An important part of Open Data Manchester’s work helps to strengthen democratic processes. This may be through exploring the data around representation, understanding data through Election Hack or helping public bodies put user experience at the heart of decision making.
Julian Tait, our Chief Executive, recently visited Kenya and wrote about the events he saw unfolding.
Kenya boasts a youthful population, with 80% aged 35 and below. This demographic, coupled with disproportionately high youth unemployment, has cultivated an informal ‘hustle’ economy. Many people we spoke to view this informal ‘hustle’ as one of the few ways to make ends meet, with only a small percentage of 15 to 34-year-olds finding employment in the formal economy. The informal economy in Kenya employs five times more workers than the formal one, and the Kenyan government took measures to tax it through its far-reaching and ultimately doomed Finance Bill (2024). The bill sought to extract revenue from those working within the informal economy directly and also by taxing food staples such as bread.
Endemic Corruption
We were told that the bill made the already difficult situation people found themselves in more precarious, and the general feeling was that the legislation was punitive and unfair. The sense of unfairness was further exacerbated by corruption, both real and perceived, that permeated society – from the police officer controlling traffic on gridlocked roads, through to government at the highest level. In 2016, it was estimated that a third of the Kenyan annual government budget was lost to corruption.
Within Nairobi, many of the matatus, private mini-buses that transport people around at low cost, sported artwork celebrating UK Premier League football teams. When asked about the state of football in what seemed like a soccer-mad nation, one of our colleagues lamented that the game had been undermined by corruption, which had destroyed footballing infrastructure and the capacity to have a functioning top-tier league. The corruption was so extensive that FIFA banned Kenya from all international football competitions in 2022.
Speaking to people, especially taxi drivers and young people we met during visits, there was an all-pervading sense that people were tired of the corruption and the grind of just trying to get by, whilst those in power seemed to be aloof and ignorant of the situation. This heavily contrasted with the seemingly high level of understanding of the political and social context by the Nairobians we met.
The 15-34 Demographic and the Role of Technology
Kenya has the strongest educational system on the African continent. Yet, the lack of opportunity to earn a living within a student’s chosen field – as the formal economy employs just 5% of young people – has led to the growth of the informal hustler economy. Like most countries, young people are more likely to be technologically enabled, forming affinity groups around subjects of interest and concern, and social media usage is relatively high.
The ability to convene easily around common causes has enabled the rise of Kenya’s Gen Z as a political force. This force has wrong-footed those in power and revealed a complacency within government that failed to understand the situation and depth of feeling of those they were elected to serve.
Since independence from the Britain in 1963, Kenyan politics has been structured around tribal affiliations and alliances. With power shifting between the two largest ethnic groups, this has led to politically elite groups consolidating power, evading accountability and furthering their own economic interests to the detriment of the wider population.
This tribal and dynastic power of the political elites was challenged in 2018 when William Ruto, who was then the Deputy President, sought to recast the Kenyan political landscape to one that was class-based.
Hustlers versus Dynasty
Ruto’s ascendancy to presidential power was in part based on his touting of his credentials as a man of the people through his experience of hustling for money by selling chickens on one of the main roads out of Nairobi. He had, however, amassed substantial wealth, often through dubious land deals. But the projection of the ordinary Kenyan as a ‘striver’ and hustler cut across traditional tribal politics, appealing to those trying to make ends meet by hustling.
This appeal to the hustler class and the messaging that the leadership understood and supported ordinary Kenyans and small businesses rang hollow when he embarked on a raft of taxes that directly affected those ‘strivers’ he had courted to gain power. Mockingly referred to as Zakayo – Swahili for the biblical figure Zacchaeus, who is portrayed in the Christian holy book as a greedy tax collector who climbed a tree to see Jesus – his attempt to service the large amount of debt that the country had acquired (much of it through previous administrations) directly impacted an already struggling populace and added to the perception that the political elites are out of touch with the population.
The difficulties that people and businesses faced were exacerbated by the formulation of the Finance Bill 2024 and its far-reaching scope that sought to tax essentials such as bread and sanitary pads, as well as taxes that seemed to be directly targeted at the hustler economy.
The Protests as They Happened
There had been rumblings of unease on the streets of Nairobi for a week, but on Thursday 20th June, the Finance Bill was presented to parliament for its second reading and committee stage. This drew protesters onto the streets in major urban centres across Kenya, most prominently in Nairobi around the Central Business District (CBD), the location of the National Parliament.
From the location of the workshop where my colleagues and I were participating, the afternoon started with occasional car horns and the sound of people shouting through bullhorns as they passed. It wasn’t until mid-afternoon that we realised something more serious was going on. From our building on the opposite side of Uhuru Park from the Parliament building, we heard an increasing number of loud explosions. We were informed that this was the sound of tear gas canisters and that it wasn’t unusual for street protests to draw this response from the police. Like most protests, we were told, it would be over by 6pm when people drift off home. I wasn’t sure if this was to make us feel less nervous, or if this was truly how protests typically run their course in Nairobi.
When the workshop finished, my colleague and I had to return to our hotel on Kimathi Street in the CBD, but were informed that it wasn’t safe to return until later. The protests seemed to be more intense and different from previous ones. We managed to return to the hotel three hours later, and our taxi driver had to negotiate blockaded roads and burning barricades. The streets were strewn with debris, groups of armed police were in the midst of a mop-up operation, and anyone unfortunate enough to be on the street was immediately set upon.
The hotel seemed to be an oasis of calm compared to what went on outside. From this vantage point, I was able to find out what had happened that day.
I had started receiving text messages from friends as news of the protests was making it back to the UK and being reported by the BBC. Through looking at reporting in both local and national media, as well as what was being posted on social media, it became immediately apparent that this protest was different from what had gone before.
Gen Z had mobilised, utilising the technology and social networks available to them. Many of the people involved were educated; most had never thought or felt bold enough to protest before. This mobilisation seemed spontaneous to the government and took them completely by surprise, as they were used to fending off factional protests. Tens of thousands of young people took to the streets around the CBD in an initially good-natured and peaceful show of feeling.
Then the police moved in and things changed. Water cannons were deployed, police discharged tear gas and baton rounds, and charged protesters. As the afternoon progressed into evening, the protests turned into skirmishes, with the protesters inevitably being on the losing end of the confrontation. Even when confronted by force, many responded with reasonableness, strength, and humour. There were many instances of videos circulating on social media of people arguing their way out of arrest and standing up to overwhelming force.
The police escalated an already disproportionate response, resorting to live rounds which took the life of 29-year-old Rex Masai, and left 200 injured. In an article in the Kenyan online Nation, it described Rex as having studied architecture at college, “a dream he had harboured since childhood, but, like the majority of his jobless peers, he was yet to secure a job.” A position that many of the protesters found themselves in. No police and security service injuries were reported, indicative of the disproportionate use of force on a largely peaceful protest.
The city awoke the next morning with little evidence of the burned barricades and rubble on the street from the night before. The fronts of the shops on Kimathi Street looked untouched, and what appeared to be normalcy had returned. Travelling to our workshop the next day, our taxi driver stated that government intelligence had started to abduct organisers of the protests, but with spontaneous and distributed protest, who were the ringleaders?
Within government, there was growing unease as blame was being laid at the feet of the protesters. The National Assembly Majority Leader, Kimani Ichung’wah, proclaimed that the Gen Zs were privileged Uber-riding, KFC-eating, bottled water-drinking urbanites out of touch with the rest of the country. Recriminations were also directed at the government’s own National Intelligence Service for failing to inform the President of the public sentiment over the finance bill – a statement that revealed more about the disconnectedness of the political elite from the country than the failure of the intelligence service.
Third Reading
The effect of the protests reverberated around government. The taxes against bread and mobile money transactions (‘M-pesa’, the de facto digital money exchange platform in Kenya and several other countries in sub-Saharan Africa) had already been scrapped on the 18th, pre-empting any protest during the parliamentary reading. The 3rd reading of the Finance Bill was due in Parliament the following Tuesday. The events on the 20th were a small-scale rehearsal for what was to take place on that day.
I arrived back in the UK that Tuesday, and as I was returning home from the airport, protesters were again on the streets of Kenya’s major cities. This time, the police and security services were unequivocal in their response. Despite opposition from the protesters and some within parliament itself, President Ruto was determined to push through the bill. Protesters broke through the perimeter of the parliament compound and proceeded to set part of parliament and City Hall alight. Ruto called the acts treasonous and threatened increasing escalation of force.
Colleagues and friends in Kenya reported that the internet and mobile phone networks were becoming slow and unusable. Was this an attempt by the Kenyan Government to shut down the communications channels used by protesters that day? Peter Ndegwa, Chief Executive of Safaricom, Kenya’s largest telecommunications provider, defended the organisation after it drew the ire of Gen Zs – a major customer market. He proclaimed that the outage was coincidental and that there had been a problem with two of its undersea telecommunications cables. However, Safaricom has prior form related to opportune internet outages, with Telegram being blocked during Kenya’s Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) exams in 2023.
Aftermath
As the day drew to a close, 39 people had lost their lives, with 361 injured across Kenya. Through examining the reporting of the events that unfolded across the day and in the previous weeks, it was obvious that the vast majority of protesters were young, proud, aware, and wanting a better future for themselves and all Kenyans.
Even at the time of writing, the aftershocks of the protest and continuing civil unrest were reverberating around the country and through government. The protests of Thursday 20th and Tuesday 26th June had considerably weakened President Ruto’s position, a man who claimed to be the voice of Kenya’s hustlers and strivers. The toxic Finance Bill was withdrawn, and with it, the plans to raise an extra KSh 200 billion in revenue on the day of the protests.
On Thursday 11th July, President Ruto sacked his cabinet ministers in an attempt to show that he was listening. He touted that he was considering a government of national unity, drawing ministers from his Kenya Kwanza party and the Orange Democratic Movement. But whether this was a cynical attempt to retain his grip on power or a real move to fight the corruption that pervades all levels of government – with some believing that Ruto is a prime example – only time will tell.
From my own position, as someone from the UK who was only briefly in Kenya at the time, listening to people talk about the present situation, the difficulties of day-to-day survival, and the lack of opportunities for young people, coupled with a great desire for change and realisation of Kenya’s potential as a young, educated population that wanted to live in a just and fairer society, gave hope. This hope was also reflected in conversations with colleagues. A number of people stated that many living in sub-Saharan Africa were looking at the events happening in Kenya as a potential blueprint for change within their own countries – a shift from a politics of tribal division and self-interest to one of national consciousness that sought to improve the lives and opportunities for everyone and realise the potential of African countries in the 21st Century.
This article is based on my experience in Nairobi and participation in the Common Purpose Global Leadership Programme workshops in late June 2024.