If there is anything to sum up James Ayugi Panaito—the man behind the government’s eCitizen platform—then it is a post on his Facebook page on Friday, February 28.
Just after the Business Daily published a story titled Shadowy firms earn Sh1.45bn on eCitizen, Mr Ayugi took to his Facebook page and posted “This is very little money for what government is getting in return. We actually need more.”
That is the man. Ambitious. Cautious about his public image. Go-getter.
For starters, the Business Daily story reported an audit that queried a Sh1.45 billion payment to the eCitizen vendor, part of the payment (Sh591.9 million) being from a Sh50 charged on every transaction Kenyans seek on the platform called ‘convenience fee’.
It later emerged from interviews that eCitizen is currently being run by a consortium of three firms—Webmasters Kenya, Pesaflow and Olivetree—all associated with Mr Ayugi.
But just how did the 40-year-old find his way to the centre of a system that is now the government’s engine of public services, processing upwards of 22,000 services and while at it, pocketing hundreds of millions?
The journey begins from Busia, a town 465km west of Nairobi bordering Uganda.
Until the early 2000s as a teenager, Mr Ayugi still thought he would pursue music. This first love for art has stayed with him to date through his brand of dreadlocks and an ascot cap you will never see him without.
However, while the innocence of youthhood and the wave of popular songs by the likes of Nameless and E-sir may have deluded Mr Ayugi into thinking that his future was in music when he landed in Nairobi all this changed and he found new love in information and communication technology (ICT), which would become his life mission.
Mr Ayugi says he started life in Nairobi living in a single room in the slums of Kaloleni, Eastlands around 2002. He had always wondered how despite his state of life there were still people affording to drive high-end vehicles and build high-rise apartments.
So he set out to find out what their secret was. “One fellow one day told me that most owners of the buildings and nice vehicles were suppliers to the government. He challenged me to find something I could supply government also,” Mr Ayugi recalled in an interview with the Business Daily.
He did not have companies to construct roads or supply products to the government, just some basics in ICT, specifically web design.
He decided that his knowledge in ICT would be the product to trade with the government in his pursuit of a breakthrough to riches, and he started this pursuit by convincing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to upgrade its website.
In a few years, he had made inroads in government corridors and when the World Bank wanted to pick a local firm to upgrade the government’s e-registry his company, Webmaster Kenya, was picked.
He was an ambitious man out to pursue success and about a decade ago he posted on his Facebook of how he would be a billionaire in a decade’s time. “I crossed the billion-shilling mark long ago. A billion is not so much money,” he says.
His focus, he says, is to now build a billion-dollar business, ostensibly by exporting the system he has built to deliver public services in Kenya, to other countries.
The government may have paid him Sh1.45 billion for e-citizen services last year, but Ayugi says this is a small amount that just serves to run operations.
It is by selling the idea to governments in other African countries that he will make real money, and grow his empire into a billion-dollar business, Mr Ayugi believes.
However, along this journey, the man is all too aware of the essence of having a good public image and he has always been wary of what people say about him publicly.
During one of the pursuits of government tenders for the export of an eCitizen version to the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2019, a local newspaper ran a headline story screaming “DCI probes missing Sh5.6b eCitizen cash”.
He did not take it kindly and the newspaper had to publish an apology later after he accused “some people” of wanting the eCitizen to go down “so that they benefit from manual processes.”
“I just want what people say to be accurate. I’m the kind of person who loves to have the right information out there. I have ambitions to export services to other countries,” he says.
His social media pages are awash with posts of him hanging out with politicians, attending ICT conferences and others of himself living the life, enjoying exquisite drinks, driving high-end vehicles, and staying in good hotels. While not publicly affiliated with political factions, he has had a strong appreciation of the unwritten ‘rules of the game’ in Kenya’s political-economy space.
When he started seeking government deals, his public identity was James Panaito, which served to dodge any misfortunes that would have been attracted by the name Mr Ayugi.
After entering into the space and firmly establishing his base, he claimed back his name and has since been using it. He has an easy-going person, he picks calls from everyone.
Even in our first meeting, he is a chatty fellow who will engage you in conversations. This character has served him well in marketing his services.
While only in Kenya has Webmasters delivered the service at a massive scale converging more than 22,000 public services on one platform, the company has also delivered services to other governments, albeit on a smaller scale, notably in Rwanda, Somalia and Iraq.
A lot about Mr Ayugi is available on the Internet, but what you will not find are details of his academic accomplishments, perhaps this explains his strong opinions on the place of the formal education system in a person’s life.
He believes the formal education system is structured to “drill students to pass exams”.
“There’s too much noise in the formal education system. They first teach you everything and let you specialise very late in life. When people start specialising earlier they become aware of where they want to go earlier,” he says.
Mr Ayugi has been a student of specialised learning and taught himself programming back when many had not appreciated the place of technology in modern life. Talking to him, it’s hard to conclude that he does not consider the years he spent in primary and secondary learning as wasted time.
“I have been inquisitive all along and I’ve always gotten wrong answers. Back in school, I would ask why we were using log tables and how we would apply them in the real world. The answer would be hii haitakuja kwa mtihani (that will not be in the examination),” he recalls.
On the business front, Mr Ayugi cuts the image of a ruthless go-getter who will do everything to defend what he believes in.
In 2015, his company, Webmaster Kenya teamed up with Treasury to kick out a company that had been contracted to collect eCitizen revenues on behalf of the government in a nasty breakup that was followed by fierce legal fights.
Since President William Ruto’s government came in, he appears to have strengthened his roots in government corridors and hopes to step on the influence he has horned locally to propel his expansion to other markets.
“We don’t believe we will make money in Kenya, we will start making real money when we export this service,” he concluded.
