Raila calls on firm action against Cambridge Analytica at London forum

High Representative for Infrastructure Development in Africa Raila Odinga embraces Kojo Annan and wife Shamithi (left) during the two-day-conference dubbed Our Shared Humanity to mark the Legacy of the former UN Secretary General Koffi Anana at Chatham House in London on June 3, 2019.

Opposition Chief Raila Odinga has revisited the issue of propaganda and fake news and how both instruments were used to derail the last elections.

Speaking yesterday in London during the Chatham House conference, Mr Odinga particularly cited the British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, which he accused of spreading hate messages to tarnish his name during the 2017 polls.

“I have been a victim of these fake news. The international community has failed to rein in them,” Raila told participants at Chatham House.

“Cambridge Analytica was running a platform where anytime you opened a page you would see my picture there with very negative stories. Once the campaigns were over, you could not see those pages, making it difficult to seek legal redress.”

The conference is in honour of former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Raila said Cambridge Analytica, which specialises in data analysis, helped hijack Kenya’s democracy.

He explained how voters were fed with apocalyptic messages that painted him as the leader into darkness, who would bring violence and corruption.

The former premier asserted that social media outlets - Facebook, Twitter and even Google - facilitated the work of outfits such as Cambridge Analytica, and therefore were complicit in poisoning democracies.

According to the New York Times, Cambridge Analytica experimented mostly in countries in Africa and the Caribbean, where “privacy rules are lax or nonexistent.”

A television expose by Britain’s Channel 4 showed how Cambridge Analytica mined Kenyan voters’ data to help Uhuru Kenyatta win the disputed elections.

In the programme, an undercover reporter taps the firm’s executives revealing how they ran “just about every element” of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s campaigns in 2013 and 2017.

They explain how they re-branded the President’s party twice, and even wrote his speeches and manifesto.

“We have re-branded the entire party twice, written the manifesto, done research, analysis and messaging,” said Mark Turnbull, the managing director of the company’s political arm in the Channel 4 expose. “I think we wrote all the speeches and we staged the whole thing.”

The company has since denied any wrongdoing.

Cambridge Analytica first hit the headlines after helping US President Donald Trump to his shock win in 2016.

In March last year, National Super Alliance Chief Executive Officer Norman Magaya called for a full investigation on Cambridge Analytica.

Underhand dealings

But while striking a reconciliatory tone, Raila said the firm’s underhand dealings were no match to the strong Kenyan institutions that the late Annan had helped put up.

“In Kenya, we had the good fortune of experiencing Annan’s diplomacy first-hand for at least two months in 2008,” Raila said.

“Annan wanted to make leaders, especially the rich and powerful, understand that they have a responsibility to those they rule.”

Raila narrated how Annan took over the UN at a time HIV/Aids was killing more people in Africa than the wars that were being fought in the continent.

He said in 1997, some 23.3 million people were living with HIV/Aids, and that there were 3.2 million new HIV infections every year.

That, he said, was happening while treatment was only available to a privileged few, but Annan’s leadership changed all that.