Closing the gap between dormant energy and public action.
The Disconnect
It started with regular hikes to the Menengai Crater and the natural sites around the Rift Valley. While pursuing my computer science degree at Kabarak University, I kept noticing the same pattern: stalled geothermal projects surrounded by incomplete infrastructure.
The more I dug into the government documents and news coverage, the clearer the issue became. Kenya's geothermal stagnation wasn't caused by a lack of resources. It was driven by licensing delays, companies stalling on county payments, highly fragmented agency data, and a massive public awareness gap. Citizens continue paying exorbitant electricity fees while vast energy resources lie dormant in their own backyards—and they have almost no say in the matter.
Mvuke
Mvuke is the response to the public awareness gap. It is a bilingual civic platform (English and Kiswahili) that breaks down Kenya's draft National Geothermal Strategy 2026–2036 county by county. It routes citizens directly to official public participation channels so the people whose land and futures are tied to these developments aren't just reading about decisions after they're made—they're actively shaping the policies.
OpenThermal
Public participation alone doesn't fix scattered data. OpenThermal is the parent initiative built to map out geothermal-potential sites and construct structured datasets where none currently exist. By tracking licensing statuses and stalled permits, it provides policymakers, researchers, and companies with a clear, queryable picture of where the opportunity lies and exactly what is blocking it.
The Roadmap
Once Mvuke's public participation pipeline is stable, that same infrastructure will host OpenThermal's first dataset: a county-level map of Rift Valley geothermal sites, their exact licensing status, and financial bottlenecks.
The immediate goal is to build one reliable, undeniable proof-of-concept in the Rift Valley. From there, we scale county by county, rendering the data open enough that journalists and county officials can query it instantly instead of chasing scattered records across fragmented agencies.