This August, tens of millions of Africans will turn their attention to Kenya’s general election. Kenya’s recent history features hotly contested, sometimes violent elections in which candidates and their allies have used tribal politics to turn people against one another. Yet as this election approaches, one of the biggest dangers comes much further from home: US and Chinese tech platforms.
Before unpacking the dangerous role that tech platforms are playing in Kenya, it’s important to understand the high stakes. For many Kenyans, this is the mother of all elections. The country’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta of the Jubilee party, has overseen an economy battered by inflation and debt, bruised by corruption and struggling to get on its feet due to the harm inflicted by Covid. Fighting to be the next president are Kenyatta’s deputy, William Ruto, and the leader of the opposition, Raila Odinga, of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM). The last time Kenyatta and Ruto were on opposing sides of an election, in 2007 and 2008, the country was plagued by violence, and they ended up on trial in the international criminal court (ICC). (Kenyatta’s charges were dropped in December 2014, and the court terminated Ruto’s case due to weak evidence.)
