Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Associate Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent.
The final week of campaigning before nationwide elections in Kenya began with two incidents that amplified fears of political violence. First, last weekend, a man armed with a machete managed to break into the home of Deputy President William Ruto, wounding one police officer and then fatally shooting another with a stolen rifle. It took 18 hours for security forces to kill him.
Then, authorities announced Monday that a senior official with Kenya’s election commission had been found dead. An autopsy revealed that he was tortured and strangled. Christopher Msando was involved in the effort to develop the commission’s electronic voter registration and balloting systems, and he “had made frequent media appearances to reassure voters that new technology to be deployed in the coming election was reliable against fraud,” reported the Guardian.