TI-Kenya in collaboration with the Transparency International Health Initiative (TIHI) convened an open contracting workshop in Nairobi Kenya. The workshop brought together partners and organizations working in the Open Contracting (OC) space and provide a forum for open dialogue and discussion.

As a movement, OC has grown rapidly over the last five years, generating large impact globally. However, most successes have occurred in middle- or high-income contexts which have the infrastructure to support such modern techniques.

The workshop was guided by four core objectives which included updating the list of list of OC approaches and pressing research questions, documenting experiences of approaches and implementation in preparation for a detailed assessment, establishing a formalised Community of Practice (CoP) between implementers and agreeing upon objectives of CoP and settling on methods of communication and key deliverables, especially on how best stories and evidence on OC can be shared.

Some of the key objectives from the forum included the need to rethink what OC capacity building looks like and identify champions to promote buy-in and political good will. Also, the need to train persons working in procurement and monitoring and evaluation as there is lack of capacity. Several people should be trained concurrently so that there is broader institutional knowledge and capacity.