*** Democracies Online Newswire - http://e-democracy.org/do *** *** *** *** Up to seven posts a week. To join over 2500 subscribers, *** *** e-mail <listserv@tc.umn.edu>, in message: sub do-wire *** Thank you David Sawe <http://www.tanzania.go.tz/psrp/Sawe.html> from Tanzania for sending this along. DO-WIRE members <http://e-democracy.org/do> specifically interested in e-democracy trends in Sub-Saharan Africa are encourage to join the DO-AFRICA sub- list. Send an e-mail to <do-africa-subscribe@yahoogroups.com>. To track down the main author of the message below try his company: http://www.circuitspackets.com A related story on the use of SMS in the Kenyan elections: http://allafrica.com/stories/200212190517.html For the Kenyan election news and results see: http://www.eastandard.net http://www.eastandard.net/elections2002/ http://www.nationaudio.com/elections/ http://www.kenyaelections.com/ http://www.kenyanews.com/ The victor: http://www.kibakiforpresident.net President's residence - in virtual transition: http://www.statehouse.go.ke Steven Clift Democracies Online ----- Original Message ----- From: Cheick Gologo To: African Information Society Initiative - Discussion Forum <aisi-l@lyris.bellanet.org> Sent: Monday, December 30, 2002 10:15 AM Subject: Re: Role of ICTs and Kenya Elections Congratulation ! This is a good example showing the efficient use of ICT for Democracy and good governance.The ICT's real time applications are making elections in Africa fair and transparent. Cheick --- Bill Kagai a écrit : > Hello all, For the first time, we Kenyans have more or less agreed that this time we have had a fair election with the highest number of voters turning out to vote. One key instrument has been the mobile phone. Picture this; 1. Planning - Political strategists came up with huge databases of their supporters with cell phone numbers and let the dynamics of networking at grassroots level take effect. In other words, because of this instrument, people who had not met before could contact each other and assist wherever they could. The youth manning the polling stations could call for support incase of any hitches. 2. Campaigning - The use of sms (short messaging service) was intense and balanced for the leading presidential candidates. Kenya has more than one million mobile phones users outstripping by far fixed lines subscribers and a message to one cell phone number can reach at least 4 people. 3. Results Diseminination - As soon as votes are counted even in the remotest areas, results can easily be accessed immediately as opposed to previous elections where people had to wait for ballot boxes to be transported to key counting points and it is believed rigging used to happen during the trasportation. We in the ICT field know this is a best practice on how ICTs can help curb rigging, enhance transparency and keep people together. The two cell phone providers were licensed less than five years ago and cover most of Kenya and have outstripped fixed lines government provider by more than 300% in that short period. Incidentally, no fixed lines were working in all the polling stations I visited further proving the maxim..Africa telecommunications development will be more wireless than fixed. Cheers, Bill Kagai ------- End of forwarded message ------- ^ ^ ^ ^ Steven L. Clift - W: http://www.publicus.net Minneapolis - - - E: clift@publicus.net Minnesota - - - - - T: +1.612.822.8667 USA - - - - - - - ICQ: 13789183 ========== HURIDOCS-Tech listserv ========== Send mail intended for the list to <huridocs-tech@hrea.org>. Archives of the list can be found at: http://www.hrea.org/lists/huridocs-tech/markup/maillist.php To subscribe to the list, send a message to <majordomo@hrea.org>, with the following text in the message: subscribe huridocs-tech To unsubscribe from the list, send a message to <majordomo@hrea.org>, with the following text in the message: unsubscribe huridocs-tech If you have problems (un)subscribing, contact <owner-huridocs-tech@hrea.org>.
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