Latest update November 13th, 2024 1:00 AM
Tullow linked to firm bankrupted after Facebook data scandal
Kenyan media has uncovered a link between Tullow Oil and Cambridge Analytica, the firm that was bankrupt after it was revealed to have misappropriated the private data of tens of millions of Facebook users.
Daniel Wesangula, a Kenyan correspondent for The Guardian, wrote about the link in the Kenyan publication, Standard Media.
The publication stated that a leaked 2013 proposal from Cambridge Analytica suggests that Tullow may have worked with the disgraced firm to manage the optics of its operations in Kenya by, among other things, swaying the opinions of Government officials.
At the time of the proposal, the exploratory operations being conducted in Turkana – a county in Kenya – were described as “volatile” and “divisive”.
In the leaked document titled ‘Proposal for Research and Consultancy Services’, it is stated that “Tullow’s challenges are therefore to understand how best to engage positively with its host communities and keep the Kenyan government on its side whilst avoiding entanglement in domestic politics, all of which must be achieved to ensure the long-term attractiveness of the projects it is developing,” Standard Media reported.
Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL Group, sought to propose the conduction of a “thorough audit of the human and private sector skills and capabilities available in Kenya (and Block locations) that could – with various levels of capacitation, support and supervision – become involved in Tullow’s commercial activities.”
The proposal sought to give Tullow a comprehensive analysis of the workings of the Turkana society, and a communications plan to target the host communities of Tullow in a positive way, as well as keeping the Kenyan government ‘on side’ at all levels, it was reported, while avoiding being caught up in internal politics.
It is unclear whether Tullow took Cambridge Analytica up on its offer, but Standard Media reported that there appears similarity between Tullow’s operations and suggestions put forth by Cambridge Analytica’s proposal.
The publication also noted that there has been consistent and favourable press about Tullow in Kenya, as well as positive response from Government on related matters “so much so that last year President Uhuru Kenyatta launched the first batch of crude oil export from the Turkana oil fields”.
Cambridge Analytica was a firm involved in political data analysis work, having worked in over 60 countries.
It is now defunct, after it was revealed by The Observer that it misappropriated the private data of 87 million Facebook users.
Wired, an American publication, had reported that Cambridge Analytica’s professed advantage is having enough data points on people to build extensive personality profiles which its clients could leverage for psychographic targeting of ads and persuasion.
Just days ago, The Guardian reported that there has been a leak of an additional 100,000 documents that will show just how the infrastructure works of a company that engaged in large-scale voter manipulation “on an industrial scale”.
The firm was forced to close in 2018 after the scandal.
It was revealed that the firm worked with US President Donald Trump’s campaign to build a system that could profile US voters, individually, and target them with personalized political advertisements.
It was also revealed to have worked with the Leave EU campaign in The United Kingdom, to influence the British electorate to vote “Leave”.
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