NAIROBI, Kenya — The Ministry of Interior is planning to integrate the National Registration Bureau (NRB) database with a new mass surveillance system across five major cities, in a move aimed at speeding up criminal investigations, Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen has revealed.
Speaking during a television interview on Monday, June 22, Murkomen said the proposed system will enable security agencies to match faces captured on CCTV cameras with official government records, including national ID photographs, to quickly identify suspects.
He noted that Kenya’s current policing system lacks an automated facial recognition database linked to official identity records, making it difficult to identify individuals captured on surveillance footage.
“We do not have a database with facial recognition technology that already has the facial recognition for Kenyans, where you merge the faces you get from the cameras to the database to establish the credentials of an individual,” Murkomen said.
Murkomen said the facial recognition technology will be integrated into the Integrated Command, Control and Communication Centre (IC3), which is currently undergoing upgrades as part of wider security reforms.
Under the proposed system, police officers will be able to compare images captured by CCTV cameras with photographs stored in government databases, significantly reducing reliance on manual identification methods.
“Once we establish this technology, we will slowly build in the data of various people based on information in the ID. Police will now be able to use the faces of Kenyans with their pictures in the official data,” he added.
Currently, law enforcement agencies depend on manually reviewing CCTV footage and circulating suspect images to the public in order to gather leads.
The announcement comes days after the Interior Ministry revealed plans to install surveillance cameras in Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, Nakuru, Eldoret and Nyeri as part of efforts to curb rising criminal activity.
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Murkomen said the government is in the final stages of procuring the system, with the overall project expected to cost not more than Ksh25 billion. The procurement process is expected to be completed within two months.
Once implemented, Nairobi is expected to be among the first cities to benefit from the rollout, with deployment projected to take between three and six months after procurement is finalised.
On concerns over privacy and data protection, the Cabinet Secretary said the surveillance system will only be installed in public spaces and not in private areas such as homes or hotels.
The proposal is expected to trigger public debate over the balance between national security, digital surveillance, and data protection as Kenya expands its use of smart policing technologies.
