Two billion SMSs to be sent in run-up to March 4 election
What you need to know:
Safaricom expects that between 300 and 400 million SMSs would be sent in the last week to the elections.
Safaricom will donate 50 million free SMS’s on short code SMS 8762 for the peace initiative.
Partners include Sisi ni Amani-Kenya, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, the Communications Commission of Kenya, the National Cohesion and Integration Commission and the Kenya Police.
Kenyans can access the service by dialling *762# and once registered they will receive or send peace messages.
Safaricom is projecting that about two billion SMS messages will be sent between now and the March 4 General Election across the four networks. The company’s director of corporate affairs Nzioka Waita said it expects that between 300 and 400 million SMSs would be sent in the last week to the elections.
“The question is what will be sent, in what context will it be sent and will it be for the purpose of destroying or building Kenya?” Mr Waita said.
Close to 400 million SMS were exchanged from Christmas day to date across the industry.
Speaking during the launch of an SMS-based peace programme aimed at promoting peace in the run-up to the General Election, Mr Waita said more than one billion SMS were sent in the run-up to the 2007 elections, a third of them between December 23 and March 30, 2007.
Mr Waita said as of Thursday morning, there were two million Facebook users and more than 300, 000 active Twitter members in Kenya.
While launching the peace programme in partnership with local peace leaders group Sisi ni Amani-Kenya, Mr Waita announced that Safaricom will donate 50 million free SMS’s on short code SMS 8762 for the peace initiative.
Other partners include the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, the Communications Commission of Kenya, the National Cohesion and Integration Commission and the Kenya Police.
Kenyans can access the service by dialling *762# and once registered they will receive or send peace messages.
“Using the SMS platform, community peace ambassadors will send out peace messages targeted at specific incidents at a micro level with the aim of preventing, reducing or stopping election-based violence,” Mr Waita said.
He said the 2007/08 post-election violence awoke industry players on the potential of the various platforms such as SMS, voice and data to polarise the country.
“We have decided to support initiatives by like-minded organisations who want to curb the abuse of these mediums as platforms for spreading hatred and fanning violence,” Mr Waita said.
“We know that technology has worked for us going by the revolutionary M-pesa service among others. We must also be alive to the fact that technology can work against us when misused,” said NCIC chairman Mzalendo Kibunjia.
Sisi ni Amani-Kenya runs reconciliation programmes in regions that bore the brunt of post-election violence.
