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Kenyan Elections: Safaricom is ready to face any investigations

BY David Indeje · September 27, 2017 06:09 am

Safaricom (NSE: SCOM)  has refuted claims by the National Super Alliance (NASA) that it was involved in the disputed August 8, presidential elections.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, Safaricom chief executive Bob Collymore said all results transmitted through the company’s network were on the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) public portal contrary to Raila’s claims the results went to Spain and never came back to the commission’s servers in Nairobi.

“Contrary to what is alleged in the Nasa statement, results from Kenya Integrated Electoral Management System (Kiems) kits from Safaricom zones, were transmitted and are on the IEBC web portal,” said Collymore.

Collymore reiterated that,“Safaricom is ready to face any investigations and/or private prosecutions, brought by any party, on this matter.”

According to the telco, they were required to:

Provide a dedicated secure tunnel to transmit the encrypted data from the KIEMS kit to the IEBC server, also known as a Virtual Private  Network; Provide technical support to the IEBC before, during and after the general election day including a dedicated project manager and provide a record of transmission from all the SIM cards provided to the IEBC under the contract for purposes of the General election.


Collymore faulted Raila’s decision to name specific Safaricom staff members for the alleged conspiracy and accused the Opposition leader of endanger difference being that each operated in zoned areas.

“For further clarity as to how transmission was conducted, the country was divided into zones, allocated to Safaricom, Telkom Kenya and Airtel Kenya, collectively known as the MNOs,” said Collymore.

Safaricom clarified that the role of the MNOs was merely to transmit the results from the Kiems kit to the IEBC servers.

He further said, Safaricom was not required to report on matters regarding stolen elections kits.

“It was IEBC’s responsibility to transmit results from its servers to the tallying centres and this was publicly available information. Further, it is ing them and their families.

“This action is callous and unnecessary,” he said. In the statement, Safaricom clarified that the contract it had with IEBC was the same with other mobile network operators (MNOs).

According to NASA, ““None of the Kiems kits under Safaricom’s network ever got their results onto the IEBC’s public web portal.

“Consequently, results from the polling stations in Kiems kits left the country but never found their way back to IEBC.”

Collymore explained the country was divided into zones allocated to Safaricom, Telkom Kenya and Airtel Kenya, collectively known as the Mobile Network Operators (MNOs).

Read: Kenyan Telcos will provide IEBC a secure conduit to transmit poll results

All the KIEMS kits had two SIM cards, with one MNO as a primary provider and the other MNO as a secondary one, he said.

Each of the MNOs established a VPN to transmit results from areas where they were either a primary or secondary provider.

“The role of the MNOs was therefore merely to transmit the results from the KIEMS kits to the IEBC servers. In accordance with the contract with IEBC, all the mobile operators connected their VPNs and transmitted the data to the IEBC cloud servers. It was IEBC’s responsibility to transmit results from its servers to the tallying centres and this was publicly available information,” Collymore said.

David Indeje is a writer and editor, with interests on how technology is changing journalism, government, Health, and Gender Development stories are his passion. Follow on Twitter @David_Indeje David can be reached on: (020) 528 0222 / Email: info@sokodirectory.com

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