Jubilee confirms link to Cambridge Analytica firm in 2017 elections

Jubilee party has confirmed that during the 2017 election campaigns, the party paid for services from Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL) — an affiliate of Cambridge Analytica — which is at the centre of an election manipulation scandal involving Facebook.

Jubilee Vice-chairman David Murathe said: “They were basically branding and all that but not directly.” It is the first public comment by a senior official of Kenya’s ruling party on SCL’s involvement in the election.

Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix was on Tuesday suspended after he emerged on the recordings boasting how his data company also played an expansive role in Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, doing all of its research, analytics as well as digital and television campaigns.

This comes after a British TV channel aired an undercover expose on Tuesday showing how Cambridge Analytica influenced 200 elections around the world.

The opposition reacted angrily to the reports of Cambridge Analytica’s involvement in the Kenyan elections.

“The same propaganda that they used in Trump’s election is what has been used in Kenya. Cambridge Analytica is now becoming an international propagandist,” said Junet Mohamed, a lawmaker for ODM party and its director of elections.

However, Jubilee senator Kipchumba Murkomen denied any influence on the election, saying that social media were of only marginal influence in Kenya despite its reputation as one of Africa’s most tech-savvy nations.

“Those things don’t influence elections in Kenya,” he said. “Kenya is not America. In Kenya, vernacular radio stations are more influential than those things.”

Cambridge Analytica has denied using Facebook data but the scandal has heightened pressure on the social media giant — already under fire for allowing fake news to proliferate on its platform.

Facebook now faces investigations on both sides of the Atlantic, sending its share price tumbling another 2.6 percent after a 6.8 percent plunge on Monday.