Kenya’s election technology tender: A KSh10B procurement under fire
The IEBC has admitted an error in its flagship elections system tender — but the deeper question is whether a flawed process can still deliver a credible 2027 election
By James Mwangi
The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission yesterday admitted to an error in its KSh10B tender for Kenya’s next election management system, conceding it had incorrectly set performance security at 20 per cent of the contract price when the law caps it at 10 per cent, even as it dismissed broader allegations that the procurement was designed to favour South Korean firm Miru Systems Company Limited.
The admission came during proceedings before the Public Procurement Administrative Review Board, where Nairobi-based Galadirel Investment Limited has challenged the tender — advertised on 11 August with a 1 September submission deadline — on grounds that it is discriminatory, legally defective and a violation of Article 227 of the Constitution, which requires public procurement to be fair, equitable, transparent, competitive and cost-effective.
The IEBC said it had identified the performance security mistake and was preparing an addendum to correct the requirement in line with the law. It is a concession that hands the challengers at least a partial victory — and raises uncomfortable questions about the care with which a multibillion-shilling contract for the country’s most sensitive infrastructure was drafted.
Yet the commission held its ground on everything else. On the KSh30 million tender security, IEBC argued that because the procurement is structured as a framework contract, the law allows the security to be set as an absolute figure rather than a percentage of the contract value. On the accusation of favouring Miru Systems, the commission was emphatic. “The tender is strict. It’s either you are compliant or not. For the bidder to succeed, it should be 100 per cent,” the commission argued, adding that the allegations were speculative and that Galadirel had not pointed to any specific requirement giving Miru Systems an unfair advantage.
The commission also defended its local participation provisions. IEBC said it had included a 40 per cent local content requirement for the successful bidder, which it described as a measure to promote local participation and facilitate skills and technology transfer.
Through lawyer Julius Miiri, Galadirel has painted a different picture. The firm argues the tender document is riddled with omissions, contradictions and undefined requirements that make it impossible for bidders to prepare comparable, responsive proposals on a level playing field. “The aforesaid omissions, contradictions and ambiguities are material and have the potential to affect competition, responsiveness, evaluation, comparability of tenders and equal treatment of tenderers, thereby rendering the procurement process procedurally defective,” the firm argued.
The stakes could hardly be higher. The technology package carries an estimated KSh10B price tag and is intended to replace 45,353 kits judged obsolete, with additional contingency units, ahead of an election in which registered voters are projected to climb from roughly 22 million in 2022 to 28 million by 2027. A flawed procurement process at this stage does not merely represent a legal irregularity — it feeds directly into the corrosive narrative, already being amplified by Democracy for the Citizens Party leader Rigathi Gachagua, that the 2027 election is being engineered from the inside.
Gachagua has urged development partners and embassies accredited to Kenya to monitor the procurement closely, warning that the process could undermine confidence in the polls. “We appeal to our development partners and embassies accredited to the Republic of Kenya to take note of this threat to Kenya’s electoral democracy,” he said. The IEBC has not responded directly to those remarks.
The PPARB is expected to deliver its ruling this Friday. The commission has asked the board to dismiss the challenge and lift the suspension on the procurement process so that it can advance to the next stage. Galadirel is asking for the opposite — that the tender be declared legally defective and the process halted.
Whatever the board decides, the damage to public confidence has already begun. After contested elections in 2017 and 2022, trust in who programmes the kits, who holds the encryption keys and where the data is hosted remains dangerously thin. An electoral commission that advertises a KSh10B contract with an acknowledged error in its own legal requirements is not in a strong position to ask Kenyans to simply trust the process.
Transparency is not a courtesy the IEBC can afford to dispense with. It is the only currency that purchases public confidence — and right now, the commission is running short.
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