Author: Joseph Macharia Kimemia, Transform Health Youth Council Advocate
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When I sit in a room where policymakers are discussing Kenya’s Health Information Exchange, I often think about the mother in Turkana walking three hours to a dispensary, only to have the clinician start her child’s file from scratch because her last visit’s record never made it across. That image is why I do this work. Interoperability (the ability of Kenya’s many health information systems to talk to each other) is not an abstract technical debate. It is the difference between a system that is responsive and one that is not.
Kenya’s Finance Bill 2026 and Digital Health
The Finance Bill in Kenya is an annual government proposal that introduces new taxes, alters existing tax rates, and updates financial laws to raise the revenue needed to fund the national budget. Representing Transform Health Kenya in June 2026, youth advocates participated in national discussions and public hearings on the Finance Bill 2026, advocating for sustained investment in Kenya’s digital health ecosystem. We called for the deletion of the proposal to introduce excise duty on phones and wireless devices, as it may increase the cost of digital health rollout, especially for counties, Community Health Promoters (CHPs), health facilities and patient-facing services. We warned that this could undermine digital inclusion, discourage local assembly and investment in the ICT sector, and adversely affect access to communication and digital services. The Committee agreed with this concern and recommended deletion of the proposal.
Raising Awareness and Mobilising youth
Earlier this year, I contributed to the first episode of the “My Data, Our Health” podcast, a youth-led initiative where I spoke openly about what it feels like to be a young Kenyan navigating digital health platforms without always understanding where our data goes or who can see it. That conversation was personal, but it fed directly into a bigger campaign: the Health Data Governance Advocacy push that Transform Health Kenya launched with HENNET this year, aiming to reach 200,000 people and mobilise over a thousand citizens around their right to understand how their health data is used.
Communities must be empowered not only to understand budgeting processes, but also to actively shape them through public participation and advocacy. — Reflection from a Transform Health Kenya budget advocacy dialogue
I have also seen, up close, how fragile this progress can be if it stays confined to Nairobi boardrooms. When Transform Health Kenya and partner organisation Raise Your Voice convened Community Health Promoters and youth champions in Kibera to talk about digital health, data privacy, and trust, it reminded me that interoperability only matters if the people whose data flows through these systems actually trust the system enough to engage with it. I carry that lesson into every policy conversation I now sit in: a connected health system is only as strong as the community’s confidence in it.
Youth Advocates in the Driver’s Seat
In March, I stood at the Health Integration Conference in Mombasa, listening to national and county stakeholders wrestle with the same fragmentation Transform Health has been naming for years — disconnected systems from village-level services to national referral pathways. What struck me was how far the conversation has shifted. A few years ago, digital health interoperability was a side note in these forums. Now it is the centerpiece, and youth advocates like myself are in the room, not on the sidelines, pushing for the financing and governance that will make the Digital Health Act’s promises real rather than aspirational.
This is the role I see for young Kenyans in this journey: not simply beneficiaries of whatever digital health system gets built, but active participants in building it — submitting memoranda, mobilising communities, speaking on public platforms, and holding both government and coalition partners accountable to the connected, person-centred system we were promised. From fragmented systems to connected care is not a policy slogan to me. It is the outcome I am working toward, one engagement at a time.
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About the Author
Joseph Macharia Kimemia is a mental health, SRHR, and digital health advocate representing Kenya on the Transform Health Youth Council.