Following the tabling of the Election (Amendment) Bill 2022 in the National Assembly by the Majority Leader in February this year, there was significant debate and angst about the Bill’s proposed amendments to the provisions in the Election Act relating to the transmission of results. Several news outlets and social media users incorrectly asserted that the Bill proposed to scrap the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission’s (IEBC) obligation to set up and operate an electronic tallying and transmission system, reverting Kenya’s elections procedure to that which was last used in 2007. The traction gained by these assertions prompted the IEBC to clarify the position via a press statement—the provision relating to electronic transmission was not going to be amended.

This episode is emblematic of two things: an apparent recognition of the importance of electronic transmission and tallying; and an insight into the potential for social media to muddy the waters of public discourse in electoral contexts. More broadly, it is symbolic of the way electioneering—and the administration of elections—has drastically evolved in recent years. The level of digitisation of both the election administration systems and the tools used by candidates to campaign is unlike anything previously witnessed, and this is a mixed bag. While the use of technology may make processes more efficient and secure, there are inherent risks posed both to electoral systems, and to the electorate itself. In a two-part article within this series, we canvas some of the key challenges posed by the digitisation of electoral processes and review some of the measures adopted by various stakeholders in response. We look at these challenges at two levels—the structural risks posed to election administration systems and the risks posed to electoral integrity by conduct on social networks.

Election administration systems

Several election management bodies have begun using technology to administer elections to varying degrees. While some such as Estonia have implemented a system which allows citizens to cast their vote online from anywhere in the world, others, such as Kenya, still limit their use of technology to voter registration, transmission, and tallying. While these systems may render numerous efficiencies, this is sometimes at the cost of credibility. Any challenge to the integrity of these systems would effectively undermine entire electoral processes. One need only look at Kenya’s most recent experience to understand this.

After the 2017 general election, the Supreme Court of Kenya ordered the IEBC to allow two independent parties access to its servers to audit the results of the poll. This came after allegations that there were significant flaws in the tallying and transmission of results. During the various election related petitions which the Supreme Court heard in that period, public discourse around the reliability of the electronic tallying and transmission system demonstrated widespread mistrust. Considering the Supreme Court subsequently accepted the claim that the data may have been interfered with, this was unsurprising. The ambivalence towards the reliability of electronic tallying and transmission was apparent prior to the election, when officials struggled to instil confidence in voters that the systems would be reliable. In the face of clear hurdles such as insufficient network coverage, the IEBC had a difficult time assuring the electorate that it would be able to safeguard an election. Since then, there have been several instances where the integrity of the IEBC’s systems has been questioned. For example, only last year, there were conflicting reports from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) and the IEBC on an alleged infiltration of the IEBC’s servers. While the DCI publicly stated that an individual had been arrested on suspicion of having hacked into the IEBC servers, the IEBC denied these claims.

The level of digitisation of both the election administration systems and the tools used by candidates to campaign is unlike anything previously witnessed.

With digitised election administration, election management bodies must consider both internal and external risks. From flaws inherent in the systems used, to the potential for tampering by external actors, there exist numerous vectors through which a system’s reliability can be challenged. Once this reliability is impeached, it is hard to guarantee the credibility of any result. With this reality, it is now common for various political actors around the world to allege external interference or inherent unreliability when confronted with an unfavourable outcome. In countries where this occurs, the resulting mistrust of election institutions threatens the very fabric of democracy, sometimes leading to violence. Lest we forget, this is not a developing world phenomenon. The United States of America experienced this in light of Donald Trump’s rejection of the US Presidential elections.

Social networking platforms

Beyond the cybersecurity threats posed to election administration systems, the digitisation of electioneering has also exposed democracies to several harms. Over the past few election cycles, the use of networked technologies—social media in particular—in political campaigning has steadily risen. During the 2017 elections, over 80 per cent of candidates in Kenya had an online presence on social media. The peer-to-peer and instantaneous nature of these platforms means that they are especially potent tools for political actors to use for the dissemination of their messaging to large audiences, as well as for direct engagement with individual members of their bases. Given that these platforms often lack gatekeeping in the traditional editorial sense, political actors can share unfiltered content with large audiences easily.

On the one hand, these platforms have been lauded as levelling the playing field between actors who have access to the resources necessary to command a presence on mainstream media and those who don’t. On the other, the way these platforms curate the content their users consume, and the nature of the content shared by some political actors, have been criticised as undermining healthy political debate. Specifically, the spread of harmful content such as mis- and dis-information which contributes to the erosion of the basic truths which underpin political discourse and is sometimes inciteful has been of significant concern. Public authorities and private entities alike are increasingly finding themselves having to issue statements disavowing the contents of news reports or social media posts as false or misleading, as the IEBC did in relation to the reporting following the tabling of the Election (Amendment) Bill, 2022.

The same is true in relation to announcements claiming to be from public bodies.  The quality of the fakes is excellent so the public can be easily deceived.  Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) also mean that audio-visual content is not immune to these harms; the democratisation of AI technologies used to alter audio-visual content has resulted in a surge in fabricated videos known as “deep fakes”. With such an information ecosystem, it becomes difficult for political actors and the electorate to engage in constructive debate. Immediately one is confronted with incriminating content such as a video, one need only claim that it is fabricated, and this will immediately obfuscate the truth. Focus will be shifted from the content of the post to its authenticity. While social media platforms have developed some fact-checking and transparency measures in relation to, for example, the US elections, many have not bothered to do the same for most of the rest of the world, which itself is a matter of significant concern.

With digitised election administration, election management bodies must consider both internal and external risks.

These harms are compounded by practices such as microtargeting, which leverage the design of social media platforms to expose specific audiences to messaging which appeals to their biases, and which they would therefore be receptive to. In campaign contexts, these tools are often made available to political actors by consultants such as the now infamous Cambridge Analytica which offered its services to various actors in Kenya’s 2017 elections. Underpinning these targeting and microtargeting practices is an aggressive and often unchecked harvesting of personal data which enables political actors to develop audience profiles and design effective messaging. In some instances, this messaging leverages on an audience’s biases or fears, and is sometimes misleading or inciteful in nature. Recently we have also witnessed the use of social media influencers to coordinate the spread of this specific messaging that is often false, misleading, or maligning of a particular political actor or group of actors. Social media platforms, in response to findings by researchers, have severally had to take down a raft of accounts engaged in coordinated inauthentic behaviour. Most recently, this method of spreading mis-and dis-information was used in relation to the debate around the Reproductive Healthcare Bill and the Surrogacy Bill where a Spanish organisation—CitizenGo—allegedly amplified certain hashtags on Kenya’s trending page on Twitter.

Vigilance is then the watchword. Building “believability” filters and inculcating healthy scepticism are essential. In years past, the fact that something made it into print media anointed the content with a sense of credibility.  Social media has irrevocably changed this. These developments mean that election stakeholders ought to be vigilant regarding the ways in which Kenya’s electoral integrity can be attacked as we head into the 2022 general elections. On the other hand, these challenges have been widely noted by the IEBC, other regulators such as the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner, and civil society, and various measures have been put in place to safeguard Kenya’s electoral integrity. We discuss some of these measures in the next instalment in this series.

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This article was authored in collaboration with the Kofi Annan Foundation whose electoral integrity program is supported by the United Nations Democracy Fund.

As the August 9 general elections draw ever closer in Kenya, the month of April saw political party “nominations”, when the respective parties and coalitions select their candidates for a range of different positions including Member of Parliament and Governor. The political parties had a deadline of 2 April to conclude the process and submit the names of successful candidates to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) for approval. Although the 2022 nominations appears to have been a small improvement on the 2017 experience, with less violence and chaos, they did little to strengthen Kenyan democracy.

In most cases the parties behind former opposition leader turned establishment candidate Raila Odinga – the Jubilee Party and the Orange Democratic Movement – did not hold elected primaries at all, and instead used “direct nominations”, much to the chagrin of those who were overlooked. The parties behind Odinga’s main rival, Deputy President William Ruto, held more primaries, but here too there were many controversies and numerous disgruntled “losers”. As a result, both Ruto and Odinga faced a major challenge: how to prevent losing candidates from defecting and running as independents.

This is a particularly dangerous prospect in the context of a close elections, because a popular independent can divide the vote, enabling a rival party to secure an unexpected victory. In response, coalition leaders spend the post-nominations period frantically calling those who feel they have been cheated to offer then a range of rewards to stay loyal, including the promise of future tenders; appointment to cabinet positions; appointment to various state commissions; nomination to legislative bodies; appointment to ambassadorial roles oversees; and, good old fashioned cash.

It is common knowledge that the nomination of candidates for some state jobs is heavily influenced by coalition realities rather than the ability and qualifications of the individuals concerned. It is disturbing that this trend is also extending to regional institutions, however. Party leaders are now using the promise of slots as representatives in the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) to buy-off disgruntled leaders. A case in point is Ruto’s promise to give Charles Kanyi (Jaguar) a slot in the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) if he quit the Member of Parliament race for Starehe Constituency in favour of Simon Mbugua. It is a powerful demonstration of how this particular political cycle works that Mbugua had himself been nominated to the EALA in 2017, after he was persuaded by the Jubilee Party leadership to step down in favour of Yusuf Hassan in the Kamukunji primaries.

Such bargains are the lifeblood of Kenyan electoral politics, but undermine accountability and embed deal making – and hence potentially corrupt practices – at the heart of the not only the Kenyan state, but also regional governance.

How EALA was turned into an “employment bureau”

The East African Legislative Assembly is an independent arm of the Community that is supposed to advance the interests of the East African Community bloc as well as provide oversight. The membership of EALA currently stands at 62, with nine elected members from each of the six East Africa Community (EAC) partners states: Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, South Sudan and Burundi and eight ex-officio members. However, political parties have been blamed for nominating politicians who lose in nominations, or their own relatives, to the regional body. For Instance, Kennedy Musyoka, who was nominated to EALA in 2017 is the son of Wiper party leader Kalonzo Musyoka.

This is not only happening in Kenya. A similar scenario is playing out in Uganda where political parties are also rewarding rejects to EALA. In 2017, the candidates presented for nomination to EALA were mostly those that had lost after vying to be a candidate for the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) in the parliamentary elections. Revelations about this practice triggered criticism in Uganda, which in turn prompted President Yoweri Museveni to declare that EALA was not an “employment bureau” for political job seekers. Despite being president – and hence the person with the greatest power to decide how his party operates and who is sent to the EALA – Museveni sought to displace blame, stating that. “This election is just an election; elections are not employment bureaus that you are here to give jobs to jobless people but people who will support the integration process”.

The problem facing Museveni is that even if he wants to end the practice of using such nominations as patronage, he may not be able to. Facing a growing challenge from Bobi Wine, and recognizing the threat that the NRM may start to fragment during the succession struggle to replace him – should he ever stand down – Museveni knows full well that buying off disappointed candidates is critical to his regime’s survival.

More broadly, the practice of playing politics with nominations to legislative organs such as EALA is problematic because it sacrifices regional interests at the expense of the personal desires of politicians, many of whom were overlooked for good reason. As one of Africa’s fastest growing regions in desperate need of a more unified and effective approach to issues such as infrastructure and food security, this is a major shortcoming that needs to be urgently addressed.

The road back to effective leadership and administration

There is clearly a pressing need to improve the nomination procedures to EALA so that they become transparent, such those who are nominated understand the key issues facing the region and are accountable to its citizens. The process of nomination is supposed to include tough legislative vetting, with hearings to interview potential candidates, and a strong set of minimum requirements established. Some of this is already in place in Uganda, where nominees are required to appear before parliament to campaign for their bids, but could be further strengthened to enable a broader range of individuals to be considered. In countries such as Kenya, these procedures have been considerably watered down, undermining the process, and the credibility of the representatives it produces.

The changes required do not only relate to selection. Once they are in position, it will then be essential to ensure continuous performance assessment during their five-year term to assess their commitment and contribution and weed out incompetent representatives. But even these changes may not be enough if political leaders continue to see positions as an entitlement rather than something to be earned. It is the practice of paying off losing candidates that the ultimate driver of the nominations game – and the quality of domestic administration and regional leadership is unlikely to improve until this is brought under control.

The alternative energy economy is moving in the right direction. But there’s a devil in the detail: the extraction of rare-earth minerals (REM) needed to develop the technology and infrastructure for renewables are as devastating to the environment as the fossil fuels they seek to replace. Transitioning to a clean energy economy is imperative, and to do so justly, we must ensure job security, reparations, and environmental remediation to the communities where mining has both historically and currently exist.

In moving forward, we must ensure a just transition towards an alternative energy economy for our planet and for those who live on it. A just transition moves our economy off of fossil fuels, and toward clean energy, while providing just pathways for workers to transition to high-quality work with integrity. A just transition leaves no worker behind. This transition focuses on environmental and economic sustainability through decent work, social inclusion and poverty eradication.

Lithium, cobalt, arsenic, gallium, indium, tellurium, and platinum, just to name a few, are needed to develop a strong alternative energy economy and shift away from fossil fuels. Unfortunately, they are being mined with the same harmful practices and disregard as the very fossil fuels they’re meant to replace. The affected communities are often not those with purchasing power, but the Indigenous communities living in proximity to the mines.

In 2019, Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first Indigenous president was ousted in a coup, partly due to his push to nationalize the country’s lithium mines. It is believed that Elon Musk, the South African tech mogul had a hand in this process. Lithium is a mineral used in batteries that power various clean energy technologies, including electric cars. According to The International Energy Agency, the demand for lithium is slated to outpace the growth of fossil fuels two-fold in lieu of policies that will be in place to support its growth.

The low-carbon energy economy is at a cusp where the cross section of public policy and social consciousness has the potential to merge and propel our society into the future. In this transition to a clean low-carbon economy there are many jobs to be created, not only manual labor that poses high risks to human health but also jobs in electrical engineering, plant management, and urban design that are ultimately more skilled and higher paying. This transition will also require the implementation of educational infrastructure to help communities adapt.

It is imperative that we work to improve the ability of the people most affected by mineral extraction to have a say over that of the companies in what happens in their communities. We must ensure that the communities impacted have a pathway into the new economy and that nobody is left behind.

The process of mineral extraction is exactly that, extractive. Not only does it take from the earth, it also diminishes the value of the land over time and more often than not leaves a toxic mess that destroys entire ecosystems to which a monetary value can not be assessed or assigned. This process also requires immense human capital; the labor needed to get the job done. The pool of labor is often relegated to those within proximity to the mine, who exist at the cross section of poverty and opportunity. Even if the ultimate cost of this opportunity is the future of the local environment. When it comes between feeding one’s family where few other options are available, it’s a choice that must be made. It is the responsibility of the government and corporate interests to come together to ensure a just transition from the fossil fuel industry to an alternative energy economy.

As coal is dying we must be prepared to absorb the transferable infrastructure of this industry and re-tool it for use in the emerging economy. Factory buildings can be rehabilitated into solar power plants. Railways and transportation waterways can be retrofitted [with minimal effort] to assist in not only the transportation of goods and raw materials but for public transportation as well. The framework of industrial boom towns can lay the groundwork for community housing and commerce. Ensuring job training and security to the new energy economy is a vital form of equity for the communities impacted by mining. Alongside the reabsorption of the existing built infrastructure, we need to establish comprehensive and culturally comprehensive education apparatus to support the growth and development of a varied, skilled workforce required for such a transition.

South Africa, while one of the most mineral rich countries on the planet, cannot sustain its historical extractive economy. Research completed by the Alternative Information Development Center (AIDC) in Cape Town, shows that the legacy of post colonial-extractivist economics in South Africa has resulted in widespread resource depletion across the range of the country’s key resource sectors. It indicates that coal reserves have been mined downwards of 20% of original estimates. As of 20 years ago, 98% of South Africa’s total water resources had already been allocated, and the degradation of soil fertility is confirmed on 41% of cultivated land.

The extraction of resources and human capital is the keystone of colonialism and post-colonial neoliberal economics. This long standing tradition of the powerful taking something and leaving the poor with little or even something far worse continues unabated in our globalized world. Consequently, the framework of global energy infrastructure is a living relic of colonialism, harmful neoliberal economics, and ecological devastation. A debt left to the Indigenous communities where those, now even more, precious. minerals exist.

In order to transition towards a more just energy economy we must come together to:

• Nationalize all existing and future energy infrastructure and each citizen is given a stake in the economic and functional well being of the grid and energy infrastructure. This also requires that industry is purchased or seized from foreign interest to retain as much of the economy in-house and circulate the wealth within the community.
• Ensure all residents have fair and equitable as well as free or affordable access to all forms of energy.
• Retrofit existing mining town infrastructure, factories, warehouses, storage facilities, waste sites are assessed with the appropriate environmental impact assessments and made available to the new economy.
• Establish education and training programs to allow the existing and emerging workforce to be trained with job skills for the new economy. Some jobs will be lost indefinitely, so an economic safety net must be available along with a plan for those who may not be able to transition to the new economy so quickly.
• Ensure that minerals such as titanium and lithium are mined with the full consent of the local community. They must not be extracted in the current, harmful ways.
• Give priority to local peoples throughout all levels of employment in the mines and adequately training and developing the capacity of local leadership.

While these are just a few major considerations, it is important to involve the community to holistically define not only what a “just transition” can look like, but what a just transition will be for them—from the way rare earth minerals are mined, to the way we ensure job security and access to the new economy for those whose backs it has rested on for so long. Otherwise, the energy economy from fossils to alternatives remains a colonialist institution of quid pro quo for Indigenous, Black and Brown people.

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This post is from a partnership between Africa Is a Country and The Elephant. We will be publishing a series of posts from their site once a week.