Why is Kenya?s election so expensive?
More or Less: Behind the Stats
BBC
4.6 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 7 August 2017
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On Tuesday Kenyans go to the polls to elect members of parliament and the next president. A report in Quartz Africa has estimated that the cost of putting on the election by the Government works out at around $25 per head ? $480 million in total. It also estimated that it cost Rwanda $1 a head, and Uganda $4 a head to lay on elections. Recently an expert on this programme estimated that the UK General election cost about $4 a head. We explore why there is such a difference in the amounts spent.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Why do some big successful brands go bust? |
| 0:05.0 | Toast is back for a new series, taking a look at the decisions that often left investors burnt. |
| 0:11.0 | I'm Sean Farrington, a BBC business journalist. I'll be hearing about the hype. |
| 0:15.0 | They're going to do the deal that makes them the most money at that point of time. |
| 0:19.0 | And I'm picking what went wrong, talking to owners |
| 0:22.5 | and employees to ask, what can we learn? It was being undercut by similar rivals. It just couldn't |
| 0:29.2 | survive. Toast. Listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:37.1 | Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service, |
| 0:40.7 | your numbers guide to the news around the world. |
| 0:43.2 | I'm Charlotte McDonald. |
| 0:44.9 | This week, we're exploring the costs of the upcoming Kenyan election on August 8th. |
| 0:50.6 | The inspiration for this came from a tweet from a listener, Elizabeth, |
| 0:55.1 | who had read a report that estimated that it was going to cost 25 US dollars ahead. |
| 1:00.5 | She remembered that in the aftermath of the UK election this year, we'd had an expert |
| 1:04.6 | throwing around a figure about the UK. |
| 1:10.2 | Now, listeners, Alistair Tom and Tony Holmes have asked us a question. |
| 1:14.5 | Now the election is over, I wonder, what is the true cost of putting it on? |
| 1:19.4 | The polling station staff. |
| 1:21.3 | David Cowling is Senior Visiting Research Fellow at King's College London, the ideal person to tell us how much a general election |
| 1:28.6 | costs the national purse. For actual voters, it's about £3 a head. So remembering that not |
| 1:34.7 | everybody, of course, will vote, but yes, it's about £3 a head. So that's £25 US |
| 1:39.8 | dollars versus £3, which works out at about four US dollars. |
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