Connect with us
close

Op-Eds

Britain Trashes Human Rights Laws to Keep Rwanda Plan Flying

6 min read.

At the recent Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Kigali, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Rwandan President Paul Kagame could not escape insistent questions about the controversial plan to deport asylum seekers from Britain to Rwanda.

Published

on

Britain Trashes Human Rights Laws to Keep Rwanda Plan Flying

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson may have thought a trip to Kigali last week for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) would give him a nice break from home politics. But he was soon feeling hot, hot, hot when journalists besieged him with questions about his failing leadership, and the UK-Rwanda deportation plan which has been widely condemned as inhumane and illegal – not least by the Queen’s son.

Prince Charles allegedly called the plan “appalling” in private remarks that were leaked. This was a bombshell, coming on the eve of CHOGM, attended by both Johnson and the heir to the British throne. This leak dominated the news bulletins for days, as people speculated about what Charles (who chaired CHOGM, standing in for the ageing Queen) actually thinks. “Royals shouldn’t stick their noses into politics” was the riposte on the right.

If the Rwandan government thought this issue would not come up at CHOGM, they were sorely mistaken. Writer Michela Wrong, no friend of President Paul Kagame, threw oil on the flames as the meeting opened, publishing a story headed “Rwanda is a brutal repressive regime. Holding the Commonwealth summit there is a sham” Wrong is best known in Kenya for her 2010 best seller It’s Our Turn to Eat, a portrait of whistle-blower John Githongo (publisher of The Elephant) and the corruption he investigated.

Johnson was hoping to flag up trade and collaboration with Rwanda and across the Commonwealth, but was immediately hit by questions about the deportation plan. He retorted, without naming Prince Charles, “Critics need to keep an open mind about the policy. A lot of people can see its obvious merits.”

Convened under the theme of Delivering a Common Future: Connecting, Innovating, Transforming, President Kagame had hoped the meeting would be an opportunity for him to showcase his country’s transformation following a devastating genocide 27 years ago that left Rwanda on the brink. Instead, the meeting threatened to become overshadowed by questions over the morality, appropriateness and legality of his government’s association with Mr Johnson’s Rwanda asylum plan.

Questions were asked of Kagame, particularly around his government’s appalling human rights record and role in the destabilisation of neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo where a resurgent M23 rebel movement is reported to be a Rwandan proxy.

As expected, Kagame was not prepared to let anything take away from the fact that Rwanda, a former French colony that only joined the grouping in 2009, had just become the first African country to host CHOGM since Uganda in 2007.

“There is nobody that is in prison in Rwanda that should not be there,” he said at the press conference. “Actually there are people who are not in prison who should be there.” This was widely taken to be a reference to opposition critic Victoire Ingabire who, having been sentenced to 15 years in jail for “belittling the genocide and spreading rumours intended to incite people to revolt”, was subsequently pardoned by Kagame in 2018. She remains in Rwanda, unable to leave the country as her passport has been confiscated.

It has been reported that part of the agreement in relation to the Rwanda asylum plan with Britain includes a request from Rwanda for suspected genocide fugitives currently resident in Britain to be extradited to the East African nation.

Rwanda denies its wilful association with Johnson’s controversial policy—halted by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) pending a judicial review in July—is motivated by money. Kigali is set to receive £120 million as a down payment for housing asylum seekers, although this has been earmarked for “economic development” rather than for meeting the deportees’ accommodation and other living costs. (Some reports say this has have already been paid.) No further details have been provided as to how much the policy will cost per asylum seeker, although estimates have put the figure at up to £30,000 per head. Our request to the Home Office for this and other information has yet to be responded to.

In the first sign yet that the scrutiny and attention associated with this policy is perhaps beginning to take a toll on Kagame, a man not renowned for his patience especially where criticism is involved, he went on the offensive. “We try to do our best to give them a sense of security and normalcy,” he said. “If they don’t come, we won’t complain. It’s not like we are dying to have people come to us in this manner.”

Kigali is set to receive £120 million as a down payment for housing asylum seekers, although this has been earmarked for “economic development”.

In a communiqué published after the week-long meeting, an expanded Commonwealth (Gabon and Togo, two other former French colonies, have both been admitted), said it acknowledges that conflicts and crises affect migration patterns. In acknowledging that irregular migration, including when driven by conflict, creates significant challenges, the heads of state agreed that a capacity-centred approach to migration partnerships would best serve common goals. They emphasised the need for international cooperation to facilitate safe, orderly, and regular migration, including through the implementation of relevant international frameworks.

Built on Britain’s association with its colonial past, the Commonwealth has always proclaimed to be united by shared democratic values, good governance and the rule of law, respect for international human rights, gender equality and sustainable economic and social development. Given these values, one would have thought that, as the CHOGM host for 2022, Rwanda would have distanced herself from an inhumane, inherently racist, and probably illegal migrant policy by Britain.

Charges of racism 

In the topsy-turvy world of Britain’s Home Secretary Priti Patel, criticism of the Rwanda deportation plan is “racist” towards Rwanda, since some of it suggests that Rwanda is an awful place to live. But forcibly flying non-white asylum seekers halfway across the world on one-way tickets is not racist.

In her world, this plan will “smash the business model of people smuggling gangs”. But it does not target the people smugglers; it criminalizes their victims.

With her trademark smirk in overdrive, Patel has hit out at human rights lawyers who successfully argued that migrants earmarked for deportation include victims of modern slavery, a defence that stood up in court. This, together with other legal arguments and a last-minute injunction by the ECHR, prevented the first deportation flight from taking off on 14 June. Priti “Furious” Patel then vowed to change the law to remove this loophole—and pledged to cut Britain’s ties with the ECHR. The government has since unveiled a major overhaul of the human rights laws, which will entail abolishing the existing Human Rights Act and give parliament the power to overrule ECHR judgements. However, Britain will remain a party to the European Convention on Human Rights.

Sacha Deshmukh, chief executive of Amnesty International UK, said, “It’s very troubling that the UK government is prepared to damage respect for the authority of the European Court of Human Rights because of a single decision it doesn’t like. This is not about tinkering with rights, it’s about removing them.”

Donning his “breath-taking hypocrisy” hat, Prime Minister Boris Johnson regularly proclaims that Britain is a moral beacon for the rest of the globe. But British church leaders have strongly condemned the deportation plan as immoral and un-Christian.

The government has since unveiled a major overhaul of the human rights laws, which will entail abolishing the existing Human Rights Act.

We wrote about this earlier. To briefly recap, in a bid to solve the UK’s immigration crisis, and in particular deter cross-Channel migrants and asylum seekers who arrive by dinghy (more than 28,500 in the past year, treble the number for 2020), the British government announced a deal with Rwanda to deport migrants there for asylum processing. Even if their appeal were successful, the migrants would not be able to return to Britain. The option would be to stay in Rwanda, or be deported again, either to their home countries or to some other destination. All this is pretty rich coming from Patel, herself the daughter of Ugandan-Asian immigrants who arrived in Britain in the 1960s.

In our earlier story, we drew parallels with colonial-era deportations within East Africa and from Britain to Australia.

Political distraction

The controversial scheme is widely seen as an attempt by Johnson’s Tory government to distract from its many domestic woes. These include a recent no-confidence vote in his leadership (41 per cent of Tory MPs voted to oust him), two important defeats in by-elections that prompted the resignation of the party chairman, the “Partygate” scandal which saw the Prime Minister and close aides fined by police for holding parties at No. 10 during COVID lockdown, train strikes that have brought the country to a standstill, and a cost of living crisis. The Rwanda plan is cheap clickbait for right-wing Brexit voters, furious at the Tories’ failure to curb cross-Channel migration. It triggered comments like the following one online after Patel’s outburst at “racist” critics: “It’s a bit racist to make some of the statements some people make about Rwanda. If a black man enters my house illegally is it racist to call the police?” (A reader’s comment in the Daily Telegraph, 20 June).

The Rwanda plan is cheap clickbait for right-wing Brexit voters, furious at the Tories’ failure to curb cross-Channel migration.

In stark contrast to the way Britain proposes to deal with Channel migrants, it is simultaneously welcoming Ukrainian refugees with open arms. This has led to a binary narrative in public discourse—legal refugees who happen to be white and Judeo-Christian, versus “illegals” who are mostly not. In fact, there is nothing illegal about seeking and claiming asylum. Many of the placements of Ukrainians in British homes are not going well, according to one contact who is volunteering to coordinate the reception scheme in one county. Host families are angrily complaining that the refugees are “rude and ungrateful”, and are ending the agreements they made only a few weeks ago, leaving some vulnerable Ukrainians homeless. She believes many hosts signed up to house refugees for the wrong reasons. “People are boasting online about getting a refugee, saying ‘I’ve got one! I’ve got one!’ I want to say, ‘They’re not pets!’”

Support The Elephant.

The Elephant is helping to build a truly public platform, while producing consistent, quality investigations, opinions and analysis. The Elephant cannot survive and grow without your participation. Now, more than ever, it is vital for The Elephant to reach as many people as possible.

Your support helps protect The Elephant's independence and it means we can continue keeping the democratic space free, open and robust. Every contribution, however big or small, is so valuable for our collective future.

By

Eleneus Akanga is a Rwandan journalist based in the UK. He fled Rwanda in 2007 after his newspaper The Weekly Post was shut down by the government. Dr Lotte Hughes is an historian of Kenya and empire, and a journalist, who has written extensively about Kenya. Her publications include Moving the Maasai: A Colonial Misadventure (2006).

Op-Eds

Road to 9/8: Is the IEBC Prepared?

This is the fourth of a series of articles that discuss some of the major issues at stake, and the roles played by various institutions in safeguarding the integrity of the August 2022 general election.

Published

on

Road to 9/8: What Is at Stake?

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission’s (IEBC’s) centrality to the electoral process cannot be understated. There is a clear nexus between the perception of its credibility and the likelihood of instability. A recently conducted dry run of the IEBC’s new results transmission system recorded a failure rate of nearly 60 per cent. Of the 2,900 polling stations used for the simulation, only 1,200 successfully transmitted data. This is deeply concerning in an election where we will have the highest number of polling stations and registered voters in Kenyan history at 46,232 and 22.1 million, respectively. Illustratively, if the same failure rate were to be recorded during the actual election, this would mean 27,739 polling stations would fail to transmit results. In our previous articles, we discussed the IEBC’s use of technology in elections administration. In this article, we further scrutinize the elections management body’s readiness for the upcoming polls. Is the IEBC election ready? Can it administer a credible election?

Based on the Supreme Court’s indictment of the IEBC’s elections management in 2017 and the IEBC’s own assessment in its Post-Election Evaluation Report, the recurring themes in the IEBC’s shortcomings are its procurement practices, its use of technology and its internal capacity.  In appraising the IEBC, we are guided by its failings in previous electoral cycles and ask whether these have been remedied. A creature of the constitution, the IEBC is mandated with continuous voter registration, elections administration, campaign financing regulation and registration of political candidates. We will focus only on continuous voter registration and elections administration.

Questionable procurement 

In the historic 2017 judgment annulling the results of the presidential election, the Supreme Court found that the IEBC’s transmission of results was riddled with irregularities. From missing statutory forms to statistical anomalies in the transmission of results, the court concluded that it was unlikely the poll was credible. At the centre of these challenges was IDEMIA, the entity contracted by the IEBC to provide the Kenya Integrated Election Management System (KIEMS) that included biometric voter registration kits and a results transmission system. Under the Elections Act, the IEBC is required to use an integrated electoral system that enables biometric voter registration, electronic voter identification and the electronic transfer of results.

Since 2013, the IEBC’s procurement of service providers to print ballot papers and administer the KIEMS has been surrounded by controversy. Writing for Africa Uncensored, John-Allan Namu has recently chronicled the IEBC’s seemingly systemic challenges with procurement. The circumstances surrounding IDEMIA’s procurement by the IEBC suggest significant external influence. In 2013, IDEMIA successfully secured the contract with the IEBC despite it not having the most viable bid. Further, despite lingering doubts around the credibility of its conduct of the 2013 election, IDEMIA was directly procured to administer the 2017 election for the alarming amount of KSh4 billion—the most expensive election in the region at the time. Internal records indicate that the IEBC was conflicted about the propriety and feasibility of IDEMIA’s procurement. Eventually, IDEMIA would sub-contract the results transmission to another entity. The disastrous performance of the KIEMS in 2017 hardly needs to be recounted. The IEBC’s procurement challenges were not only limited to the integrated elections management system. A few months before the 2017 general elections, the IEBC’s procurement of Dubai-based Al Ghurair to print the ballots for the presidential election was under scrutiny before the High Court and the Court of Appeal. This time, Al Ghurair was locked out for failing to meet a local shareholding requirement that was introduced following the 2017 elections.

Half a decade later, the IEBC seems to be in the same position. This time, it has procured Smartmatic International to administer the KIEMS and Inform P Lykos to print the ballot papers. Coincidentally, Smartmatic is the only company whose bid beat that of IDEMIA in 2013 yet it was not contracted. So, who is Smartmatic? Earlier this year, the Philippine Cybercrime Investigation and Coordination Centre concluded that Smartmatic’s system was “compromised” during elections it administered, not exactly an endorsement of its potential to administer Kenya’s forthcoming elections. Why would the IEBC lurch from one questionable service provider from one election to the next? On the basis of credibility, Smartmatic’s contract with the IEBC was questioned before the Public Procurement Administrative Review Board by Risk Africa Innovatis, which this time emerged second in the bidding for the contract. Inform P Lykos’ contract for the printing of the ballot papers was also challenged but the Public Procurement Administrative Review Board dismissed both cases. In each case, the complainants appealed to the High Court, which is yet to decide, but the IEBC has proceeded to contract both entities, citing the urgency of the elections and the absence of injunctions restraining them from doing so.

The Philippine Cybercrime Investigation and Coordination Centre concluded that Smartmatic’s system was “compromised” during elections it administered.

Unpacking the IEBC’s sense of urgency, it is apparent that history once again is repeating itself. In its Post-Election Evaluation Report, the IEBC highlighted that delays in disbursements from the Exchequer have, in each election cycle, compromised its adherence to statutory timelines. During this cycle, the IEBC’s clean-up of the voter register was impeded by IDEMIA’s refusal to hand over voter data to Smartmatic, apparently because of non-payment by IEBC. That the IEBC would conclude a contract that would permit a third-party service provider to exercise a lien over Kenyans’ personal data in that way is unsettling. Unfortunately, like the government’s contract for the construction of the Standard Gauge Railway, the IEBC’s contract with IDEMIA has never been made available to the public, and it appears that neither will its agreement with Smartmatic. On the procurement front, it appears that not much has changed since 2017.

Failing technology and weak security 

In the 2017 election, approximately 27 per cent of polling stations lacked sufficient network coverage to support results transmission and, according to the IEBC, the results transmission rate was 92.7 per cent. This time, there have been conflicting statements by the IEBC regarding its network coverage. In April, an IEBC official announced that only approximately 260 polling stations (out of the total 46,232) lacked network coverage. In June, this number went up to 1,111. The Supreme Court, in the 2017 presidential election petition, directed the IEBC to ensure that all polling stations had sufficient network coverage. It is now clear that the IEBC has failed to comply with this directive, and this fact has been brought up in a lawsuit against the IEBC for its decision to scrap the manual voter register contrary to the provisions of the Elections Act. With the failure rate recorded during the dry run, the doubts over Smartmatic’s system and the large number of polling stations without sufficient network coverage, it is unclear if the IEBC can deliver an election without significant structural failings.

That the IEBC would conclude a contract that would permit a third-party service provider to exercise a lien over Kenyans’ personal data in that way is unsettling.

Aside from the integrated elections management system, the voter register presented seemingly insurmountable challenges to the IEBC. While the Elections Act requires the IEBC to conduct an audit of the voter register not less than 6 months before the elections, KPMG was instructed to audit the register in March. Even before this audit was complete, the IEBC admitted that the voter register was breached, and voter data unlawfully transferred. Over 1 million voters were affected, with, for example, some voters who were registered in Nyeri County being transferred to counties in the former North Eastern Province. The IEBC chairman has since announced that the responsible officers have been identified and would be prosecuted. Especially because of the recent decision by the IEBC to scrap the manual register in favour of the digital register, the importance of the latter’s reliability is clear. What remains unclear is the sufficiency of the IEBC’s efforts to secure this reliability.

Poor human resource planning

Immediately after the Supreme Court nullified the presidential elections in 2017, the IEBC experienced a mass exodus in its leadership. The CEO, Ezra Chiloba, and four commissioners all resigned. These officials, among others from the IEBC, have since been appointed to eye-catching positions. Chiloba was recently appointed as Director General of the Communications Authority, Immaculate Kassait is now the Data Commissioner, and James Muhati, the immediate former ICT director is now in charge of Huduma Kenya. Perhaps questions should also be raised regarding the Chairman’s continuance with the IEBC despite the colossal failure that was the 2017 election. The vacancies in the IEBC were only completely filled in September last year, 11 months to the elections. In its Post-Election Evaluation Report, the IEBC highlighted that in each cycle, its internal human resource capacity has been wanting. According to the Independent Review Commission, for an electoral management body to adequately prepare for an election, its leadership needs to be in place at least 24 months prior to the elections. In 2013, the IEBC’s vacancies were filled 15 months prior to the elections, and in 2017, this period was only 7 months. Between the delayed release of funds by the Treasury and the lack of political goodwill in filling its vacancies, it appears that the IEBC is designed to fail.

It goes without saying that an organisation’s leadership will determine, in large part, whether it will effectively deliver on its mandate. Are the commissioners currently in office, based on their backgrounds, up to the task of elections management? Before joining the IEBC, none of the current commissioners, including the Chairperson, had any experience in elections management. The upshot of this is that save for Chebukati, who is the chair, and Commissioners Guliye and Molu, the commission’s leadership of seven are all new to elections management.  Those who are not new learnt on the job and do not appear to have the relevant academic qualifications. Even the CEO lacks a background in elections management. Comparatively, South Africa’s Electoral Commission is comprised of a total of five commissioners, three of whom have over a decade’s experience in elections management. One of the commissioners, Dr Masuku, even developed the Electoral Commission’s strategy and implementation framework in 1998. While a diverse skillset is important at leadership level, it goes without saying that practical knowledge of elections management is crucial and would undoubtedly influence the conduct of elections by electoral agencies. It is unsurprising that with the record of the leadership of South Africa’s Electoral Commission, it has had far fewer doubts raised around its credibility.  The IEBC’s top management are not self-evidently capable of administering a free and fair election: nothing in the background of the Commissioners suggests that this is a task to which they are accustomed or to which they can easily adapt. Most are novices in this arena. It is the equivalent of putting a ship out to into sea buffeted by gale force winds under a captain whose primary qualification is that many ships have capsized under the captain’s command.

Is it ready?

Unfortunately, despite its attempts to address its previous failings, one cannot help but conclude that the more things change, the more they remain the same at the IEBC. It is an institution that is institutionally designed to fail. Significant doubt still exists over its procurement process and choices, the technology it proposes to use seems not to be credible, it has had major lapses in security, and it has key officers who lack professional credibility in the management of elections. In summary, the IEBC is not up to the task. We would be surprised if it was not found wanting. Its shortcomings are both errors of omission and commission. We should have done a lot better. We will now reap what we have sown with an electoral body unfit for purpose.

Continue Reading

Op-Eds

Kisumu County’s Fragile Food Security

Reliance on imports from as far away as Tanzania, Uganda and even China, leaves Kisumu County’s accessibility to food on a fragile footing.

Published

on

Kisumu County’s Fragile Food Security

A ceasefire had to be called at the height of the 2007/8 post-election violence and a corridor created for the safe passage of foodstuffs from the Rift Valley to the lakeside city of Kisumu to avert a food crisis. The post-election violence had erupted barely 10 days earlier.

For a region that enjoys adequate rainfall and has good agricultural soils, the lack of access food supplies within days of a crisis breaking out is indicative of the problems generated by how food systems are structured in Kisumu County.

Kisumu County has a considerable shoreline along Lake Victoria that extends from Seme to the south to Nyakach Sub-County to the north. Apart from Kisumu city, the county also has a number of smaller towns such as Muhoroni, Ahero, Katito, Maseno and Kombewa.

Eighty per cent of the food consumed by the county’s 300,000 households—including maize, potatoes, onions, vegetables, milk, rice, eggs and bananas—is imported from as far as Uganda and Tanzania along with imports of fish from China.

Kisumu County continues to import food despite having regions that could potentially support expansive food production in areas such as Muhoroni, Nyamware and Nam Thowi, and the fertile crescents in Seme to the south. Over time, the rich alluvial soils that have been deposited in these areas by floods and rivers flowing downstream from Nandi Hills have created fertile grounds that support farming.

How did we get here?

The persistent issues that have impeded food production in Kisumu County are numerous. Traditionally, communities living in the county practiced fishing and livestock keeping, and subsistence agriculture as their economic mainstay. Commercial farming has only been embraced in recent years, due to interactions with neighbouring farming communities such as the Kisii, Luhya, Abasuba, and Kuria. The majority, however, continue to practice smallholder subsistence agriculture.

The uptake of commercial farming was also hindered by the economic policies of the 1990s that saw the collapse or the weakening of many of the structures that had been established to support food production in the country as a whole and provided extension services, grants, and subsidies to farmers. They include the Agricultural Finance Corporation (AFC), the Agricultural Development Corporation (ADC), Agricultural Training Centres (ATCs), Agricultural Research Institutions (ARIs), and farmers’ co-operatives.

The system of land ownership in Kisumu County is also a hindrance to commercial food production. Most land in Kisumu County is not registered and titled and much of it is inherited property that has been passed down through the generations without legal title.

Recent surveys show that the cost of the farming inputs required to initiate meaningful agricultural production is out of reach for the majority of Kisumu County residents. This challenge is further compounded by the dearth of farming SACCOs (Savings and Credit Cooperatives); with the prohibitive interest rates charged by local banks, obtaining capital to start an agricultural enterprise has proved to be a challenge. These challenges are further exacerbated by the risks associated with farming such as crop losses and post-harvest losses.

The system of land ownership in Kisumu County is also a hindrance to commercial food production.

There is little agro-innovation among Kisumu farmers who still rely on traditional farming methods. There is little irrigation going on in the county. Lastly, there is a serious lack of the human resource required to support food production such as agricultural engineers, extension officers, veterinary doctors, agronomists, sociologists, planners, economists, among others.

Food shortage affects the mwananchi

At Jubilee Market, a major cog in the food supply chain in Kisumu City, traders lament daily about inadequate local food supplies and about middlemen from outside the county who take advantage of food shortages to import supplies and make big profits. The high demand for food and the low supply have an impact on food prices, reducing profit margins for the traders, even as consumers are faced with high food prices.

There is a serious lack of the human resource required to support food production.

The missing link in Kisumu’s economic growth is a buoyant agricultural sector. From observations made when the writer toured Victoria Eco-Farm, a leading food supplier situated at Dunga Beach in Kisumu City, the revival of agriculture in Kisumu is possible.  Victoria Eco-Farm deals in poultry, dairy, bee keeping, and the rearing of exotic dogs.  The farm has also diversified into agri-tourism, receiving visitors and training both students on attachment and local farmers on best farming practices. Nicholas Omondi, the Director, has become a role model for emerging food producers in the agriculture sector.

Modelling food sufficiency

Based on Walt Rostow’s model of economic growth, Kisumu County will not make a sudden and quick leap out of food insecurity. In Stages of Economic Growth, Rostow outlines the five stages that all countries must pass through to become developed: the traditional society; pre-conditions for take-off; take-off; drive to maturity; age of mass consumption. Regrettably, Kisumu County is still at the stage of a traditional society that is characterized by subsistence agriculture, limited funding and technological innovation, and low economic mobility.

The pre-conditions for take-off will only be fulfilled when the county government, acting in collaboration with the national government, provides adequate incentives for agricultural development. More food crops need to be introduced to farmers in Kisumu County. There is also an urgent need to revitalize existing sectors such as the sugar and fishing industries. The county’s potential to become a prime producer of rice also needs to be actualized.

Reform-oriented policies such as titling and surveying are needed in order to transform the existing models of landholding and land ownership. Farming communities in the county also require extensive sensitization and training on emerging technologies and innovations. Most importantly, existing lacklustre attitudes to farming as an economic activity among Kisumu County residents will need to be addressed.

However, the current tax regime is inimical to the drive to boost food security and needs urgent review. In effect, no serious gains can be made in the agriculture sector anywhere in the country as long as the national government continues to insist on enforcing policies that increase production costs and make it cheaper to import food from Tanzania and Uganda than to grow it at home.

The current tax regime is inimical to the drive to boost food security and needs urgent review.

Leaders must realize that whether they are in the opposition or in government, relations with state agencies, especially those in the agriculture sector, are key to developing farming in Kisumu County, that in the interest of economic development, they must always be in constant touch with the government for purposes of support, lobbying and relaying feedback in development processes. Existing attitudes and brands of politics that lead to self-marginalization must be removed at all costs.

It must be recognised, however, that the county government has taken initial steps to start addressing the challenge of food insecurity. In partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the county government has established a youth-focused Food Liaison Advisory Group (FLAG), leading to the promotion of urban agriculture, the strengthening of rural mechanisms for food production and initiating programmes for the training and deployment of agricultural extension officers.

It is to be hoped that such initiatives will contribute towards alleviating the food insecurity situation that the residents of Kisumu County continue to grapple with.

This article is part of The Elephant Food Edition Series done in collaboration with Route to Food Initiative (RTFI). Views expressed in the article are not necessarily those of the RTFI.

Continue Reading

Op-Eds

How Twitter’s Negligence is Harming Kenya’s Democracy

Twitter’s trending algorithm has been abandoned to disinformation campaigns and attacks, failing Kenyans as political actors use it to control political narratives by harassing dissenting voices.

Published

on

How Twitter's Negligence is Harming Kenya's Democracy

On the 24th of June 2021 at around 6 a.m., an insidious hashtag, #KatibaMbichi, appeared on Kenyan Twitter timelines. Its trend seemed to be driven by a number of faceless bots, and retweeted by a series of catfishes that sent it to the number one spot on the Kenyan Twitter trends. 

Our investigations have uncovered how such malicious, coordinated, inauthentic attacks that seek to silence members of civil society, muddy their reputations and stifle the reach of their messaging, is a growing problem in Kenya. Twitter, especially, has been central to these operations due to the influence it has on the country’s news cycle.

The proliferation of digital media platforms in Kenya carries the promise of a renewed definition of freedom of speech. Moreover, Twitter has been a vital tool of expression for many Kenyan citizens, many of whom use it to hold their leaders to account and to call out their failures. But civil society members and journalists have increasingly come under attack thanks to disinformation campaigns in the country.

Through a series of interviews with anonymous influencers involved in these campaigns, we accessed their inner workings and gained crucial insights into how they are organized.

An examination of the campaigns has provided our team with a window into the shadowy world of Twitter influencers for political hire in Kenya. Many of the accounts and individuals involved promote brands, causes and political ideologies without disclosing that they are part of paid campaigns.

Twitter features such as the trending algorithm are exploited to achieve the goals of these campaigns by amplifying them. Certain verified accounts on the platform are complicit in leading these attacks. The goal of these campaigns is to exhaust critical thinking and poison the information environment by muddying the truth.

Our investigations examined two months’ data between 1 May 2021 and 30 June 2021, with a particular focus on the Constitutional Amendment Bill—famously known as the Building Bridges Initiative—that was being promoted in Kenya at the time.

With the aid of Twint, Sprinklr and Trendinalia, we trailed the attacks by mapping and analysing specific hashtags that the influencers used on Twitter. This involved mapping certain accounts that posted malicious content targeting Kenya’s activists and judicial officers. The flagged hashtags often displayed synchronized publishing timestamps within the metadata, with a lack of content on most days, followed by one very sharp burst of activity and then fizzling out.

In total, using Sprinklr, which has access to Twitter’s full historical archive, we flagged 23,606 tweets and retweets released by 3,742 accounts under the 11 hashtags. We also obtained 15,350 of these tweets using the Twint package on Github to carry out further analysis of the content.

How disinformation is spread

The Twitter campaigns we looked at were those that were pro-BBI and directly attacked citizens and prominent civil society activists that were vocally opposed to the proposed reforms, and also sought to discredit civil society organisations and activists by portraying them as villains who were being funded by Kenya’s Deputy President William Ruto—he opposes the BBI process.

The well-coordinated attacks are launched through WhatsApp groups to avoid detection. The WhatsApp group admins give direction about what to post, the hashtags to use, which tweets to engage with, and whom to target. They also synchronize the posting to enable the tweets to trend on twitter.

There is money to be made in attacking civil society. Our sources confirmed that they get paid between US$10 and US$15 to participate in three campaigns per day. Those higher up the ranks are on a monthly retainer that can go as high as US$500. Those who are on a retainer supervise the hashtags and ensure that they trend on the days they are posted.

Who the disinformation targets

From our analysis, the top three most frequent victims were Kenyan journalists, judges, and known activists. Prominent anti-BBI activists under the Linda Katiba movement who petitioned the courts against the BBI were the targets of some of the most vicious attacks.

The attacks peaked in early May with the specific goal of trying to discredit the anti-BBI campaign. Jerotich Seii, a key member of the Linda Katiba campaign who was targeted, said in interview that she had to spend a lot of time trying to prove that her activism efforts were genuine and that she was not a front for someone else. “The disinformation attacks against me focussed on painting me as someone with ulterior motives who isn’t interested in the welfare of Kenyans. I had to spend a good chunk of my time defending my position as someone who is actually a patriot who does what they do out of love for their country,” said Seii.

From our analysis, the top three most frequent victims were Kenyan journalists, judges, and known activists.

All this is leading to self-censorship by some of the activists on the platform as they feel that it is pointless to use a platform that cannot deliver any meaningful engagement. One activist we spoke to said that she had significantly scaled down her Twitter activity because of all the trolling she had experienced.

The Kenyan High court struck down the BBI on 14 May on the grounds that the initiative was unconstitutional and the Court of Appeal followed suit on August 20th. The ruling not only strained the already bad relationship between Kenya’s Judiciary and the Executive, it also led to wave after wave of disinformation attacks seeking to question the judges’ judicial independence and the accuracy of their decision.

A notable change in these attacks was how the visual aesthetics of the content within the campaigns evolved; newspaper editorial cartoon-style caricatures and memes were employed, a likely indication of a change of leadership or strategy at the top that sought to make the content more palatable and shareable.

What is the impact of the slander?

The data that we gathered from Trendinalia (which collects data on Twitter trends in Kenya) shows that sufficient amplification was achieved for 8 of the 11 hashtags we identified that became trending topics. This amplification was achieved partly through the use of verified accounts. One anonymous influencer we spoke to said that owners of certain verified accounts involved in these campaigns would often rent them out to improve the campaign’s chances of trending. “The owner of the account usually receives a cut of the campaign loot from the person that rented it from them once it’s over,” the influencer said.

The demand for this service by the political class in Kenya is markedly strong. During the months of May and June alone, we counted at least 31 artificial political hashtags, including the ones linked to the BBI process. This translates to at least one manipulated disinformation campaign that Kenyans have to deal with every two days.

Curiously, there is little evidence that these operations actually sway people’s opinions. However, they do have an effect on how Twitter users interact with their information environment. The goal of such operations is to overwhelm, to create an environment where nobody knows what is true or false anymore. The objective is to exhaust critical thinking and muddy the truth.

During the months of May and June alone, we counted at least 31 artificial political hashtags, including the ones linked to the BBI process.

Typically, a post by any of the prominent activists or judicial officers is bombarded with so much aggression, insults, and dismissive comments that the space for a good conversation is lost. The point is always to ensure that sober-minded people are disincentivized from amplifying the topic after encountering so much aggression in the replies and the quote tweets.

The role of Twitter Inc.

To many Kenyans, Twitter matters. The platform has become a very critical avenue of expression, networking, running ads, and a means of obtaining information. It is also an important avenue for active citizenship as #KOT (Kenyans on Twitter) is one of Africa’s loudest and most lively internet communities.

On the darker side however, some of the features on Twitter are being exploited for nefarious purposes. The platform is failing Kenyans—and Africans more broadly. Political actors are using it to try to control political narratives by poisoning the platform and harassing dissenting voices.

Specifically, Twitter’s trending algorithm, which selects and highlights content without examining its potential for harm, often serves as an on-ramp for users who are trying to find information on the platform. Our sources said that Twitter trends is the primary key performance indicator by which most of their campaigns are judged. They admitted that without it their jobs would not exist. “The main goal is to go trending on Twitter. I’m not sure what our jobs would look like without that target,” said one source.

The evidence available points to the fact that, for the executives at Twitter, this is not a new phenomenon. The trending algorithm in particular, which is a big part of how Twitter works, has been abandoned to disinformation campaigns and attacks.

Twitter’s Moderation Team should pay close attention, keenly monitor and regulate its trending section. Activists, such as Sleeping Giants, have repeatedly called for Twitter to “untrend” itself. This could be done by either removing the feature completely or by disabling it during critical times such as during election periods.

The evidence available points to the fact that, for the executives at Twitter, this is not a new phenomenon.

Arguably, Twitter does not have an incentive to fix this. It sells ads for “promoted trends” and “promoted tweets” within the feeds of hashtags on its trending topics section to business clients. This puts Twitter squarely in the middle of the mess as it profits from this harmful activity.

Ad Dynamo, an agency that sells Twitter Ads in Kenya, currently offers promoted trends for US$3,500 per day within the country. The overall message this sends is that it is ok to sow hate on the platform so long as Ad Dynamo owners can place ads next to the trending content and make a profit from it.

As Kenya heads towards elections in 2022, the demand for these services will increase and many political parties will seek out malicious coordinated trending models and create the risk of a repeat of the 2007 political violence.

Continue Reading

Trending