IEBC picks Safran to supply poll management system

What you need to know:

  • He said Gemalto SA was also not going to meet the commission’s legal timelines to manufacture, deliver, install and commission the system.
  • Safran was contracted through a government-to-government procurement after infighting in the commission.

The electoral commission has awarded France’s Safran the contract to supply the electoral management system just three days after formally cancelling the Sh3.8 billion tender offered to another firm.

At a news conference in Nairobi on Friday, commission chairman Wafula Chebukati announced that the commission had “taken steps to directly procure the system from Safran Identity and Security (previously Morpho)”.

He said the termination of the tender to another French firm Gemalto SA was driven by a number of reasons, including that the company, the only one to have gone to the level of financial evaluation, had quoted “Sh5.2 billion against the available budget of Sh3.8 billion”.

Gemalto SA, he said, was also not going to meet the commission’s legal timelines to manufacture, deliver, install and commission the system.

The tender was cancelled because over 19 million voters have been registered using the biometric voter register.

The next priority is to ensure that voter identification and results transmission are integrated with the existing voter registration database.

Kenya Integrated Electoral Management System or Kiems, is a requirement to integrate the voter register, voter identification and results transmission.

Safran was single-sourced and is the firm that supplied the biometric voter registration kits ahead for the March 2013 elections.

Safran was contracted through a government-to-government procurement after infighting in the commission.

Mr Chebukati said Safran was picked because it will deliver by May 10.

However, Safran’s system then did not rhyme with the Electronic Voter Identification System, which was bought from South African company, Face Technologies.