Election Fraud: Technology not the issue but trust – Kiama

Co-Chair, Africans Rising Movement Coordinating Collective (Kenya), Mutemi Wai Kiama, has said the major challenge affecting use of technology during election in Africa is trust.

Kiama was responding to a question on how technology could be used in combating election fraud during a session at the the sixth edition of the Technology, New Media, Citizens, and Governance (TNCG) Conference, on Thursday in Lagos.

He said, “South Africa is a good example of how trust can be leveraged. The example I gave in Kenya whereby we have one of the biggest mobile networks in Africa which has subscriber base of about 36 million people who can stream Netflix movies at the same time, but when it comes to transmitting election results which are about 40mbs, the system crashes.

“It is not the issue of technology; the technology works. The issue is the trust. Building that trust means that citizens have to play their roles.

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“One of the biggest challenges we have in Africa is participation. If people trust that their mobile phones can transfer money safely, then the trust is there. So you try to bridge that gap by demonstrating that citizens can actually influence decisions.

“The key point is, how do we bring the citizens in large numbers to the point where they’re able to influence political decisions but also oversight – the implementation.”