If you followed the intense civic engagement around the Finance Bill 2025 last May, you likely remember the “Civic Email” tool. It was a simple yet devastatingly effective web app that allowed thousands of Kenyans to flood parliamentary inboxes with objections. The developer behind it, Rose Njeri Tunguru (known on X as @rtunguru), has just launched her next major project, and it lands right as the country begins to look toward the upcoming election period.
It’s called Tuma Report, and it is arguably a more ambitious attempt to decentralize how news is gathered and consumed in Kenya.
Born from information blackouts
According to Njeri, the app wasn’t built in a vacuum. It was inspired by the confusion surrounding the events in Kakamega County in December 2025, where people died in clashes over a proposed multi-billion-dollar gold mining project.
“In December 2025, when people in Western Kenya were almost displaced before we made noise about it, I thought: why isn’t there a platform to collect these events?” Njeri shared on X. “It took quite long before the country came to learn about the events.”
That delay in mainstream media coverage is the gap the Tuma Report app aims to fill. In an era where “mainstream” often means “delayed” or “sanitized,” Tuma Report bets on the fact that the most efficient news crew is the millions of Kenyans armed with smartphones.
Hands-on with Tuma Report app
I’ve been testing the app (currently available only on Android), and its design philosophy is clearly “frictionless reporting.”
At 32MB in size, it’s a lightweight download. The most striking feature? No sign-up is required. In a civic tech landscape where anonymity is often safety, forcing users to link an email or phone number can be a deterrent. Tuma Report skips this entirely. You launch the app, and you are immediately presented with a clean, blue-and-white interface with two primary options: Submit a Report or view the Reports Feed.
Submitting a report is straightforward:
- Title & description: A brief summary of the event.
- Location: Pinpointing where it happened.
- Visual evidence: Buttons to “Pick Image” or “Pick Video” are prominent, encouraging users to provide proof.
- Verification: A simple mathematics CAPTCHA (e.g., “What is 7 + 10?”) replaces complex logins to filter out bots.
Crowd-moderated accountability
One of the biggest risks with open platforms is misinformation. Tuma Report attempts to solve this with a community-policing model.
There is no central “editor” approving posts before they go live, which ensures real-time speed. However, the community acts as the moderator. Any post that is flagged by users for being misleading, violent, or false 5 times is auto-hidden. It’s a democratic approach to moderation that mirrors the app’s democratic mission.
The app also plasters a massive “Independence Notice” across its About page, clarifying in bold terms that it is not affiliated with the Government of Kenya. Given the current political climate, this disclaimer is a crucial feature for user trust.
The timing of this release is significant. With the election period approaching, the need for transparency and real-time accountability is at an all-time high.
We have seen how internet shutdowns or media blackouts can obscure critical events. A tool like Tuma Report effectively turns every citizen into a reporter. If a polling station opens late, if a protest breaks out in a rural area, or if public services fail in a specific ward, it can be documented, geotagged, and broadcast to the rest of the country instantly, bypassing the editorial bottlenecks of traditional media houses.
Tuma Report is currently available to download on the Google Play Store for devices running Android 7 and above. There’s no version available yet for iOS users.
It remains to be seen how fast the app will gain traction, but with over 10 downloads in its first hours and a developer with a proven track record of shifting the civic needle, Tuma Report is definitely one to watch.
