Njoro, Kenya | AFP | Ten years after her husband was killed in post-election violence and she was chased off her land, Peninah Wahito is still living as a squatter in Kenya’s Rift Valley. Like dozens of others she is waiting to be resettled after the bloodshed that erupted following the …
Read More »Kenya’s Rift Valley on edge as elections loom
Nakuru, Kenya | AFP | As Kenya’s presidential election looms, many in the country’s Rift Valley feel a deepening dread. It was in this fertile region in western Kenya that ethno-political violence flared in 2007 and continued into the following year after President Mwai Kibaki’s disputed re-election. About 1,100 people were …
Read More »Kenya may be growing but ‘You can’t eat GDP’
Nairobi, Kenya | AFP | The timing was perfect. Two months before Kenya’s August 8 vote, President Uhuru Kenyatta inaugurated the nation’s biggest infrastructure project: a railway connecting the capital Nairobi and the port of Mombasa. With pomp and ceremony Kenyatta touted the railway as proof of his campaign promises …
Read More »Rights groups protest killing of Kenya election official
Nairobi, Kenya | AFP | Kenyan rights activists took to the streets Tuesday to protest the murder of a top election official, whose death stunned the nation ahead of an already tense vote on August 8. The body of Chris Msando, charged with overseeing the country’s crucial electronic voting system, …
Read More »Dead voters and other ways to steal a Kenyan election
Nairobi, Kenya | AFP | Elections in Kenya are a fraught business, with polls beset with claims of rigging and intimidation, some subtle, some not, and this year’s vote on August 8 is no different. A decade after a disputed election led to the country’s worst electoral violence with over …
Read More »Senegal ruling party coalition claims election landslide
Dakar, Senegal | AFP | The ruling coalition of Senegal’s President Macky Sall won a widely expected landslide in a legislative election, his prime minister said Monday, bolstering Sall’s prospects for re-election in 2019. The Benno Bokk Yakaar (BBY) coalition swept all but three of the country’s 45 electoral departments, …
Read More »Ex-warlord, footballer confirmed as Liberia presidential candidates
Monrovia, Liberia | AFP | Twenty candidates will contest presidential elections in Liberia in October, among them a former warlord, a footballer and a fashion model, as Ellen Johnson Sirleaf steps down after two terms, the electoral commission said Monday. There is no obvious frontrunner to replace the Nobel Prize-winning …
Read More »Top Kenya election official ‘tortured and murdered’
Nairobi, Kenya | AFP | An official charged with overseeing Kenya’s electronic voting system was found dead just over a week before the country goes to the polls, the commission’s chairman said Monday. The body of Chris Msando, a top information technology manager at the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), …
Read More »In Senegal, Sall faces 91-yr-old ex-president and jailed mayor
President Sall faces double challenge as Senegal elects MPs Dakar, Senegal | AFP | Senegal holds a legislative election on Sunday following a campaign gripped by tension between the rival coalitions of President Macky Sall, his predecessor Abdoulaye Wade and Dakar’s detained mayor. The election is seen as a crucial test …
Read More »Angola’s likely next president Lourenco hits the campaign trail
Luanda, Angola | AFP | Angolan presidential candidate Joao Lourenco, who appears set to win next month’s election, launched his campaign on Tuesday with a speech vowing to tackle corruption and spread wealth. Defence minister Lourenco, 63, is the chosen successor of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, whose decision to …
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