persons with Disabilities Act, 2025. The document further flags a planned review of the Kenya Information and Communications Act and the proposed Institute of Public Relations and Communication Management Bill as legislative steps needed to strengthen implementation, and lists international instruments — from the ICCPR and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and AU Agenda 2063 — that shape the policy’s obligations.

Who’s in charge, and how it will be funded

Overall leadership for implementation sits with the Ministry responsible for communication (MICDE), working with the Cabinet, the Office of the Attorney-General, and the National Treasury. Implementation is to be financed through normal sector budgeting, with each MDA expected to build communication costs into its existing planning and budget processes rather than relying on a separate central fund.

Tracking whether it works

The policy commits to a full Monitoring, Evaluation, Reporting and Learning (MERL) system. In practice this means:

• Monitoring through baseline surveys, structured data collection, and real-time tracking during crises, feeding into monthly, quarterly and annual reviews
• Evaluation — both mid-term and end-term — assessing effectiveness, coherence, sustainability and impact, with external evaluators brought in to ensure independence
• Reporting in a standardised format (executive summary, achievements, challenges, financial performance, lessons learned), shared with the Presidency, government MDAs, parliamentary committees, and the public via official websites, press briefings and community engagement
• Learning, feeding evaluation findings back into policy reviews and institutional reform

The bottom line

In effect, the policy tries to turn public communication from an ad hoc, under-funded afterthought into a formal government function with its own budget lines, standards, oversight body, and accountability mechanisms. Whether it succeeds will depend less on the document itself than on the follow-through it demands: new legislation, a functioning National Communication Centre, real budget allocations across dozens of MDAs, and — perhaps hardest of all — a shift from one-way messaging to genuine two-way engagement with a public that has already moved on to platforms government has struggled to keep pace with.

The Ministry of Information, Communications and the Digital Economy has committed to an advisory, coordinating and facilitation role in seeing the policy through implementation and eventual review.

Source: Gazette Notice No. 13926, Kenya Gazette Vol. CXXVIII, No. 152, 28 August 2026, published by William Kabogo Gitau, Cabinet Secretary for Information, Communications and the Digital Economy.