A non-military approach to bringing peace in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has recently been gaining momentum at the regional level and within the United Nations.

In May 2021, experts from the countries of the African Great Lakes region, namely Burundi, DRC, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, launched the Contact and Coordination Group (CCG) for non-military measures to end conflict in eastern DRC.

The establishment of the CCG was in response to the need for a non-military approach to complement the military action against illegal armed groups in eastern DRC. The CCG’s non-military measures include the ongoing implementation of disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration (DDR) programmes for ex-combatants.

At an October 2021 meeting on the situation in the GLR, the UN Security Council developed five courses of action to renew the Council’s commitment to supporting peace in the Great Lakes region, among which was the continued support for the non-military approach identified by the CCG.

In April 2022, the Second Heads of State Conclave on the DRC was convened in Nairobi. It was hosted by the President of Kenya and attended by the presidents of the DRC, Burundi, Uganda, and by the Rwandan foreign affairs minister. The meeting discussed how to promote peace, stability and development in the eastern DRC and the greater East African region. One of the conclusions reached during this meeting was that a consultative dialogue between the president of the DRC and the representatives of local armed groups in the DRC would take place at earliest opportunity. These consultations have started and are now ongoing.

Although commendable, the non-military initiatives that have been undertaken will not on their own address the root causes of conflict in the Great Lakes region, in particular in eastern DRC.

The UN recognises the root causes of conflict in the eastern DRC to be linked to historical grievances that date back to the colonial era and the post-independence period relating to exclusion from access to land, power and resources in the Great Lakes region. In addition to these concerns, weaknesses in governance as well as limited or absent state authority have been found to have an impact on the protection of human rights and to impede efforts to strengthen the rule of law in some countries of the Great Lakes region. This situation has fuelled corruption and contributed to the impunity of perpetrators of serious crimes, including crimes against humanity.

Although commendable, the non-military initiatives that have been undertaken will not on their own address the root causes of conflict in the Great Lakes region.

As a result, local armed groups and others of foreign origin—some of whom are allegedly serving as proxies for the DRC’s neighbouring countries—have been able to create insecurity in the eastern DRC. However, while the UN has identified armed groups as one of the principal drivers of instability in the eastern DRC, it does not recognise them as being the root cause of the insecurity. However, the illicit exploitation and trade in natural resources from the eastern DRC has enabled armed groups to finance their operations with the complicity of local and external actors, including the DRC’s neighbouring countries, as has been reported by the Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Given the foregoing, it is unclear how a non-military approach that only focuses on DDR programmes for ex-combatants would contribute to tackling the fundamental causes of conflict in the eastern DRC that originate from weaknesses in governance across all the countries of the Great Lakes region.

While the consultations between the president of the DRC and representatives of local armed groups are commendable, if the root causes of the conflict are not tackled, and the states neighbouring the DRC do not effectively play their part, peace in eastern DRC will remain elusive.

Moreover, the DRC is not solely responsible for the conflicts in the eastern DRC; internal problems in neighbouring countries have also contributed to fuelling conflict in the region. The presence of foreign armed groups in the eastern DRC whose intent is to use force to overthrow the leadership of their country of origin, as well as the presence of foreign armed groups allegedly serving as proxies for countries neighbouring the DRC, shows that without the engagement of its neighbours, peace will not prevail in the eastern DRC.

The Second Heads of State Conclave was clear on how to deal with foreign armed groups: they must disarm and return unconditionally and immediately to their respective countries of origin. Those that fail to do so will be treated as negative forces and handled militarily by a regional force to be established.

If the root causes of the conflict are not tackled, and the states neighbouring the DRC do not effectively play their part, peace in eastern DRC will remain elusive.

It is not the first time that there has been military cooperation between the countries of the GLR to fight against armed groups in eastern DRC. However, the efficiency of these operations has been routinely questioned, particularly because they have been characterised by a surge in human rights abuses, the proliferation of armed groups as well as persisting insecurity in the east of DRC. It is not clear how a regional force will confront foreign armed groups some of whom are alleged to be serving the interests of specific regional states.

Given that armed groups are one of the drivers—but not a root cause—of instability in the eastern DRC, the recent call for a comprehensive political strategy to address the structural causes of the conflicts in the eastern DRC made to the UN Security Council by the top UN envoy in the DRC is to be supported.

Indeed, to avoid a situation where the symptoms of the problem are dealt with while ignoring the real causes, and for a lasting peace to be reached in the eastern DRC, individual GLR states should engage in concrete actions to eliminate the internal social, economic and political issues that lead their citizens to form armed groups inside the DRC to fight their own governments. This can be achieved through political dialogue.

The governments of the GLR should engage in frank discussions with their citizens and, in particular, with dissenting voices both within and outside the country on the governance challenges they face and how these should be resolved. The ultimate aim of such a highly inclusive national dialogue would be to remove the reasons for which political opponents from countries in the region engage in political activities outside their home country, including resorting to armed struggle against their governments.

National dialogue has been shown to open the door to resolving long-standing conflict. A good example is the Tunisian national dialogue between the Islamist-led government and the secular opposition facilitated by the Quartet. It successfully enabled these opposing forces to agree on a roadmap to managing Tunisia’s challenges thus bringing the country back from the brink of civil war in 2013. For their efforts, members of the Quartet were awarded the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize.

Thus, holding highly inclusive national dialogue in each GLR state to tackle internal governance weakness that cause instability in the eastern DRC would make a significant contribution to consolidating peace in that region.

The international community, especially the United Nations and members of the International Contact Group on Great Lakes region, which work to address political, diplomatic, security and development in the region, should also play their part.

In December 2020, the UN Security Council adopted a new strategy for peace consolidation and conflict resolution and conflict prevention in the GLR. The strategy affirms that effective and sustained dialogue among citizens is key to fostering trust, addressing underlying grievances and facilitating actions for peace, stability and prosperity and, therefore, members of the Security Council should support highly inclusive national dialogue to tackle governance weaknesses across GLR states that are the root cause of conflict in the eastern DRC.

Moreover, in their partnership with the member states from GLR, the US and the European Union should also include highly inclusive dialogue in their action plans as they work together in their quest to promote security, peace and good governance in the Great Lakes region.

Despite all its claims of being a nation that welcomes immigrants, a melting pot that embraces diversity, the United States has been anything but for the vast majority of non-white populations, especially Africans, who seek to enter the country either as visitors, students, temporary residents or as immigrants. I didn’t know just how unwelcoming the US was to Africans until I recently applied for a US visa. This was not the first time I had applied for this visa; I studied in the United States, and have been back several times since I graduated in the 1980s. I am not among those Kenyan students who went to the US and never came back home.  I have never been refused a US visa and am not a member of any terrorist or criminal organisation.

Even so, I was given an interview date of 21 March 2024, which is almost two years after I sent in my application online. This after I had already parted with a 19,200-shilling non-refundable visa application fee, which in itself is an abomination. (Note that US citizens simply have to apply and pay US$50 for a Kenyan visa online that they are assured of getting within five days.) You could say that this highly unequal relationship is because we are a poor country with little international clout while the US is a rich superpower. And we need their dollars more than they need anything from us. However, in foreign relations, reciprocity is an accepted tenet. Not any more, it would appear.

Money-making scam? 

It is estimated that the US embassy in Nairobi collects millions (if not billions) of shillings every year in visa fees from thousands of applicants who may never get a visa or who don’t need a visa anymore because the event they were supposed to attend in the US has already taken place. Basically, this means that Kenyans are subsidising the operating costs of US consular services. Why don’t they collect the fee when they are issuing the visa? This way, unsuccessful applicants would not feel cheated of their money. As one of my Twitter followers stated after I posted my frustration about my visa application, the process is a scam because it collects the money before any visa is issued or any interview date is scheduled, which means you cannot even change your mind about applying for the visa because the fee has already been paid in advance and there is no chance of getting it back. In fact, you have no chance of getting an interview date unless you have paid the fee. And even if you wait patiently for two years and do arrive at the US embassy for the interview on the scheduled date and time, you are not likely to get the visa because the interviewer will probably ask you why you need a visa to attend an event that has already taken place.

In its defence, the US Embassy posted on Twitter that these delays are occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic, which I find hard to believe because visa and travel restrictions during the first two years of the pandemic made it less, not more, likely for Kenyans to travel abroad. Kenya was the target of travel bans by many Western nations during the early months of the pandemic. Despite having the among the lowest infection rates in the world, Kenya was among a list of African countries whose citizens were denied entry into the UK and other European countries where infection rates were skyrocketing. You could say that at the time, an African travelling to European countries and the United States was more in danger of being infected with the coronavirus than if he or she had stayed home.

I didn’t apply for a US visa because I suddenly felt an urge to visit America. I have been officially invited to an academic conference on African cities in New York convened by an international organisation that has relations with a university in New York that has provided academic input to the conference’s various papers. The organisers have sent me a letter stating that that they will pay for my travel and accommodation. The conference was originally scheduled for June this year, but realising that many of the Kenyan participants would not get their visas on time, the organisers had to postpone the conference to sometime next year. But it looks likely that the conference will be postponed yet again or cancelled because it might take the majority of African participants at least two years to obtain a US visa.

Delegitimising African scholarship

When I tweeted about my predicament, some of my followers suggested that I attend the conference via Zoom. Others said I should not travel to the US at all, and should look for more Kenya-friendly places to visit. One follower even sent me a list of 70 countries where Kenyans do not require a visa or where they can apply for visas on arrival. (I have added Nepal to the list of countries I will be visiting.)

These sentiments have also been echoed by academics like Haythem Guesmi.  In an article titled “The gentrification of African studies”, he wondered why the African Studies Association’s annual meeting and the annual conference of the African Literature Association are routinely held in North American cities. Guesmi, who was a PhD candidate in English Studies at the University of Montreal when the article was published, was commenting on the absurdity of situations where conferences focusing on African issues are held in Europe or North America and have panellists exclusively from the Western world – people who by virtue of their skin colour or citizenship have easy access to these venues, a privilege that citizens of African, Asian or Latin American countries do not have.

But it looks likely that the conference will be postponed yet again or cancelled because it might take the majority of African participants at least two years to obtain a US visa.

“This reality,” wrote Guesmi, “has generated numerous difficulties for Africa-based academics and scholars who are now forced to pay exorbitant, non-refundable visa fees in foreign currencies not always available to them and struggle to secure international travel funding. The resulting displacement and exclusion of continent-based Africanists have undermined the true purpose and identity of African studies; a pathological process commonly identified as gentrification.”

The marginalisation, or what Guesmi calls “gentrification” of African scholars from the field of African studies has led to an absence of Africans from public discussions and intellectual debates. “In the news or in public venues, there is an embarrassing preference to invite white Africanists to comment on every single topic, ranging from women’s oral culture all the way to electoral violence, and anything in between,” noted Guesmi.

Guesmi made a valid point – why should a conference about Africa be held outside the continent? Wouldn’t it be preferable if the conference to which I have been invited was held in Kenya, which would ensure maximum participation of Kenyan and African academics and professionals? Moreover, by holding these events in the West, are we not contributing to delegitimising home-grown African scholarship? Do Africans have to travel to the West to gain acceptance in the world of academia?

But both Guesmi and my Twitter followers have missed an essential point, which is that travelling abroad has become almost impossible for Africans, and this is simply unfair. Why do we have to go through torturous visa application processes? Why are we being denied an opportunity to mingle and network in person with our peers from the West, a penalty that is not imposed on people with more “acceptable” passports? Why is Africans’ participation at these events viewed with such suspicion by visa-issuing authorities? Why are we being denied the right to travel to whichever country we want yet an American or a Brit can waltz into this country without ever experiencing the kind of humiliation that Kenyans and other Africans are subjected to?

9/11 and its aftermath 

How did we get to this ridiculous place? You could say that while the US has generally been hostile to non-white people entering its borders, this sentiment intensified after the September 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington that injected a feeling of paranoia and xenophobia among US citizens and the US administrations that became wary of foreigners on their soils. Yet even though the terrorists who blew up the World Trade Centre were Saudis, no visa penalties were placed on Saudi nationals wishing to visit the US. Instead, the focus of US policy towards immigrants and visitors turned sharply against Africans even though to date no African has been implicated in a terrorist attack on US soil. Yet citizens of Saudi Arabia, a key US ally, can travel freely to the United States.

Kenya, or rather, the US embassy in Nairobi, was the target of the first major terrorist attack by Al Qaeda in 1997, but instead of extending a hand of compassion to Kenyans, who bore the brunt of that attack, with some 200 Kenyans losing their lives, Kenya was punished. (Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, was a Saudi national.) Al Shabaab’s terror attacks on Kenyan soil made it even harder for Kenyans to travel, as radicalised Kenyans, both Somali and non-Somali, were viewed as a potential security threat.

Why are we being denied an opportunity to mingle and network in person with our peers from the West, a penalty that is not imposed on people with more “acceptable” passports?

Yet, Kenya does not produce refugees as do neighbouring countries like Somalia, South Sudan and Eritrea. The dinghies carrying migrants and refugees across the Mediterranean to Europe are not full of Kenyans. We tend to travel legally to other countries (even when we over-stay our visas). But with this punitive visa regime, is it surprising that an increasing number of Africans are using human traffickers to gain access to Western nations? There is no doubt that some Kenyans who travel to the US never come back to Kenya and choose to remain illegal immigrants, but the same could be said of many Americans who decide to make Kenya their home yet are not subjected to punitive visa requirements. On the contrary, I know of many Westerners who have lived in Kenya as “tourists” for decades. Yet, despite following the rules, Kenyans are heavily penalised.

How can we continue viewing the US as the land of the free when that freedom is only accorded to people of one race? Has America’s “caste system” (as author Isabel Wilkerson defines it in her book Caste) once again relegated Africans to the bottom of the pile, as it did for four centuries when African slaves were defined as cargo or property, not as humans? During the transatlantic slave trade, Africans were forcibly taken to the US against their will. Now Africans are denied access to a country that their ancestors built with their sweat and tears, and for no pay. The war In Ukraine has showed us that this caste system also extends to refugees. While African, Syrian, Afghan and other non-white refugees and asylum seekers trying to get to Europe are generally vilified, European countries have opened their arms to the white refugees fleeing Ukraine.

Now Africans are denied access to a country that their ancestors built with their sweat and tears, and for no pay.

President Donald Trump did not hide his contempt for immigrants and non-white people, so Africans could expect to be treated badly at US embassies during his administration’s tenure. But under the more tolerant Biden administration, this kind of attitude is not just counter-productive, but also reflects badly on a government that is trying to clean up the carnage that Trump left behind. America’s superpower status may make it feel like it can treat citizens of poor African countries badly without suffering any consequences. But in a world as polarised as ours, it would be prudent for the US to show a kinder, more welcoming face to the rest of the world.

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.