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Kenya, November 09, 2026 - The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission has begun training Integrity Assurance Officers for the National Police Service. The course is running in Kisumu, Mombasa and Nakuru.
It is not a routine ethics workshop. It follows directly from the systems examination EACC carried out on the police between February and June 2025.
That examination found structured problems. Traffic officers collected regular payments from matatus and boda bodas. Reports said seniors sometimes set daily targets and the money moved up the chain.
Police stations took informal fees from businesses because many lacked proper operating funds. Recruitment and transfers remained open to bribery and political influence. Internal reporting systems were weak and understaffed. The audit described these as design failures that made corruption predictable.
EACC and the National Police Service, working with UNODC, responded by selecting officers and putting them through a five-day course. The officers learn how to map corruption risks at their stations, write local anti-corruption plans, and set up reporting channels. When they finish they return to their duty stations with a new formal role: Integrity Assurance Officer.
The design places these officers at the exact points where the audit said money was being collected. At traffic stops they are expected to document patterns that used to stay cash-only.
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At stations they are expected to record informal fees and link them to the lack of proper funding. In transfers and deployments they are expected to flag practices that look like punishment or favouritism. The training gives them the tools to make those practices visible from inside the service.
What remains less visible is the position these officers occupy. They stay ordinary police officers. The same commanders who control transfers, promotions and postings still control their careers. An officer who records target-driven collections too clearly can be moved.
An officer who pushes real reporting can be isolated. The 2025 examination itself showed that Internal Affairs lacks the numbers and independence to protect such officers fully.
In communities that already see the police as corrupt, the problem deepens. People will assume the new integrity officer is part of the same system. Colleagues will hesitate before reporting anything. The channels the training creates only work if those who use them believe the report will not come back on them.
The training has started. Officers are being prepared and returned to stations. Whether the mechanism changes anything on the ground now depends on whether commanders treat the new risk assessments as real work and whether the wider reforms recommended in the same audit, proper station funding, traffic unit changes, stronger internal accountability, move forward at the same time.