Article at a glance 

-The roots of Kenya’s post-electoral violence go beyond ethnic divisions – they have much to do with a lack of effective political representation and broad economic opportunities.

-The private sector in post-conflict settings has an important role to play in brokering peace agreements.  

-Building the institutions of representative democratic governance and a stable, competitive market economy is a key element of conflict prevention.

Just as in any other country afflicted by conflict, the violence that followed December 2007 elections in Kenya had a complicated history. In late 2007 to early 2008, in a span of two months, 1,500 people died and 600,000 were displaced following elections that were expected to solidify the country’s status as one of the more stable democracies in Africa. The post-election violence was a shock for a country that had been touted as one of the success stories of Africa. Many experts identified ethnic tensions with deep historical roots as the key source of violence. Yet, the underlying reasons were more than that: ethnic tensions were the manifestation of deep-running democratic governance failures. 

To build a sound, representative democracy one needs to address two challenges: leadership selection and decision-making. In a democracy, the leadership selection issue is addressed by ensuring free and fair elections. The decision-making issue is addressed by the establishment of governance institutions that provide opportunities for citizens to participate in the development of policies and also provide them with tools to hold government officials accountable for their action or inaction. 

Although many hoped that elections in Kenya would be relatively transparent, violations of election standards and the subsequent violence prompted Freedom House to remove Kenya from its electoral democracies list almost immediately following the announcement of the results. Electoral violations only added to the long-standing list of pre-existing governance failures – the most fundamental of which was the absence of democracy between elections, failing to provide all citizens with equal opportunities to participate in the governance of their own country, regardless of election outcomes.

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