Murang’a County Launches MyMurang’a App to Put Permits, Bursaries, and Jobs on Your Phone
If you have ever tried to process a Single Business Permit at a Kenyan county office, you know the drill. You show up early, queue, get sent to a different window, queue again, pay at a separate counter, then hope the receipt is processed before someone’s lunch break. It is a process that feels like it was designed to test patience rather than deliver a service.
Murang’a County wants to change that. Governor Irungu Kang’ata has announced the rollout of the MyMurang’a mobile application, a platform that pulls together several county services that previously lived in separate offices, separate queues, and separate systems. The app is already available on the Google Play Store, with a formal public launch set for April 18, 2026, at Kimorori Stadium.
What the app actually does
MyMurang’a is designed to handle the kinds of county interactions that most residents deal with routinely. You can apply for and process Single Business Permits, liquor licences, and health licences. You can also settle payments linked to land rates, parking, and utilities. These are the bread-and-butter revenue functions that counties depend on, and digitising them has a direct impact on how efficiently money flows in.
But the app goes a step further than pure payments. It includes bursary applications and access to county job listings. That is a meaningful expansion. Most county digital platforms in Kenya have stuck to revenue collection. Layering in education support and employment access turns the app from a payment gateway into something closer to a citizen services hub.
Other features include service tracking so that you can follow up on an application without calling an office, push notifications for updates, and access to health and business information. Security is handled through PIN and biometric login, and the platform is available around the clock.
Why it matters in context
Murang’a is not starting from zero. The county has been automating parts of its revenue and licensing systems over the past few years. Officials say those earlier efforts led to improved collections and faster processing. MyMurang’a is essentially the public-facing layer sitting on top of that backend work, giving residents a single front door instead of several scattered entry points.
This approach mirrors what a few other counties have attempted. In 2023, Safaricom partnered with Nairobi County to develop the “My Nairobi App” under a similar premise: one platform for digital services and citizen engagement, built into channels like the M-PESA Super App and a USSD shortcode. Kiambu has also deployed digital payment systems, though scope and uptake vary widely.
What makes Murang’a’s attempt interesting is the inclusion of bursaries and jobs. County bursary applications in Kenya have historically been opaque processes, riddled with complaints about fairness and access. Putting that process into a trackable digital workflow does not eliminate the politics, but it makes the process harder to hide. If someone applies through the app and gets a reference number and status updates, that is a measurable improvement over handing a form to a ward administrator and hoping for the best.
The bigger picture for county digital services
Kenya’s 47 counties are at very different stages of digital readiness. A 2025 analysis showed that while Nairobi and Kiambu enjoy internet usage rates above 50%, counties like West Pokot sit below 10%. The national government has been pushing digital transformation through platforms like eCitizen and Gava Mkononi. But at the county level, where most day-to-day services actually happen, digitisation has been patchy.
The challenge is not just building the app. It is getting people to use it. Murang’a County has a mix of urban and rural residents. The county seat has reasonable smartphone penetration and data access. But in the more rural sub-counties, residents may still rely on feature phones and USSD. The TechTrendsKE report on the launch did not mention a USSD channel or any feature phone fallback, which raises a question about how inclusive this rollout actually is. An Android-only app on the Google Play Store is useful for a segment of the population. It is not a universal solution.
There is also the question of who built the platform, how it is hosted, and what happens to the data residents submit. The app collects personal details, ID information, and payment data. None of the reporting so far has addressed the data protection angle, which matters under Kenya’s Data Protection Act of 2019. Residents deserve to know where their information sits and who has access to it.
What to watch
The April 18 launch event at Kimorori Stadium will likely serve as both a public onboarding exercise and a political moment for Governor Kang’ata, who has been building a profile around technology-led county administration. That is not inherently a bad thing. Political incentives to digitise services can produce real results, provided the platform works.
The real test comes after the launch. Can the app handle volume? Will payments process reliably? What happens when a bursary application gets stuck and there is no office to walk into? Early reactions online have been positive, with some calling Murang’a a pacesetter among counties. But the distance between a demo and daily reliability is vast. Anyone who has watched Safaricom’s My OneApp rollout over the past two weeks knows that merging services into one app is the easy part. Making them work every single time is where things get hard.
Murang’a has made a promising start. Whether MyMurang’a becomes a model for other counties or another app that sits unused on people’s phones depends entirely on execution from here.
