Free and Fair Elections in Africa’s Silicon Savannah?

Kenyan Election Official Killed A Week Before Presidential Vote To Take Place: Kenyans go to the polls on August 8 in a hotly contested vote between current President Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga. Yesterday, Christopher Msando, an election official in charge of managing information technology systems for next week’s election, was found tortured and killed. Msando had made it a point to publicly reassure voters that the election results would not be tampered with. The chairman of Kenya’s electoral commision demanded answers from the government regarding Msando’s death and said the commission postponed a test run of the voting technology because Msando was vital to the process.

Kenya’s last two elections were marred by violence, notably after the 2007 presidential vote when more than 1,200 people died and 600,000 were displaced. The 2013 elections were more peaceful, but hundreds of people died during protests, and voting machines experienced widespread malfunctions. The stakes are high for the two candidates this time around, said a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group: “Kenyatta, a scion of one of the most prominent political families in the country, does not want to make history as the first Kenyan president not to achieve re-election. His rival, Raila Odinga, son of Kenya’s first vice president, is probably making his last serious attempt at capturing the presidency. None of them can afford to lose.”

…But Kenya Will Continue To Fight For Free And Fair Elections: Kenya, hailed as “Africa’s Silicon Savannah,” is using technology such as biometric voter registration, to stop election fraud. In addition, a recent court ruling declared that results announced by tallying centers must be regarded as final and that an officer at each voting station will transmit, in real-time, results electronically through a secure mobile phone.

Kenya’s youth has also been involved in supporting a peaceful, free, and fair electoral process by building an accurate picture of what’s happening across the country on election day. One example is Uchaguzi, which is built on Kenya’s homegrown and now globally-used mapping platform Ushahidi (which was used to monitor the 2016 US presidential election). Uchaguzi maps voting and tracks thousands of tweets, calls, emails, and texts from voters, activists, civil society groups, and election monitors. The ‘situation room’ for the program will be hosted at iHub, Nairobi’s leading tech innovation hub, where dozens of organizations can rapidly respond to outbreaks of violence and cases of fraud or mismanagement. In Kenya’s 2013 election, this system ensured that nearly three quarters of the incidents reported by 8,000 respondents were resolved.

Russia To Conduct Military Exercises In Belarus: At the end of the summer, Russia will send as many as 100,000 troops to the eastern border of NATO territory in “one of the biggest steps yet in the military buildup” undertaken by President Vladimir Putin. The troops will engage in military exercises, known as Zapad, that have been scheduled for many months (prior to the sanctions bill passed in US Congress last week). The drills will take place in Belarus, the Baltic Sea, western Russia, and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad and represent “the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union that so much offensive power has been concentrated in a single command.”

Top American military officials say that the drills could be used as a pretext to increase Russia’s military presence in Belarus, which shares a border with three key NATO members: Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia. NATO officials are questioning whether all Russian troops and equipment in Belarus will leave after the exercises are complete. Another concern is whether or not Russia will use the Zapad drills to keep Belarus “in line.” Belarus has long worked closely with Moscow, but recent friction between Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenko and Putin means that the former is reluctant to host even more Russian forces.

Two Resignations Set Back Hopes for Female Politicians in Japan: Last fall, in less than two months, three women took on high-ranking posts in the Japanese government. But in the space of two days last week, two of those women resigned. On Thursday, Renho Murata, the first woman to lead the opposition Democratic Party, quit after a crushing defeat in local Tokyo elections held in July. The next day, Defense Minister Tomomi Inada resigned after a controversy about the dangers faced by Japanese soldiers in a UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan.

Both women stepped down for reasons that had nothing to do with gender. But in a highly developed country that scores “abysmally” on global measures of gender equality and has been hoping for change on that front, these women’s departures are a setback. Women are “expected to balance femininity with strong leadership” and are swiftly and harshly criticized when they fall short of what is expected. There is one exception to the disappointing track record of Japan’s female politicians–Tokyo’s governor, Yuriko Koike, who is hugely popular. Koike, widely believed to harbor ambitions to become Japan’s first female prime minister, has stood up to the political establishment and successfully courted the news media.

Ancient Statue Found At Cambodia’s Angkor Temple Complex: On Saturday at Cambodia’s famed Angkor temple complex, archaeologists uncovered a two meter tall statue thought to be from the late 12th to the early 13th century. Experts believe the carving might have once stood guard over an ancient hospital. The Angkor Archeological Park, Cambodia’s most popular tourist site and a UNESCO world heritage site, contains the ruins of the capitals of the Khmer Empire from the 9th to the 15th centuries. At the height of its power, the city and its hundreds of temples had more than one million inhabitants, making it one of the world’s most populous pre-industrial centers. Large portions of the park have been excavated over past decades, creating a “walkable archaeological wonder” that hosts more than two million visitors a year.

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