Hello, everyone. Good morning, afternoon or evening, and welcome to this edition of Elsewhere in Focus. You can find all the articles in the series here (along with my other diaries).
The youth of the world are discontent because their leadership have failed them. This has been so in Bangladesh where student protests brought down an authoritarian government. And this has been so in Uganda and Nigeria where there were massive protests against the government, with police cracking down on them with the violence typical of colonial regimes. And a few weeks back, this was so in Kenya as well.
I know that Black Kos has had excerpts on Kenyan protests, and the protests have lost momentum. However, I thought that a whole diary on it may still be useful to share. So, here we are.
Kenya—Protests that Brought the Cabinet Down
What Brought About the Kenyan Protests?
A finance bill that increased taxes on the poor and on essential items. An economy that was serving only the rich and the corrupt (one might say they are one and the same, mostly). An International Monetary Fund (IMF) introduced debt servicing regime that hurts the poor while keeping corruption intact.
But first, what protests am I talking about? If you have not seen much about it: As Meron Elias, an analyst for East and Southern Africa for the Crisis Group writes, June saw a wave of youth led protests against President William Ruto of Kenya and the parliament. The initial reason was against the IMF-advocated finance bill mentioned above. (3 Jul 2023).
A wave of protests is sweeping through Kenya. Triggered by controversial proposed tax hikes, the movement has evolved into a wider campaign for more accountable governance in the country. Some demand the entire government’s resignation. The demonstrations started on 18 June, and for a week were overwhelmingly peaceful, but in the early afternoon of 25 June, they took a violent turn. A number of demonstrators breached police barricades and stormed the precincts of parliament. They set parts of the building on fire, destroyed legislators’ offices and carted away property, including the speaker’s mace. Kenyan police, who have a well-deserved reputation for brutality, and have in recent days drawn strong criticism for repeatedly lobbing tear gas at protesters and charging them with batons, responded with live fire. On 26 June, the Kenya National Commission on Human rights reported that 39 people had been killed in the protests since they began.
The unprecedented scenes in the houses of parliament stunned Kenyans. President William Ruto, who wavered at first between saying the protests had been “hijacked” by criminals and promising talks with the participants, finally gave in and agreed to shelve the contentious legislation, called Finance Bill 2024, on 26 June. Despite the unexpected win, demonstrators vowed to press on and held demonstrations on 27 June and 2 July. Protesters have also rolled out a program of street action due to culminate on 7 July in a “national vigil” in honour of those killed by the police. They assert that although the Finance Bill set off the protests, demonstrations were also driven by a broader set of grievances with the way Kenya is governed, including pointed criticism of well-paid officials in the executive and parliament denounced for living in luxury while imposing austerity on the public.
I am not entirely sure I agree with the author’s description of the violence as from both sides. It is the police that killed people. I know Americans might have a different idea and memory given Jan 6, but Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and now, Kenya have all shown that reclaiming the people’s house can be a revolutionary act too. Though what follows is what demonstrates whether the structure remains or reforms (as Sri Lanka where a repressive regime took charge or Kenya’s own history of a progressive constitution of 2010 bringing limited changes on the ground shows).
Frustration among Kenyans with the state of the economy and the government’s perceived insensitivity to the plight of citizens has been brewing for years, but the sudden street action caught authorities by surprise. President Ruto won an against-the-odds victory in a closely fought election in August 2022, promising to tackle the cost-of-living crisis and place “hustlers”, or poor, hard-working Kenyans, at the heart of his policy priorities. Ruto had served as deputy president in the previous administration led by President Uhuru Kenyatta, but he claimed that he was sidelined from decision-making. On taking office, he encountered state finances in a parlous condition. Kenya’s national debt stands at around $80 billion, about three quarters of its annual economic output, and 65 per cent of annual revenue goes to repaying the country’s debt. The administration’s response has been to cut several subsidies put in place by Kenyatta, notably those on fuel. Myriad other measures to raise revenues followed in 2023, including a 5 per cent increase in income tax for high earners and a 3 per cent housing levy (designed to raise funds to construct low-income housing), collected from both employees and employers. Most of these policies fall under a set of reforms that Kenya has agreed to implement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Publication by the National Treasury in May of further revenue-raising measures for the 2024-2025 financial year galvanised public anger. The proposals initially contemplated imposing a 16 per cent VAT on bread and introducing an “eco tax” on products viewed as harmful to the environment, a levy that would have raised the price of items such as sanitary towels, nappies, packaging, plastics and tyres. These proposals drew fierce, widespread opposition, although the government insisted the measures were essential to finance public spending.
Its majority in parliament appeared to guarantee the government would have its way. But an unlikely source of dissent soon emerged. Historically, opposition leaders have taken the main role in rallying supporters to reject government policies. This time, apparently using the springboard offered by social media platforms and without being steered by political leaders, young Kenyans mobilised to express their discontent. The hashtag #REJECTFINANCEBILL2024 gained prominence over the weekend of 15 June, with many calling for protests to press their case. On TikTok, dozens circulated videos outlining the harm government policies were causing. On 18 June, ahead of the Finance Bill’s second reading in parliament, thousands took to the streets. The movement at first drew praise from the general public for the way it conducted itself peacefully, in striking contrast to past opposition-led agitation that has sometimes taken the form of riots. Demonstrators also came from a wide array of ethnic groups and regions, and their highly articulate, issue-based demands sparked intense debate in the national media, as well as on social media, about the state of the economy. Despite the wave of public sentiment against the measures, the National Assembly voted on 20 June to move the legislation to the next stage, with 204 of 349 members of parliament voting yes and 115 no. Decrying the outcome as a betrayal, many protesters called for even larger demonstrations on 25 June.
If videos are more your lane, Al Jazeera also provides an introduction to the protests in this piece from June.
How Did the Government Fail Kenyans?
As I say above, and as the Crisis Group article from Meron Elias says, the economy was in very dire straits. While IMF measures have certainly contributed, and continue to contribute, the country’s political class have also been failing the people for decades.
Nanjala Nyabola, Nairobi based political analyst and write, writes for the Guardian about the crisis facing Kenyans (1 Jul 2024).
The challenge facing Kenya’s treasury is that the previous administration, of which the current president William Ruto was a part, went on a decade-long borrowing and spending spree, incurring massive debts for ill-advised infrastructure projects that were over budget, poorly executed and behind schedule. For example, rather than renovate the existing railway line that connects the coastal city of Mombasa to the Ugandan capital, it borrowed a great deal of money from China to build a new railway line that only runs across half the country, and which cargo companies have been reluctant to use.
A similar story can be told of the new overpass in Nairobi for which hundreds of trees across what was once Africa’s greenest capital were cut down. The road was built but the tolls were too expensive, so it remains underutilised. Yet the nation remains on the hook for the debt. In 2013, when Uhuru Kenyatta and Ruto came into office, Kenya’s debt-to-GDP ratio was 43%. In 2019 it was 61.7%, and so far in 2024 it is running above 70%.
All this would be bad enough even if Ruto was not also spending a fortune on an unprecedented expansion in the executive. Although Kenya has ministers and cabinet secretaries, the administration attempted to create 50 positions known as chief administrative secretaries distributed across the various ministries, as well as an office of the prime cabinet secretary. Not only is this an expensive duplication of roles, it is also illegal, and a court ruling has held that the positions are unconstitutional - leading to Ruto delaying some of the chief administrative secretary positions.
In addition, the offices of the first lady, the deputy first lady, and the spouse of the prime secretary – each with a budget, an office and staff – were created to great public fanfare. Many elected legislators in the country routinely flaunt their wealth on social media, sharing videos on TikTok of expensive cars and homes, or giving obscenely large donations to religious organisations and charities. Kenyan legislators are the second-highest paid in the world relative to GDP, and would be exempt from many of the new taxes because of their status. The finance bill was described as austerity, but this is not austerity: this is a cash grab from the poor to sustain the lifestyles of the rich.
Kari Mugo, Nairobi based writer, has more details about how the Kenyan experience the economy in Africa Is a Country (7 Jul 2024).
After years of mismanagement of the country’s affairs by a small political elite that includes President Ruto—who has been in and out of elected office since 1997—Kenya has become a miserable place to live in for those without power, wealth, or the requisite connections to attain either. Successive governments, borrowing heavily in the Kenyan people’s name in opaque debt arrangements have also left the country in a debt crisis. With a debt burden estimated at $80 billion— which is over half of the country’s GDP—Kenyans have little to show for it. There are no jobs for the young and old, inadequate health care for the sick, a crumbling education sector for children, no affordable housing for families, or social welfare protections for those in need. Meanwhile, the cost of living continues to rise. Leaving Kenyans asking, “Where does our money go?”
Cases of massive corruption provide some answers and steady fodder for the country’s newspapers. An auditor-general report published this week shows the government “cannot show projects funded with Sh1.13 trillion [$8.5 billion] of expensive loans” borrowed between 2010–2021. Further reporting by Africa Uncensored into budgeted corruption also found at least $10 billion lost to state corruption between 1978 and 2022. For context, Kenya’s outstanding debt to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) stands at less than $4 billion. And the political class is so detached from the concerns of ordinary Kenyans, who languish in poverty, that annual national and county budgets have become wealth-enriching schemes. In the 2024–2025 financial budget, for example, over $15 million was allocated for new cars for senior government officials, with only $780,000 set aside for youth development. Critically, 35 percent of Kenya’s population is between the age of 15 to 35, and the unemployment rate for young people stands at 67 percent.
These statistics—and the fact that Ruto ran on a youth platform—might explain the president’s eagerness in the previously mentioned TV interview to extoll all the overseas jobs his globe-trotting is creating for young people. But a scan of the government portal listing “Foreign Active Jobs” is filled with vacancies for housemaids, house helps, housekeepers, cleaners, and drivers in countries with documented human rights abuses against Kenyan laborers. The petite bourgeoisie, Kenyans say, have sold us out to enrich themselves.
In “What Must We Do to Be Free?” Ed Whitfield writes that chattel slavery in the Americas relied on “the use of power to take from a person the product of their own labor.” In Kenya, 61 percent of every shilling collected in taxpayer revenue, according to Ruto, is spent on servicing debt. Not only is this an admission of the government’s inability to meet the essential needs of Kenyans, but it amounts to the theft of the labor of the Kenyan people. Budgeted state corruption means Kenyan taxpayers are paying for loans, some of which never arrived in Kenya. Young Kenyans, who have rightfully identified the connection between the lack of control over their labor and its products (in tax revenues) are now seeking liberation from decades of economic violence and the yoke of Western extractionism and imperialism that the political class has tethered itself to. They are demanding a government that prioritizes their interests and a country in which they can live, work, and thrive.
Kenyan government was not working for the Kenyan people. The youth got tired of it, which is why they protested and many of them continue to protest.
What Was Special About the Current Protests?
The protests were a groundswell of popular sentiments channeled into an uprising, not a movement promoted by any political party as in previous years. Kenyans, as per observers, rose above the tribal affiliations that used to be a trademark of their politics until now. And they did it by organising through social media.
Patrick Gathara, Senior Editor for Inclusive Storytelling, writes for The New Humanitarian about how the Kenyan youth have changed the political landscape in their country and how the government and establishment would fight back (10 Jul 2024).
In the space of just three weeks, the political scene in Kenya has been completely upended by a youth protest movement that threatens to render all the normal rules of political engagement obsolete.
The upstart Generation Z has rejected much of the wisdom and tradition of their elders and created a “fearless, leaderless, partyless, and tribeless” movement that has left the political class – both within government and outside of it – scrambling to catch up.
Kenya hasn’t seen anything like it.
In the past, political action has been centred around a clutch of key charismatic political leaders, and around institutions such as political parties, civil society organisations, churches, and the mainstream media. But this new brand of younger protester bypasses all that and prefers digital platforms like TikTok and X as forums for organising countrywide protests, spreading the word, and even debating strategy and conducting civic education.
This has confounded the regime of President William Ruto, who initially responded with the tried and tested tactic of brute force: police violently disrupting the peaceful protests, killing at least 41 people, and abducting and disappearing dozens more; the military deploying on the streets; and eventually paying thugs to infiltrate the demonstrations and loot businesses to try to delegitimise the movement.
The politicians who today claim to stand with Gen Z are the same ones who were happy to stand with oppressive regimes such as that of Ruto’s predecessor, Uhuru Kenyatta, when it suited them.
The opposition, meanwhile, has been surprised by its newfound irrelevance. Like the 19th century French politician Alexandre Ledru-Rollin, who during the French revolution is said to have declared, “There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader”, opposition leaders are belatedly rushing to hitch their wagon to the movement. How far their light has dimmed is illustrated by contrasting today’s movement with their attempt last year to capitalise on popular discontent over tax hikes, which failed to generate much lasting political pressure.
In fact, the political class shouldn’t be shocked as it only has itself to blame.
Apart from lack of political party co-optation or leadership, the protests were also marked by unique methods of organisation and resistance. Naila Aroni, an artist and writer from Nairobi, writes about the “keyboard warriors” who organised the protests and the innovative methods they used.
In the crucial days leading up to Parliament’s second reading of the bill on June 20, posters about occupying Parliament began circulating like wildfire. Nobody knew where the posters originated—the protests were leaderless, organic, and tribeless, generating significant interest in mobilization—but everyone wanted to take part. Since then, calls to action have taken many forms across several platforms such as X, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. These include eye-catching infographics detailing the mismanagement of public funds, an AI chatbot decoding the bill, and a satirical diss track remixing Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us.” Moreover, TikTok users coordinated videos breaking down the bill in ethnic languages.
One of the more controversial digital tactics used by protesters was a form of hacktivism—leaking personal information to allow protesters to spam MPs with WhatsApp or SMS messages. Posters were shared across social media encouraging protesters to “SMS your MP.” Tweets shared MPs’ contact details with cheeky slogans like “salimia MP wako” (“say hi to your MP”). MP Stephen Mule’s phone was reportedly spammed with over 30,000 messages urging him to vote against the bill.
Unlike in other democratic nations where MPs are obligated to respond to constituents, Kenya has no public participation policy, meaning there are few forums in Kenya for people to meet their MPs or express their concerns, which has contributed to their inaccessibility and impunity. These protests and coordinated actions represent an urgent turning point in Kenyan history where politicians are finally being held accountable and stripped of their status as self-anointed saviors.
The spamming of MPs numbers by Kenyan protesters also confirms that WhatsApp is an emerging frontier for digital activism. Social movement scholars explain that WhatsApp’s accessibility has the potential to involve everyone, turning “politics into an everyday affair.” Organized tactics such as these WhatsApp messages further prove that our conception of connective action is rapidly expanding—digital activism is not limited to content dissemination (e.g., information and political education); it depends more on how it is used to obtain the most effective rapid response from public servants.
As the article and others note, the protests were threatening enough for the Kenyan state to use highly repressive tactics to suppress them and in the case of failure, dilute their meaning and intent through muddying the waters.
How Did the Kenyan Government Attack the Protests and Protestors?
While not up to the level of Bangladesh (the state murdered over 600 people there), the police did kill people in Kenya. Around sixty people and counting. Scores of people were disappeared. The internet was strangled making organisation difficult if not impossible. In addition, Mr. Ruto and others claimed—in the time honoured manner of states challenged anywhere including the US—that there was foreign hand in the protests.
Tessa Diphoorn, Associate Professor, Utrecht University and Naomi van Stapele, Professor in Inclusive Education, Hague University of Applied Sciences, write for The Conversation about five tactics the Kenyan state uses to control its citizens (30 Jun 2024).
Note: I have changed the style for the headings in the excerpt.
As anthropologists who have been studying social justice movements, security and citizenship in Kenya for many years, we conclude that the Kenyan state continues to engage with its citizens through the language of violence. This language refers to the structured and institutionalised way in which the state engages with citizens through force.
We identify five main ways the state does this:
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using unlawful physical force
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blaming individual police officers for violent incidents
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using the army for domestic security
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criminalising demonstrators
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abusing the justice system.
1. Suppressing demonstrations
Protests allow citizens to bring their grievances to the attention of their government. How a democratic government responds to this expression matters.
In Kenya, the state’s response has often been the use of unlawful and excessive physical force. During recent anti-graftg protests, for instance, law enforcement agencies used tear gas, water cannons, physical assaults and live ammunition on demonstrators. Such aggressive tactics have a long history in Kenya.
There were also attempts to abduct individuals suspected to be behind the leaderless anti-graft protest movement. These echo a grim pattern of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings by police.
Extrajudicial killings, involving so-called killer cops who target crime suspects in low-income neighbourhoods, cast a dark shadow over the state’s response to what it deems insecurity. Although President William Ruto promised to deal with extrajudicial killings, they have continued under his presidency.
2. Rotten apple or barrel problem?
The Kenyan state blames police violence against Kenyans on “rogue” elements – utilising the “rotten apple” theory. Across the globe, the rotten apple theory is used to explain bad behaviour as the outcome of a few bad people, rather than the result of systemic or structural factors.
The Kenyan police also regularly use “rotten apples” as a deflection strategy. These “rotten apples” are then transferred to less desirable locations, like Kenya’s dry north-west region, as a punitive measure. This tactic reinforces the idea that individual actions – rather than systemic issues of broader police culture, such as corruption – are the root cause of misconduct. This allows the government to evade any form of accountability.
There is more on the enforced disappearances in the Guardian. Carlos Mureithi writes (15 Aug 2024).
The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights has recorded 66 cases of people who are thought to have been abducted or have gone missing since the protests began, leaving behind relatives and friends who are desperately searching for them.
The protests started in response to a specific bill aimed at raising taxes, but quickly encompassed wider demands for reform, increased government accountability and the resignation of the Kenyan president, William Ruto.
According to the KNCHR, at least 60 people have been killed and 601 injured in clashes with the police and other security personnel, and 1,376 have been arrested.
Some of those declared missing have resurfaced alive, but others have been found dead.
Hussein Khalid of the Haki Africa human rights organisation, accused the authorities of trying to “muzzle” the right to protest. “Enforced disappearances have unfortunately become the modus operandi for the security authorities during these protests,” said Khalid. “Not only is this practice unconstitutional but also illegal and an affront to people’s rights and liberties.”
Resila Onyango, the spokesperson for the National Police Service, said the Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA), a civilian watchdog body for police work, was investigating allegations of police involvement in the disappearances, without providing details.
The IPOA did not respond to a request for comment.
At a public meeting in Mombasa on 28 July, Ruto dismissed claims that people had been abducted. “If there is any Kenyan who has disappeared, I want people to step forward and say Kenyan so-and-so has disappeared,” he said. “I will be very happy to deal with it.”
In the story that begins the article, a mother warns her son to not participate in the protests. He may have heeded her warning. Or he may not have. Irrespective of that, he did disappear. Odanga Madung writing for Issue 172 of the Continent—the latest—calls it digital tyranny (17 Aug 2024).
Click the cover and you can download the PDF of the whole issue.
Its first move was to shut down the internet on 25 June. This is the first time such a disruption has happened in Kenya (which likes to bill itself as the “Silicon Savannah”). Internet watchdog Netblocks said the outage occurred just as protesters attempted to storm Parliament in Nairobi.
As the protests raged on, journalists, activists and dissenters began to disappear. CNN reported that this included at least a dozen prominent social media users, who were abducted by Kenyan security forces on the night before the storming of Parliament.
According to Amnesty International Kenya’s Ramadhan Rajab, the abductees who resurfaced spoke of their phone functioning strangely before they were picked up; cars waiting at their residences and favourite hangouts; and their abductors confiscating their phones as soon as they took them. These stories draw attention to the massive surveillance infrastructure that Kenya has invested in over the years.
Nairobi streets have about 2,000 police surveillance cameras, according to a 2023 investigation by Coda Story. The Communications Authority of Kenya has a Device Monitoring System (DMS) capable of intercepting text messages and phone calls.
The agency fought a long legal battle against campaigners, who argue the DMS unduly breaches privacy, but eventually secured the right to use it. In addition, according to a 2017 investigation by Privacy International, Kenya’s spooks can directly intercept telecom networks, even without the operator’s knowledge.
The abductees’ stories raise suspicion that some combination of such capabilities were used to target them.
The author talks about how when these initial tactics failed—at least at the time—the government started muddying the waters by talking about how Ford Foundation was behind the protests. As per Ms. Aroni’s article above, the government also used paid bloggers to spread misinformation online (as the IT cell does in India). Many blamed LGBTQIA+ people for the protests. If that is not enough, the Kenyan government also has a US PR firm spinning its image to an international audience (2021 article as quoted in a Jacobin article I will use below). Mr. Ruto has also employed diversionary tactics and only time will tell how successful he becomes.
What Did the Protests Achieve?
As Ms. Aroni says, the effectiveness of protests must not be assessed by systemic changes that they brought about if any. Education must also be considered both an aim and an effect. Even so, the protests did manage to tank the finance bill and force Mr. Ruto to dismiss all but one member of his cabinet. Reuters report in the Guardian (11 Jul 2024).
Kenya’s president, William Ruto, has fired his entire cabinet apart from his foreign minister, bowing to pressure after nationwide protests that have created the biggest crisis of his two-year presidency.
The youth-led protests against planned tax rises began peacefully but turned violent. A least 39 people were killed in clashes with police last month. Some demonstrators briefly stormed parliament before Ruto abandoned the new taxes.
“I will immediately engage in extensive consultations across different sectors and political formations and other Kenyans, both in public and private, with the aim of setting up a broad-based government,” he said in a televised address to the nation, adding that he would announce additional measures later.
He also dismissed the attorney general, but said the office of the deputy president was not affected.
The sweeping cabinet changes on Thursday were what Kenyans had been asking for, the veteran anti-corruption activist John Githongo said.
“Let us see what happens now if the new ministers deal with big issues around corruption and just the arrogance and excess of his administration and the fact that a lot of Kenyans died during the demonstrations,” he said. “Hopefully this should temporarily calm things.“
The cabinet included some opposition members, which may have reduced protests in opposition dominant areas as per Al Jazeera (8 Aug 2024).
Police have hurled tear gas at protesters calling for the president’s resignation in the Kenyan capital as a new cabinet is sworn in.
The protests in Nairobi on Thursday were organised by activists upset with President William Ruto even after he dismissed almost all of his ministers and added opposition members to what he called a “broad-based” government.
Businesses in the city were mostly closed and public transport vehicles remained out of the central business district where they normally operate.
Police also mounted roadblocks on routes leading to the city. The president’s office, where the new ministers were sworn in on Thursday morning, also remained cordoned off.
Major towns and cities including the lakeside city of Kisumu – an opposition stronghold that has previously witnessed protests – remained calm, with some residents telling journalists they were not protesting because the opposition figures had been incorporated into the new cabinet.
If that is not enough, the Kenyan youth also managed to inspire the youth in Nigeria. All of these protests may have petered down but the effect and the desire for change would remain. And one day they would build a movement strong enough to effect change. As long as global forces do not stand in the way.
Al Jazeera had another Inside Story asking if real story is possible in Kenya. Take a look at that for now.
How Is the West Mixed Up in All this?
Apart from the IMF, which Africans and others (including folks in the Caribbean) consider a Western or US controlled institution, there are direct interactions between the US (at the least) and Kenya that makes US support Kenya in its efforts at repression.
Samar Al-Bulushi, professor at UC Irvine, writes for the Jacobin, about some of them (24 Jul 2024).
Kenya currently hosts the largest US embassy in Africa and is among the top recipients of US security assistance on the continent: between 2010 and 2020, the US Department of Defense provided $400 million in counterterrorism “train and equip” support, enabling it to vastly expand its security infrastructure. The US military operates from several bases in the country, including the naval base in Manda Bay, which has served as a launch pad for drone strikes in Somalia and Yemen. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin visited Kenya in September 2023, where he signed a five-year joint defense cooperation agreement with the Kenyan government focused primarily on the ongoing fight against the Somali militant group al-Shabaab.
There is perhaps no better indication of Kenya’s growing geopolitical significance than the recent state visit by President Ruto to the White House in late May of this year, where President Joe Biden announced that the country had been designated a major non-NATO ally. At the time of the visit, most analysts attributed this designation to Kenya’s willingness to lead a US-backed police intervention in Haiti. Few highlighted the equally relevant decision by the Kenyan government to join Operation Prosperity Guardian, a US-led multinational coalition designed to protect the flow of global trade in the Red Sea amidst the blockade led by Yemen’s de facto Houthi government. The fact that other states in the region —including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Djibouti — have all refused to join this coalition makes Kenya’s participation all the more significant.
Kenya’s growing relevance to the United States and NATO means that these powers cannot risk an uncertain political situation within Kenya itself. This is, perhaps, the one source of leverage the African nation, which has for a long time been seen as a paragon of stability in the region, has over its creditors. It is worth noting that while US officials have condemned the police violence against protesters in Kenya, they have strategically avoided going as far as to call the country a “failed state.”
But US officials have long been aware of the sordid history of police repression and human rights abuse in Kenya — including at the hands of US-trained police units, and this has not deterred them from deepening their security partnership with the Kenyan government. In fact, the Biden administration announced during President Ruto’s trip to Washington that it would be providing $7 million in new aid to the east African nation’s police force.
That is, USD 7 million in new aid to a police force notorious for human rights abuses. Not surprising at all. In any case, given setbacks in Niger and Ethiopia, the author says, the US will be even more desperate to support Ruto.
What Do We Do About It?
I don’t have much to say on what we might do to help Kenyans. Awareness helps but it has an impact only when we engage with the larger society and politics and force organisations and political systems to change in how they interact with peoples and countries with less power. I hope that we, whether in US, UK, or India, will do more—create awareness, press our governments more in whatever manner possible if we have links or can campaign—to make our foreign policy choices more ethical and less power and supremacy oriented.
Please read all of those pieces if you can.
That is it for today, everyone. Stay safe. Be well. Take care.
May the youth protest and may the elders provide guidance and support and if not, stop holding them back.
