Kenya’s Crises

Kenya’s​ government is in crisis. In May, President William Ruto introduced a controversial new finance bill, which proposed higher duties on basic goods such as bread, vegetable oil and sugar, as well as an ‘eco-levy’ that would drive up the cost of sanitary towels and other items. Ruto said the taxes would raise a much needed additional £2 billion in government revenues. But many Kenyans suspect that the money is more likely to end up in MPs’ pockets or invested in their business ventures than spent on health or education. Prices have surged since the start of the war in Ukraine, while the country’s creditors – with the national debt standing at two-thirds of GDP – insist on its compliance with the IMF’s demands for fiscal discipline. Given the cost-of-living crisis and widespread scepticism of ministers’ probity, protests were perhaps inevitable. But no one foresaw how tenacious they would be.

On 18 June, people took to the streets in largely peaceful demonstrations against the bill. Within a week these had transformed into a mass movement, with many calling for Ruto to step down. In scenes that recalled anti-government protests in Sri Lanka two years ago, when demonstrators stormed the president’s residence and jumped into the pool, young Kenyans entered the parliament building in Nairobi and helped themselves to the MPs’ buffet lunch with their bare hands – a play on kula, or ‘eating’, meaning corruption. Kenyan MPs earn around 33 times the average wage (British MPs earn just over twice the average salary). When the protesters stormed parliament, the lower house had already voted to pass the bill and MPs were evacuated through an underground tunnel. Part of the building was set alight. The police shot nineteen protesters dead. At least fifty have been killed since the protests began and there are reports of arbitrary detention and disappearances.

Young Kenyans are frustrated by a lack of economic opportunities and public services, characterising themselves as ‘Gen Zs’ waging a struggle for intergenerational justice. Eighty per cent of the population is under the age of 35, and the majority of those of working age are unemployed. Ruto entered office in 2022 with promises of economic reform and anti-corruption measures; Kenya would be a ‘hustler’ nation where individual effort was rewarded. He seemed a breath of fresh air in a political landscape dominated by old dynasties. (The previous president, Uhuru Kenyatta, is the son of Kenya’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta; the longtime opposition leader, Raila Odinga, is the son of Kenya’s first vice president, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga.) But Ruto had served as Kenyatta’s deputy for nine years and there were few real signs that his presidency would signal a break with the corruption and poor economic management that plagued previous administrations. His promises have failed to materialise and most Kenyans are now ‘hustling backwards’, as they put it, struggling to stay afloat as the tide of disadvantage rises.

While in power between 2013 and 2022, Uhuru Kenyatta borrowed on a grand scale to finance infrastructure projects such as the Chinese-built railway line that connects Nairobi to Kenya’s main port in Mombasa. Those debts haven’t gone away. At the time interest rates were low and China was willing to supply huge sums to countries in the Global South as part of its Belt and Road initiative. But Chinese loans only make up around 17 per cent of Kenyan debt. The rest is owed to multilateral organisations including the IMF and World Bank, bilateral lenders such as the US and Saudi Arabia, and an array of commercial banks.

Earlier this year, Kenya issued another round of sovereign debt to avoid defaulting on a $2-billion Eurobond. But interest rates were at 13 per cent. To unlock further cash from the IMF, Ruto needed to balance the books – hence the unpopular finance bill. (In 2023, Kenyans took to the streets to protest another IMF-backed finance bill. Those protests were led by Odinga, but the turnout was much lower.) Ruto himself has criticised the high interest rates set by global financial institutions for developing nations. But the demonstrators have gone further and taken aim at the IMF’s insistence on austerity.

The election that brought Ruto to power was close-run – he won by just 200,000 votes – and marred by accusations of vote-rigging. Few young people went to the polls. More than half the members of the electoral commission rejected the results, casting a shadow over Ruto’s mandate. But to others he appeared to have pulled off a stunning electoral coup, defeating Odinga, a Luo, and capturing a large share of votes in Kenyatta’s largely Kikuyu base in the centre of the country. It helped that no Kikuyu politician ran for the presidency (Ruto is a Kalenjin, like his mentor Daniel arap Moi, the second president of independent Kenya). Both men chose Kikuyu running mates to boost their standing among Kenya’s majority ethnic group.

The electoral system is deeply flawed. In 2017, prospective MPs spent an average of £150,000 of their own money campaigning for their seats. Sums for 2022 were almost certainly higher. As the former chief justice Willy Mutunga put it, ‘Kenya is a fake democracy where elections do not matter because the infrastructure of elections has been captured by the elites.’ But international observers and Western governments were quick to applaud the ‘free and fair elections’ of 2022 and congratulate Ruto, who earlier this year became the first African head of state to have an official reception at the White House in sixteen years. Biden has called Kenya a ‘major non-Nato ally’: it is a strategic base for counterinsurgency operations against al-Shabaab in neighbouring Somalia, and Washington hopes the partnership will bolster US influence on the continent. This means overlooking Ruto’s less than saintly past. In 2010, the International Criminal Court opened a case against him for crimes against humanity. He was accused of organising attacks in which hundreds of people were killed following the disputed elections of 2007. Six years later, the ICC closed its case due to ‘insufficient evidence’. Witnesses recanted their statements, were disappeared or were found dead.

As with Moi, Ruto’s abuses at home have been massaged away by his standing abroad. During Moi’s 24-year presidency, extrajudicial killing, torture and disappearances became part of everyday life. When he stepped down in 2002, it emerged that his regime had set up torture chambers in the basement of Nyayo House, a prominent building in Nairobi’s business district. Many opposition politicians and activists, including Odinga, are said to have been interrogated in its soundproof rooms. After being forced to agree to multi-party elections in 1992, Moi oversaw the creation of an organisation called Youth for Kanu ’92. It was described as a ‘lobby group’, but its members used a combination of bribery and intimidation to ensure the success of Moi’s Kenya Africa National Union in subsequent elections. Ruto was its treasurer. In 2022, other former Kanu youth wingers reappeared in his cabinet, one as prime cabinet secretary and another as deputy president.

Like Moi, Ruto has remained steadfastly pro-Western. He was one of the few African leaders openly to reject Putin’s invitation to a summit in July 2023 and has relied much less on China than Kenyatta did. In return, Western governments and institutions have turned a blind eye to his alleged embezzlement of public funds. Ruto has also brought Christian fundamentalism back to the forefront of politics. He is Kenya’s first evangelical president, even if the association is largely tactical: 80 per cent of Kenyans regularly attend church. Ruto has crafted an image of himself as a pious man who prays every day, donates large sums of money to charity and rarely misses Sunday service. He favours homophobic and transphobic legislation. But some churches have had second thoughts about supporting his presidency, and in a joke doing the rounds, it’s said that the protests have finally ‘driven the church back to God’.

Ruto will not go without a fight when his term ends in 2027. As the protests continued to gather strength in July, he panicked and sacked his entire cabinet, aside from his foreign secretary, and began courting opposition MPs with a view to forming a ‘broad-based government’. (Supporters of Odinga have now been nominated for cabinet positions and Ruto has offered to back Odinga’s candidacy for chairman of the African Union Commission.) The most recent protests, on 8 August, were confined to Nairobi – leading some to argue that Ruto’s tactics are working. But the government has already announced plans to bring back some of the taxes it promised to cut, which will lead to further discontent. And young Kenyans continue to demand justice for fellow protesters who were killed or disappeared in recent months. It will take more than political manoeuvring to restore Kenyans’ trust in their government.