Kenya austerity measures affect biometric voter management system budget

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission of Kenya (IEBC) has cried out that supplementary budget cuts instructed by the President of the Republic will affect a planned continuous voter registration exercise and other activities related to its preparations for upcoming electoral operations in the country.

Kenya has faced socio-political tensions in the past weeks, headlined by youth-led protests which forced President William Ruto late last month to withdraw an unpopular finance bill which was set to increase the tax burden on citizens.

As part of the fallout of the protests, Ruto also sacked his entire cabinet almost two weeks ago, and pledged to make adjustments to the country’s budget in the face of an economic squeeze.

The IEBC is among the state institutions to suffer a budget cut in the aftermath, according to Nation, with 870.5 million shilling (US$ 6.7 million) supplementary budget already slashed.

The Kenyan government has made an overall slash from the 2024/2025 budget by 1.9 percent with various public institutions affected. The cut, the government says, is to make up for a huge budget deficit trigged by the failed new tax plan.

In a recent outing in front of the Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs of the National Assembly, the IEBC Chief Executive Officer, Marjan Hussein Marjan, said the budget slash affects item lines related to payments for licenses and maintenance of the Kenya Integrated Elections Management System (Kiem) Kits.

Smartmatic supplied some biometric kits for the system used in Kenya’s last election, to supplement existing kits earlier supplied by Idemia. The IEBC says the software and hardware require continuous maintenance for optimum performance when they have to be deployed anew.

Marjan told the lawmakers that with the budget cut, the election agency faces a steep climb in properly executing its planned activities including by-elections in one constituency and some words, preparations for the 2027 general elections, voter education campaigns, other election-related printing jobs, as well as some running costs.

The slash, according to Marjan, also makes it more difficult for the election agency to meet its debt obligations of legal fees and court fines from litigations having to do with the last general elections.

“The commission therefore requests for exemption from the reductions effected and adequate funding for the activities including the up-coming by-lections,” Marjan was quoted by Nation as telling the parliamentary committee.

We didn’t get any indications as to what the parliamentary committee’s response to the IEBC’c concerns was.

Article Topics

Africa  |  biometrics  |  elections  |  Kenya  |  Kenya Integrated Elections Management System (KIEMS)  |  voter registration