Uhuru hires Trump’s campaign team ahead of August elections

juma chrispinus

May 10, 2017 9:53 AM

The team is said to have been behind the success of UK's Brexit

President Uhuru Kenyatta’s reelection bid has received a shot in the arm after his latest move that is set to shake the NASA team.

Jubilee Party has contracted the services of global data mining company Cambridge Analytica to boost his re-election campaigns in August.

The party is also set to use a powerful British PR firm BTP Advisers which was behind the TNA campaigns that brought victory to President Uhuru Kenyatta in 2013.

Cambridge Analytica is known to have been behind US President Donald Trump’s victory in the last years November elections in US.

Also read: Powerful Kamba leader surprises Uhuru at State House

The firm, described as a "psychological warfare firm", is also credited for a massive success in the highly touted Brexit campaigns in the United Kingdom June last year.

Cambridge Analytica, a British company, is owned by an American billionaire Robert Mercer and a top Trump’s Trump adviser Steve Bannon.

UK’s Guardian site, in an expose, claimed that CA, in conjunction with its sister company AggregateIQ in Vancouver, Canada, essentially won the Brexit vote by “trawling Facebook and buying up commercial consumer datasets to identify 'persuadable' voters whom it then bombarded with more than a billion social media posts and adverts.”

The paper wrote that the company employed senior ex-army officers experienced in psychological warfare operations.

“It was like working for MI6. Only it’s MI6 for hire," a former employee told the Guardian.

AggregateIQ was paid Sh705 million for its work on Brexit.

It is not, however, clear how much the Jubilee team will be parting with to import the sophisticated campaign strategy.

During Trump’s campaign last year, Cambridge Analytica is said to have created a swing vote, creating a margin of 70,000 votes between him and Democrat’s Hillary Clinton, without it, critics argue, he would have lost.

The company on its website says that apart from Brexit and Trump’s success, it has been instrumental in elections in Kenya, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, Iran and Moldova.

"Within the United States alone, we have played a pivotal role in winning presidential races, as well as congressional and senatorial elections," CA says.

Also read: White House to Kenya: This is what Trump told Uhuru on phone Tuesday

A well-placed source in the office of the president hinted that a small CA team arrived in Kenya last weekend to find out what voters believe the Jubilee administration should have done and what it should do.

The CA team will work closely with BTP Advisers, which has already started campaign planning in Nairobi.

BTP played a major role in Uhuru's 2013 win by conceptualizing the now-defunct TNA, before its launch in May 2012.

Jubilee has created a team of 500 campaigners from across the country to popularise the Jubilee agenda before the grand launch of the Uhuru campaign.

juma chrispinus