A Single Source of Truth

With Huduma Namba and Maisha Namba, the Kenyan government has aspired to create a “single source of truth.” But the controversies these digital infrastructures have generated have instead revealed multiple, incommensurable kinds of truth and truth claims. National inclusion can now be understood as a constitutionally protected “right;” a heavily policed entitlement limited to “genuine” citizens; a right to legal personhood, anchored in UN conventions; or a datafied, transactional effect of digital platforms. Interpolated through these various logics, Kenyan civil society groups are using data practices and digital infrastructures to create new “rights in the making” and, in the process, are reshaping the techno-political terrain.