ARTICLE by
Ben Roberts
Group Chief Technology and Innovation Officer at Liquid Intelligent Technologies.
Putting Technology On Trial ICT Enhanced Elections 2.0 If you had to think about it without picking a side, would you say technology won, lost or confused the election process? 2022 had two moments in Kenya’s history when the world collectively held its breath. One was the afternoon of 15 August when Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Commissioner Wafula Chebukati announced William Samoei Ruto as President-Elect to the mellifluous tunes of a choir on repeat; the other, just as heightened if slightly less lyrical, when Chief Justice Martha Koome read the Supreme Court verdict on the Raila Odinga & Martha Wangari Karua V Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission & Others presidential petition citing phrases such as ‘hot air,’ and ‘bombshell.’ It had been a tense month of dread with an expectation of violence hanging in the air. There is no denying Kenyan elections have been fraught over the past 15 years. The stakes are always so high, business grinds to a halt. 2022’s Elections 2.0 dated back to The Kriegler Commission Report of 2007, one that conclusively merged the manual electoral system with a technological one. In his paper Digital Dilemmas: The Unintended Consequences 10 www.cioafrica.co | OCTOBER 2022 | CIO Africa Magazine | by dx⁵
