The 2027 election has already started: This time, watch the money

Kenya’s political machinery is moving long before polling day — and the question of who is funding it deserves to be at the centre of the national conversation

By Levis Wangamati

The loudest part of Kenya’s 2027 election has not yet arrived, but the machinery is already moving. Politicians are touring the country, parties are reorganising and alliances are taking shape long before a single presidential ballot is cast. Yet beneath the rallies, speeches and political declarations lies a quieter question that could become one of the defining issues of the next election: who is paying for all this politics?

It is a question that rarely receives the same attention as political defections and dramatic speeches. Perhaps it should.

Yesterday, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission moved that question closer to the centre of the national conversation by engaging the Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Kenya on strengthening campaign finance management and accountability ahead of the 2027 General Election. The partnership is intended to improve monitoring of campaign finances, covering financial disclosure, expenditure, record-keeping and reporting. For an election already consuming enormous political energy, the timing is significant. The country is being reminded that elections are not only about votes and politicians — they are also about the money that powers the competition.

Kenya has seen enough elections to understand that political money is never merely a background detail. Vehicles must move, offices must operate, advertisements must be produced, rallies must be organised and political networks must be maintained across counties. Behind every impressive political spectacle is a financial architecture, and the public has a legitimate interest in understanding how that architecture works. The question is not whether politics requires money — campaigns inevitably require resources. The question is whether citizens can know where significant campaign funds come from, how they are spent and whether the rules governing that money are actually being enforced.

The timing could hardly be more consequential. The IEBC has formally set August 10, 2027 as the date for the next General Election, meaning the country is already moving toward a defined electoral deadline. The commission’s election operations plan provides a timetable covering party nominations, independent candidates, campaigns and other electoral preparations. To ordinary Kenyans, 2027 may still feel distant. But the institutions responsible for organising and regulating the election are already working against the clock. The campaign has begun institutionally, even if the official campaign period has not.

The Office of the Registrar of Political Parties has also begun placing concrete requirements before political parties. The Registrar has announced mandatory timelines covering party nomination rules, authorised officials and membership registers, with further inspections of party headquarters and county offices already scheduled. These may sound like dry administrative details, but they matter. Political parties are the vehicles through which most candidates will seek public office. Stronger internal records and compliance systems make the political process easier to scrutinise before voters are eventually asked to make their choices.

This is where Kenya’s political conversation needs to become more sophisticated. Kenyans have grown accustomed to asking who has joined which coalition, which politician has visited which county and which party appears to be gaining ground. Those questions will continue dominating headlines because personalities are easier to discuss than institutional systems. But democracy cannot be reduced to political arithmetic, handshakes and rally attendance. Voters should also be asking who is financing political organisations, whether parties are maintaining proper records and whether the institutions charged with enforcing electoral rules have the resources and authority to do their work effectively.

The issue becomes sharper still when electoral technology and transparency enter the conversation. The High Court has granted political parties and accredited election observers access to specified electoral records and technological information held by the IEBC, including material relating to the Register of Voters, databases, servers and audit logs. The ruling should not automatically be read as proof that irregularities exist — access for scrutiny is not the same thing as evidence of wrongdoing. But it reinforces a principle that should be central to the 2027 process: confidence in elections is strengthened when legitimate scrutiny is possible.

The same principle applies to campaign financing. Asking where political money comes from does not amount to accusing every politician of corruption, just as demanding financial disclosure does not establish that someone’s accounts are fraudulent. It simply recognises that political competition concerns the acquisition of public power, and the public therefore has a reasonable interest in the systems supporting that competition. When financial information is clear, citizens can examine and debate it. When it is hidden, incomplete or difficult to verify, suspicion fills the space where facts should be.

That conversation has already begun beyond the traditional political parties. A constitutional petition has been filed seeking accountability over contributions associated with the Linda Mwananchi political project, raising questions about fundraising, expenditure and financial records. The legal process should be allowed to proceed without prejudging its outcome or treating allegations in a petition as established facts. Yet the broader question is legitimate and increasingly relevant. If political movements ask ordinary citizens to contribute money toward political causes, those citizens should reasonably expect meaningful transparency about how the funds are administered within the law.

This could become one of the defining tests of political maturity before 2027. Kenya has spent years debating whether politicians genuinely represent particular communities, whether coalitions are built on ideology or convenience and whether political alliances survive beyond election day. Those debates matter. But the financial question deserves equal weight, because money shapes the political environment in which all those alliances operate. What financial interests sit behind the political machinery being assembled across the country? Until Kenyans are willing to ask that question seriously, much of the political conversation will remain focused on the visible performers while ignoring the systems keeping the show running.

There is also a danger in treating campaign finance as a technical matter belonging exclusively to accountants, lawyers and electoral officials. It is not simply an administrative issue to be buried in compliance documents and annual reports. Money influences the scale at which political messages reach citizens, the visibility of candidates and the organisational strength of competing formations. That does not mean every well-funded campaign is illegitimate or every poorly funded one more authentic. It means the public deserves rules capable of making political financing transparent enough for citizens and regulators to understand the financial dimension of electoral competition.

The IEBC’s engagement with ICPAK should therefore be judged by what happens beyond the announcement. The important question will not be whether another partnership has been signed or another framework discussed. The real test will be whether campaign expenditure can be monitored effectively, whether financial disclosures can be examined and whether the rules apply consistently across all political formations. A regulation that exists only on paper provides no meaningful accountability. Kenya has enough experience with ambitious institutional promises to know that implementation is where credibility is ultimately tested.

Political parties should face the same expectation. The Registrar’s compliance timelines and inspection programme offer an opportunity to strengthen the administrative foundations of party politics before the pressure of nominations and campaigns peaks. Parties are not merely vehicles for ambitious individuals seeking elective office — they operate within a constitutional and statutory framework. Their membership structures, nomination rules and financial records affect the quality of political competition. When those internal systems are weak, disputes that could have been resolved administratively can rapidly become national political crises.

Voters have a role in this process long before they enter polling stations. Kenyans should not wait until campaign posters cover every wall, political convoys fill the highways and candidates compete to make the loudest promises before beginning to ask difficult questions. By then, enormous resources will already have been committed and political narratives will already be deeply entrenched. Citizens, journalists and civil society organisations can instead begin examining party structures, campaign financing and electoral preparations while there is still time for institutions to respond to legitimate concerns. Democracy works better when scrutiny begins before the ballot rather than after the result.

Perhaps this is the conversation Kenya needs before the next wave of campaign slogans arrives. Not another argument over which politician insulted another, and not another endless debate about who shook hands with whom. The political class will supply plenty of those stories because personality politics is easy to package and easier to consume. But the harder questions are often the ones that matter most for the health of institutions. Who donated? Who spent? How much? Where did the money go? Who keeps the records, and who has the authority to inspect them?

Follow the money into the parties. Follow it into political movements and campaign organisations. Follow it through the institutions responsible for regulating elections, while carefully distinguishing verified financial records from allegations and political claims. Ask questions without assuming guilt, but without surrendering the public’s right to information either. Kenya does not need citizens to become accountants before they can participate meaningfully in democracy. It needs citizens willing to recognise that the financial side of politics is an inseparable part of politics itself.

By August 10, 2027, Kenyans will not simply be choosing names on ballot papers. They will be choosing among political organisations, candidates, promises and competing visions of the country’s future. Long before that day, however, the political machinery will have consumed enormous amounts of money, organisation and public attention. That is why campaign finance deserves to move from the footnotes of election coverage to the centre of public scrutiny. The earlier the country asks difficult questions, the less room there is for financial accountability to become an afterthought.

The more important question may be much simpler — and much harder to answer: who is paying for the machine, how is the money being used, and who is watching the accounts? Because in 2027, Kenyans will count votes. Before then, they should also learn to count the money behind the politics.

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