Strengthening Governance and Democratization Processes in Kenya and the East and Central Africa Region

The grantee was unaware that there was another UNDEF-funded project in Kenya at the same time also focused on supporting the electoral processes. No coordination was established between these initiatives, and the two grantees in some cases ran parallel activities. Hence, the grantee missed out on logical synergy effects which could have strengthened the effectiveness and impact of both projects.

There was a lack of adequate staffing for project activities as staff was also tasked with other work. This delayed some activities and a more coherent implementation of outputs following the Kenyan electoral cycle timeline. Lack of staff capacity could have been mitigated by the grantee at the design phase through increasing the number of project staff, adopting a cascade training approach, and/or providing small subgrants to partners in Kenya which could also help to strengthen organizations at the grassroots level.

There was a lack of adequate staffing for project activities as staff was also tasked with other work. This delayed some activities and a more coherent implementation of outputs following the Kenyan electoral cycle timeline. Lack of staff capacity could have been mitigated by the grantee at the design phase through increasing the number of project staff, adopting a cascade training approach, and/or providing small subgrants to partners in Kenya which could also help to strengthen organizations at the grassroots level.

A part of the project entailed translating sections of the ACE Electoral Knowledge Network website into Swahili. But there was already more than a decade’s worth of good materials developed in the region in local languages that could have been uploaded to ACE. Before investing in this effort, a needs assessment should have been done to see if the lack of ACE-type material in Swahili was a major constraint to the achievement of the project’s intended outcomes and to determine which topics, if any, should be translated.

A part of the project entailed translating sections of the ACE Electoral Knowledge Network website into Swahili to increase access to voter education. However, the Swahili site ended up not generating much traffic. Part of the reason was the lack of publicity and outreach. Another was the lack of relevance for local CSO’s in Kenya. All of the Kenyans interviewed said they would rather access technical information in English because Swahili did not have the technical vocabulary needed.

Timing of the study tours to Canada, Mexico and Ghana to learn lessons from other context, was not ideal in relation to the Office’s engagements, and the Kenyan electoral cycle. Doing the study tours earlier would have been more effective as this would have given them the opportunity to incorporate some of the best practices observed into the updating of the Party Act.

To enhance the capacity of the newly established Office of the Registrar of Political Parties in Kenya, the grantee organized study tours to Canada, Mexico and Ghana. While the tours were useful in raising awareness of participants, there was no plan for how new knowledge and recommendations should be incorporated into the organization. Study tours should have been part of a broader institutional capacity building effort that also provided follow-up activities.

Although most of the project activities were directly relevant to the objective of strengthening the electoral process in Kenya, most of the activities were designed as a series of one-time efforts. This scattered nature lacked the programmatic links and followed-up needed to be effective beyond the activity level. Failure to collect outcome data made impact difficult to assess beyond the individual level. In order to achieve outcomes beyond outputs, follow-up efforts would have been needed in all four activity areas.