AI for eGovernance: Leveraging Language Technologies For Digital Inclusion

Abstract

The Kenyan government has invested heavily in the digitisation of public service delivery, in line with the Kenya Digital Master Plan 2022-2032. The national eGovernment platform, eCitizen, hosts services that are vital to citizens' livelihoods, including business registration, youth enterprise lending, digital literacy and tax filing. However, the platform faces digital inclusion challenges that limit equitable access for marginalised groups, particularly youth in rural areas and persons with disabilities. This exclusion is driven by a language barrier, since the platform is primarily in English with limited Swahili support, and by a text-only interface that excludes low-literacy and visually impaired users. This paper reports findings from six one-on-one interviews and an eleven-person roundtable discussion across four platforms essential to youth livelihoods: Ajira Digital, Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) iTax, Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) and the Youth Enterprise Development Fund (YEDF). Drawing on these findings, on Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 principles as a design lens for diagnosing eCitizen's accessibility gaps, and on comparator models such as Estonia's Bürokratt and India's Bhashini, the paper proposes a human-centred, systems-minded framework for embedding generative AI and language technologies into eCitizen, including text simplification, neural machine translation, text-to-speech and speech-to-text. The paper argues that, when deployed responsibly with appropriate human oversight, these interventions could meaningfully improve access to government services for linguistically excluded citizens. It also emphasises that AI alone cannot overcome the broader structural barriers, including unemployment and educational inequality, that shape digital exclusion.