Busy start of week 2

Monday kicked in hard. The alarm went off at 5am and in the dark we left with our driver Raphael for the long drive to Nairobi. This was the third day in a row that I saw the sun rise, although the previous 2 days were in a National Reserve with giraffes in the background, instead of on a bumpy road with a sleeping colleague on each side of me in the back seat of a car. We had a full day of 7 interviews and tours ahead of us.

Nairobi traffic was awful and the morning trip took 3.5 hours. Oh well, this is Africa. So we used the time in the car to do our last preparations.
Again, we met with senior directors, like the CIO of the Attorney General (we would have loved to speak with the AG himself, but the position has not been filled yet), the CIO of the Immigration Ministry and the Head of Passports. It was amazing to hear their views on the inefficient processes, the non-existent National Data System and especially that everyone is waiting for each other to take the lead in centralisation efforts and push for change. Most impressive were the tours through the Registration Offices. Piles and piles of paper!!
There is a separate bureau for obtaining a passport (only 5 locations in the country), a separate bureau to register for a Birth Certificate (only 60% of all births in Kenya are registered) and another separate bureau to obtain a National ID card (not a single computer found at this office). We didn´t even go to the ones for driving licenses, company registration, land registration etc etc. Certainly no one-stop-shop here.
We spoke to people at the end of the day outside of the Birth Certificate office. They had a sad face because they had not succeeded in completing their application that day, for the fifth day in a row. Oh well, this is Africa, so you just go home and try again tomorrow.

Nyayo House in Nairobi, where the Ministry of Immigration is located

National ID Card paper administration since October, only covering the ID Card dispatching information

Thousands of National ID cards have been created but are never picked up by the presumed owner

Pages and pages of hand-written data entry

Our team is trying to hide their amazement. These chaotic piles of paper represent one day of Birth Certificate applications in one part of Nairobi.

Shelves of birth registrations

More shelves of birth registrations, attempts to structure on shelves...

...or some people just gave up and left it here.

Our last meeting of the day was with Vivian Ashioya from IBM East Africa. We talked through our day and the preliminary recommendations in our final report, while enjoying a lovely cappuccino made from real Kenyan coffee beans, finally!

Our trip back to Nyeri again took more than 3 hours. No matter how exhausted we were, we couldn´t resist the Gin & Tonics in the hotel bar, our daily office space in the evenings and also where I am sitting now while typing this blog. I cannot imagine that I have only been here for 10 days. It seems ages ago that I left Zurich, but I am enjoying every single moment of the CSC experience until now and more exciting stuff to come!