As the Referendum campaigns have by Kenyan election rules ended today, it’s a good time for a bit of catching up on the challenges in the region.

With elections coming up on August 9 in Rwanda, Mike Plantz has a new piece from Chatham House “Rwandan Election: Doubts About the Poster Boy”

For similar conclusions on Somalia and Somaliland from different sources, try “Somalia’s Rough Road to Peace” from Abena Ampofoa Asare in Pambazuka and “Ballots and Bullets: The Tale of Two Somalia’s” from J. Peter Pham, published everywhere but here is the Somaliland Press version. I had also missed Bronwyn Bruton’s op-ed in the NY Times (HT to the Sahel Blog).

On Uganda, with elections upcoming early next year, the U.S. lobbyists representing Museveni, the Whitaker Group (the group that picked up Jendayi Frazer when she left the State Department) has moved out of “public sector” work and is wrapping up their contract, seeing more opportunities on the non-public side.