Purity Mukami

Purity Mukami is a pioneering Kenyan data & investigative journalist. A statistician by training, she works at the intersection of data, open-source intelligence (OSINT), and more recently, algorithmic accountability. Her professional foundation is built on rigorous statistical analysis, and confidence dealing with troves of documents. She has spent over a decade transforming complex datasets into powerful narratives that hold the powerful to account, bridging the gap between technical complexity and public understanding. Mukami is also at the forefront of technological innovation in the African media ecosystem as a part-time product manager at Qhala.

Her recent landmark audit of Kenya’s healthcare funding is a testament to her unique skill set; alongside her colleagues, they uncovered a previously undisclosed flaw in the AI-based system used to calculate premiums for the Kenya's Social Health Insurance Fund. This discovery sparked a vital, ongoing national conversation regarding the ethics and transparency of AI in healthcare funding and generally in public service programs.

Her investigative work's impact is truly global, having served in key data, OSINT, and
research roles for some of the world’s most courageous journalistic organizations, including Africa Uncensored, BBC Africa Eye, Finance Uncovered, and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) as well as for Lighthouse Reports. Purity has been a vital contributor to massive cross-border collaborations such as the Pandora Papers, the FinCEN Files, and Dubai Unlocked among others. From verifying user generated content leading to the documenting the Sudan Livestreamed Massacre to unmasking illicit financial flows, her work consistently exposes systemic corruption and human rights abuses.

Purity’s work also includes contribution in reporting election results during recent election cycles in Kenya by providing transparent, data-driven explanations of the numbers.
Her reporting continues to drive legislative and social change in Kenya, and beyond, particularly in the realms of public procurement, financial transparency, and algorithmic accountability.

Before her career in the newsroom, Purity contributed her analytical precision in the banking sector and as a statistics lecturer at several Kenyan universities. Today, she remains dedicated to using her unique toolkit to combat misinformation and ensure that, in an era of automated governance, data remains a tool for truth and justice.